Another criticism is that action based ethics are founded on a theological- legal model that isn’t really appropriate. Moral language in traditional schemes usually has a structure that resembles that of law. Traditional, natural law ethics used this model with integrity, for it saw moral principles as terminology to law and God as alike to the sovereign. Now, however, ethics has become autonomous activity, so that it is now an inarticulate metaphor.
The virtue ethicists reject this model. Ethics should help us develop admirable characters that will generate the kind of insights needed for the difficulties of life.
In this regard, the legalistic bent of modern moral theory has the effect of weakening the spirit of morality. Rules often get in the way of kindness and spontaneous charity.
Also, action based ethics often ignore the spiritual dimension of ethics. Action based ethics reduce all moral judgement to judgements about actions and neglect the spiritual qualities of gratitude, self respect, sympathy, having one’s emotions in proper order, and aspiring to become a certain kind of person.
Virtue ethicists often cite Kant’s theory as a model of an anti- virtue ethics. They point out that a trial of Kant’s extreme action- centred approach highlights the need for a virtue alternative. For Kant; natural goodness is morally irrelevant. The fact that you actually want to help someone is of no moral importance. Kant’s logic would force him to conclude that you are actually moral in proportion to the amount of temptation that you have to resist in performing your duty.
To virtue ethicists this is madness. True goodness is to spontaneously, cheerfully, and enjoyably do what is good.
Action based ethics seems to overemphasise autonomy and neglect the common context of ethics. This criticism claims that rule- managed ethics is a symptom of the enlightenment which exaggerated the principle of autonomy, that is, the ability of each person to arrive at a moral code by reason alone. We don’t make moral decisions as rational atoms in a vacuum, and it is sheer ideological sightlessness that allows this disfigured perception.
It is in communities that such virtues as loyalty, natural affection, spontaneous sympathy, and shared concerns arise and sustain the group. It is out of this primary loyalty that the proper dispositions arise that flow out to the rest of humanity. Seeing how people actually learn to be moral and how they are inspired to act morally is vital to moral theory itself, and this, it seems, has everything to do with the virtues.
In conclusion, rule-governed systems are uninspiring and unmotivating, negative, improperly legalistic, neglectful of the spiritual dimension, overly rationalistic, and atomistic. Against this background of dissatisfaction with traditional moral theory, virtue ethics has reasserted itself as offering something that captures the essence of the moral point of view.
