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CHAPTER 4

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Families of Moral Values

As diverse as they are, moral values do not simply form a hodgepodge.Philosophers often distinguish three different families of moral values. Thefamilies may sometimes overlap, and not all moral values fall neatly intoone or another family. Still, categorizing moral values into families, as far aspossible, helps us sort them out, and helps us know what to look for when"unpacking" ethical issues. Useful patterns begin to emerge.

THREE FAMILIES OF MORAL VALUES

I will label the three families Goods, Rights, and Virtues using each term in afairly careful sense, as we will see. In the most general outline, the families are:

• Goods. Happiness and well-being: satisfaction, pleasure, the relief of painand suffering; fulfillment. Social benefits (social, political, or economic products,services, or states of affairs that promote happiness and well-being); reduced social

costs.

• Rights. Appropriate respect for the dignity or worth of each person. Fairness;justice; respecting legal, civil, or human rights. Treating others as equals; not actingas though they are somehow less than ourselves.

• Virtues. Good personal character. Acting as a good person ought to act:responsibly, charitably, honestly, loyally. Living up to the best of what we are.

Let us look at each family in turn, by themselves first and then in relationto each other.

Goods

Maybe we are wondering how to think, morally, about poverty. What, ifanything, should those not in poverty do for those in poverty? What sort ofwelfare system should there be?

One natural way to think about this issue is to look at goods. Poverty canbe a grinding, hopeless, self-perpetuating kind of misery, lacking even thebasics most people take for granted. Understanding poverty in this way, an

Families of Moral Values 69

argument for a welfare system looks simple: such a system relieves some ofthis misery, lifts a little of the burden of hunger and homelessness, providesthe basics, and therefore can give people a sense of self-worth and a chanceto start again. It is good for people in the simple and obvious sense that itimproves their lives. It relieves suffering and makes them better off.

Of course, many things could be called "goods." In the broadest sense,I suppose, "goods" could include any value at all—anything that is good. Inthe sense used here, though, "goods" are fairly definite, concrete, and visiblebenefits. Well-being, satisfaction: these things we can verify by experience, atleast to some extent. And many of the means to happiness and well-being are"goods" in the economic sense, products or services, say, that are definite andconcrete too, often even measurable.

Still in terms of goods, though, there is another side to the argumenttoo. It may be argued that welfare has major social costs. Critics acknowledgethe misery and the need, but go on to argue that the welfare system, at leastas we know it, actually tends to perpetuate that misery. Some accuse welfareof creating a "culture of dependency" that discourages many people frommoving ahead in life. The costs of the welfare program may also dampen theeconomy—a bad consequence for everyone. So while welfare may genuinelybenefit some people, its overall effect, the critics claim, is to make people(many individual recipients, and society as a whole) worse off rather thanbetter off.

Suppose we diagram this debate as in Figure r.The double arrows in this diagram represent contention. This is a debate,

after all. People disagree.

Good effects/benefits:the welfare system relievesthe burden of poverty andhelps people escape.

A

Bad effects/ costs:the welfare systemmay perpetuate povertyand dampen the economy.

Figure r Ethics and the welfare system: Goods in conflict

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70 Values

Still, this' debate takes place in a shared "space," indicated here by thedotted lines around the two poles of the contention. It is framed by certainbasic agreements about what kinds of moral values count. Again, it's anargument about goods: about whether, on balance, the welfare program hassocial benefits.

Both sides agree that poverty has immense costs. Both sides agree thatthe costs are morally relevant—indeed, the arguments on both sides appealdirectly and solely to the effects of poverty on people. Both want to minimizethose costs, to maximize benefits—good effects. They only differ about whatthe effects of the welfare system actually are, that is, on whether it has the netbenefits claimed for it, or perhaps overall does more harm than good.

This way of thinking may seem so very natural that it is not clear thatthere is any other way to think about such topics. In fact, there is, as we shallsee in a moment. The point for now is just that this "natural" way of thinkingis, in any case, a way of thinking, and a quite specific one at that. "Goods" tella story—one story.

Rights

Consider by contrast another and quite different way of thinking about povertyand welfare.

Is it fair for some people to end up living in the streets when others live inmansions? Is it just that some people have to work one hundred hours a weekmerely to keep food on the table while others live in luxury and do not work atall? Many people do not think so. Inequality on such a scale that it threatenspeople's very lives does not show appropriate respect (or any respect, somewould argue) for the dignity or worth of each person. No one should have towatch his or her children go hungry or stay with an abusive spouse becausethere is nowhere else to go. It's just not right.

