Appropriate Emotion, part 1.

I've been thinking, briefly, recently, about Virtue Ethics. As I tend to do, I've been thinking about it through the perception that virtue ethics as an entire ethical theory seems sorely lacking, incomplete, and indeterminate, but may serve as a useful companion to some other ethical theory, like, oh, let's say, Utilitarianism.

Specifically I've been thinking about the idea that, according to virtue ethical theories, our emotions should always be appropriated directed. So to draw this idea out by contrast:

Some kind of simple Christian teaching might tell people to love everyone. This is the whole Turn The Other Cheek, Love The Sinner thing. Some dude punches you in the face? Love him. Some dude kills your father? Love him.

Virtue Ethical theories, on the other hand, very much don't say this. According to most virtue ethicists, as I understand it, if some dude kills you father? Hate him. Hate him quite a lot. Hate is the appropriate emotion to feel towards someone who has killed your father. Vengeance might also be appropriate. Love really isn't, and it would be the sign of a morally deficient agent that he loved someone who killed his father. That's right, to love in this case would be an evil/immoral act, to hate would be appropriate, and so good/ethical.

Maybe there's something to this thought, maybe. But the point where I bring in my "virtue ethics can't really supply us with a totally satisfying, complete theory of morality" thought is where I ask "so what exactly makes for appropriateness?" Before I say anything else, I should disclaim: Maybe some virtue ethicists have an answer to this. I'm really not all that familiar with the literature here, and so there might be some totally satisfying answer to that question that I am unaware of. But, as I say, I am unaware of it, so I will go on:

In the case I've mentioned, it does seem intuitively plausible that hatred is appropriate. Father-killing is a pretty big deal, it seems kinda normal to hate people who have wronged you or others you care about, etc, etc. There might be arguments on the other side, like that hatred only leads to more hatred, which is a bad thing in the long/short run. But these arguments are unlikely to outweigh the pure intuition. Hatred in this case will still intuitively feel quite justified, blameless. There will still seem like something kinda wrong, or emotionally deficient about a person who just says "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. This upsets me, but I am prepared to overlook it for the sake of our relationship."

But... But on the other hand, Christian theology does straightforwardly suggest an answer to the question of what makes for appropriateness in this case, an answer that is totally justified and necessarily given by the theoretical commitments of the belief system as a whole. And that answer is "It is never appropriate to hate a person. The appropriate emotion to feel towards a person is always, and under every circumstances, love." And, crucially, someone who is deeply immersed in such a Christian theory will probably not, or not so strongly, feel the above intuitions (I could be wrong about this, but it comes from my inkling that a person's intuitions will be at least partly determined by the results given by the theories that they subscribe to.)

I suppose all this is just to say: If Virtue Ethics and Other Theories of Ethics are to stand in contradiction to each other, and so Virtue Ethics is to be believed as its own, complete theory of morality, then it leaves us with no decent guide to the appropriateness of emotions other than intuition, which may differ from person to person (though may want to say of the Christian above that their intuitions are invalid insofar as they stem from belief in an incorrect moral theory).

If, on the other hand, Virtue Ethics is meant to be a mere companion to some other ethical theory, then our account of appropriateness will probably simply fall out from that other theory. This leads me to want to check out what will count as appropriate emotion in a Utilitarian theory, but I'm going to leave that for my next post.