Abstract:
Character traits are, very roughly, ways in which people are good or bad. In this thesis, I consider the question of what character traits are. Many recent attempts to understand character traits in terms of some disposition or another have been undertaken, but these turn out not to be sufficiently informative to provide adequate theories of character traits. Aristotle defined character traits in terms of deliberation. Unless Aristotle is correct about the singular importance of deliberation in human life, it seems that there might be character traits that do not involve deliberation. Yet even if there are character traits that do not involve deliberation, the character traits that can only be understood in terms of deliberation are a significant subset of the character traits. Hume sought to analyse virtue and vice in terms of proper objects of moral approval and disapproval, but to do this character traits must be delineated in some principled manner. Hume provides no such principles, so I develop a method of delineating character traits in terms of their relationship to appropriate moral approval and disapproval, which is probably broad enough to capture all traits. I then show how the notion of a virtuous or vicious action can be derived from both Aristotle's and Hume's theories, and how these derivations indicate two, complementary notions of virtuous and vicious action, which is a reason for using both the Humean and the Aristotelian conception of character traits conjointly. Finally, I apply the theory of character traits that I have developed in the thesis to the question of the relationship between character and friendship through a discussion of Aristotle's approach to the same problem. One form of friendship described by Aristotle involves sharing moral success, and character is clearly a good basis for this sort of friendship. Character is not a sensible basis for a sort of friendship which involves appreciating the idiosyncratic ways in which another person engages with the world, yet such friendships are also very important. I analyse the notion of such idiosyncratic engagement of the world, and show how it relates to character traits.