This is a different kind of case for a welfare system: an argument fromjustice and equality—from what I am calling rights. This is not an appeal togoods, at least not in any direct way. We are no longer speaking of lesseningthe costs of poverty. We are speaking of righting its wrongs.

Note that the word "rights" here is meant in a broader way than wesometimes use it. One way to show "appropriate respect for the dignity orequal worth of each person' is by respecting people's civil or legal or human"rights" in the sense of rights to something, as when we speak of the right tolife, or the right to some kind of "safety net" when down and out. In the senseused here, though, "rights" include "rights to" life, etc., but also go farther.The argument may be that it is the right thing to do (it is fair, just, etc.) to helpout the poor, to reduce the most radical inequality, and so on, because ourfundamental dignity or equality requires it.

Like goods, though, rights in this sense can cut both ways. There is alsoa case against welfare in the same key.


There are many ways to understand fairness or "doing the right thing."There are many different interpretations of "appropriate respect for the dignityor equal worth of each person." To some it means just that everyone has anequal chance, not that everyone is entitled to succeed. In a ball game, forexample, the score may be lopsided, but it doesn't follow that the game wasunfair. One team was just a lot better (or luckier) than the other.

So maybe the right or fair thing to do in this case is to be impartial, to avoidacting in a way that is arbitrary or biased. No one should discriminate againstpoor people, for example—though we're not necessarily obliged to help out.There's a kind of equality here too, but it's not an equality of result. What would

be unjust or unfair in such a case, in fact, would be to take some points fromone team and give them to the other even though the second team did notscore them. The first team is entitled to all the points they earned, whetherthe other team scores or not.

Another way to put this is to say that wealthy people have rights to theirwealth. People have rights to their property, and therefore to the money thatthey make. Even if it's a lot more than other people make, it's still theirs. Criticsof welfare argue that taxpayers' rights are violated (or it is not right or fair; theyare not being treated with equal respect) if taxpayers are forced to give someof their money to support those who cannot support themselves. Thus we areobliged to respect their rights, even if it means that we cannot do somethingthat would (or might) have social benefits: offer public support to the needy.After all, private (voluntary) support is still possible—and violates no rights.

A diagram of this debate looks rather different. Consider Figure 2. Re-member the double arrows represent contention; the dotted lines mark out

Equality/fairness:the welfare system correctsradical disparities andmeets basic needs

AV

Fairness/rights:taxpayers have the rightto use their $$ as theysee fit.

Figure 2 Ethics and the welfare system: Rights in conflict

72 Values


the "space". of this debate—a quite distinct space from the debate about goodsoutlined above.

Again there is a major disagreement here. What is the right thing to doin the face of poverty? Which takes precedence, the claims of equity or rightsto do as you choose with your money? As to values, though, notice once againthat both sides agree on fundamentals. This time, both sides agree that the"right thing to do" is the key question—not "goods" in the sense of social costsor benefits. What is the right thing to do is still a question, but there is noquestion that what's right is what counts first.

Virtues

There is yet another kind of moral question that we ask—not about goods orrights but about what sorts of persons we are or are becoming. And here wecome to the third family of moral values: the virtues.

Many of us, thinking about poverty, will first think about how we respondto someone in poverty. Do we pull away and deny any connection, or do werespond sensitively, with charity, open-heartedness, benevolence? Think ofthe stingy, greedy, shrunken-souled Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol—someone we would not like to become.

We may ask the same kinds of questions about our whole society. Are wea society of Scrooges, begrudging the poor every morsel, or can we find in ourgreat wealth the generosity to give freely and without grudge?

That's the pro-welfare side. Thinking about certain other virtues, though,may lead you to oppose welfare. Another virtue we widely recognize andvalue is self-responsibility trying to pull your own weight and live withinyour means. Some needy people refuse to go on welfare, as a point of pride:they believe that the primary virtues are those of self-reliance and hard work,even if poorly rewarded, and that dependence is a kind of vice (the opposite ofvirtue), to be shunned even if life is very, very tough. Alongside the Scroogestory, there are stories in this other key too. Think of the old stories of familieson the frontier, or of the "self-made man."

And so for a third time we can recognize a disagreement within a sharedspace that defines a family of moral values. Consider Figure 3.

This time the disagreement is about which virtues take precedence andabout how to show virtue ourselves (being benevolent) or bring certain virtuesforth in others (encouraging self-responsibility). The shared space of thedisagreement—the underlying agreements that give it its very terms—is theconviction that the primary moral question is one of character—of virtue.Though the term "virtue" sometimes has a quaint ring, it is not at all meantquaintly in our usage here. It points us toward another distinct kind of moralquestion. In this book, again, the virtues are those moral values concernedwith who we are, not—right away, anyway—with what we do.

Benevolence

Charity, Open hearts

A

Self-responsibility

Pulling your own weight

Figure 3 Ethics and the welfare system: Virtues in conflict

There are many (possible) virtues: the ones at stake here are only a few. TheChristian Middle Ages had their seven "cardinal virtues": faith, hope, charity,prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude (along with the "deady sins"—vices

DO ALL VALUES HAVE A FAMILY?

Do all values fall into one or another of these three families?Many do, yes. The three families are really generalizations from expe-

rience: they aim to categorize the general types of values that come up forus every day. In this they reflect three broad and distinct aspects of ourlives. In our lives as embodied, vulnerable beings, the goods of well-beingand avoiding suffering must be prime concerns. In our lives as sociallyinterdependent beings, rights—fairness and justice—are prime concerns. And

S our special relationships, in families and at work, each carry special demandsand expectations, and therefore define virtues.

Still, not every value fits neatly into one of these families. Values may arisefrom other aspects of life. Some writers, for instance, advocate "authenticity,"a kind of radical honesty in the face of death and ultimate meaningless-ness. Some of these writers formed their views in the midst of World WarII, when death was an ever-present reality and it was a real question howto live, knowing that the next day might be your last. They generalizedfrom there. However, it's true for all of us all the time, isn't it, that thenext day might be our last? Maybe we ought to pay more attention thanwe do.

Families of Moral Values 7574 Values

In any case, authenticity does not fit any of the three families. It comesclosest to virtue, perhaps, but stands apart from the other virtues, embeddedas they are in ongoing lives. That is no objection to it, though; instead, it isjust a reminder that some values stand outside the three families introducedin this chapter. Sometimes we need a more complicated picture.

Some environmental values also do not fit into any of the three families.Part of the idea seems to be that nature deserves respect, so the rights familymight be the best first guess. A well-known historian has even written a historyof environmentalism under the title The Rights of Nature. Still, the rights familyis typically concerned with human social relations, and extending it to naturemay be too much of a stretch. Moral values, I have said, connect us to a largerworld, but in this case it's a vastly larger world, beyond (though including) thehuman and even animal worlds as a whole. Sometimes the values involvedseem to be almost religious in nature: we speak of awe in the face of nature,and the words "sacred" or "holy" sometimes come to mind. It may be that anew family of values is on the horizon—more on this in Chapter 21. (Recallalso the reading from Edward Abbey in Chapter 3. Did you find [mainly] goods,rights, or virtues there, or something else?)

By contrast, other "nevi' values do fit naturally within one of the threefamilies. Philosophers concerned with other animals, for example, dividefairly sharply into those who advocate animal rights—on analogy to humanrights—and those who want to relieve animal pain and suffering, whoseappeal is chiefly to goods.

The upshot is simply that the three families introduced in this chapterare useful categories most of the time, but we should not try to force everyvalue into them. Some of the most interesting new developments in ethicspush beyond these families. Values keep changing!

Another question: does any given value fit only under one category? Coulda value belong to several families at once?

Ifs a matter of interpretation. Some values that appear to be specific mayactually be rather vague and varied, and then it becomes a matter of choicewhether we should say that the value fits under more than one category, orthat the value term really names more than one specific value, each of whichmay fall into a different family. "Justice," for example, even in the basic listsgiven in this chapter, shows up twice, in different families: as one of thecardinal virtues and in the category of rights. We might therefore want todistinguish justice as a personal characteristic ("being a just person') fromjustice as a feature of social institutions ("is the welfare system just?"), and itis somewhat up to us to say whether we have two distinct values here or onlyone value with several aspects.

Other times it may not be clear how to classify a single value. "Not playingGod," for example, may be some sort of obligation, or some sort of virtue(humility?), or maybe both. Or think of "freedom." We speak of freedom (or

"liberty," in the Declaration of Independence) as a matter of justice or right,but we also think that freedom is tightly tied up with our well-being and sois a prime candidate for a basic good as well. Perhaps it is a complex singlegood, a kind of alliance of varied specific values? Or perhaps what we learnfrom examples like these is that the three families themselves may be deeplyinterconnected. (Maybe, for example, all rights are ultimately justified by theirsocial consequences—a question for Chapter 6.)

In short, there is no need to force every value into one (and only one)family. The reality is probably more complex than that. It is enough that mostvalues fit reasonably well into only one. Those that dont, just note separately.

the opposite of virtue: pride, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, avarice, and sloth).Recent advocates of character education, such as William Bennett, formerU.S. Secretary of Education, list ten key virtues: self-discipline, compassion,responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, andfaith. Some feminist thinkers in ethics focus on the virtues of care in re-lationship. Specific virtues would then include patience, nurturing, trustand trustworthiness, being supportive without being overbearing—essentialvirtues, in fact, not just for parents and spouses but for teachers, mentors,coaches, health professionals, and many others too.

MAPPING MORAL DEBATES

Values in these three families relate in various ways, from mutual support toopen conflict. We can use the kinds of diagrams just introduced to work outrough "maps" of the values involved in different moral debates and how theysupport or conflict with each other.

Parallel Debates

I introduced each family of values by asking how we might think about thequestion of poverty and welfare from within each family. Let us stay withthe poverty and welfare question, but now picture each of the three welfaredebates already sketched—one within each family—side by side.

As before, I use the double arrow to indicate a conflict or tension, andthe dotted lines enclose each separate family of values, to mark off its specificspace. Figure 4 should make it clear at once that all three families have theirown welfare debates, in very different terms. "Pro" goods conflict with "con'goods (or benefits with costs); "pro" rights conflict with "con" rights; "pro"virtues conflict with "con" virtues.

These are the debates introduced in the first part of this chapter. Here

Benevolence


114Self-responsibility

Pulling your own weightS.

1111111

Good effects/benefits:the welfare system relieves Ithe burden of poverty andhelps people escape.

Bad effects/ costs? 111

Equality/fairness?

Fairness/rights:1 taxpayers have the right

to use their $$ as theysee fit.

Rights

Equality/fairness?

Fairness/rights:taxpayers have the rightto use their $$ as theysee fit. .?

Virtues1

Benevolence1

Charity, Open hearts 1

1

"con" virtues? 1

11

Figure 6 Ethics and the welfare system: A conflict across three families

Now the debate is wider. The participants are speaking for fundamen-tally different types of values, no longer within the same family. For us asindividuals, this sort of debate may arise when we speak with people whodisagree with some of our basic conclusions, or may agree with (some of) ourmoral conclusions but not for the same reasons. Likewise, in the larger com-munity, economists and businesspeople sometimes speak (and sometimesmust speak) with religious leaders and civil rights lawyers, and vice versa. Themoral debate widens to include several different communities. Different waysof thinking have to find some way to connect.

Conflicts Between Allied Sets of Values

The overall welfare debate is wider yet. Welfare is debated in society atlarge; indeed whole political campaigns are waged about it. In this debate,naturally, all kinds of reasons come up, from all three families, both proand con. Proponents of welfare, for example, argue from welfare's ben-efits and its fairness and the virtues of charity and benevolence. All ofthese values are called upon to support a welfare system. Together theymake up an allied set of values, even though they come from differentfamilies.

Goods

111111111

Good effects/benefits: 1the welfare system relievesthe burden of poverty andhelps people escape.

Bad effects/ costs?

1


•••

1111111

Good effects/benefits:1 1

the welfare system relieves I Ithe burden of poverty and I Ihelps people escape. 1 1

1 1Bad effects/ costs: I Ithe welfare systemmay perpetuate poverty _ Iand dampen the economy.


Fairness/rights:taxpayers have the rightto use their $$ as theysee fit.

Figure 4 Ethics and the welfare system: Three parallel debates

Figure 5 Ethics and the welfare system: A cross-family conflict

each family proceeds separately. These are within-family fights. We have threeparallel debates that don't necessarily meet.

Parallel debates like these are common when people mostly speak to otherpeople who share a moral framework—people who mostly draw upon just onefamily of moral values, either out of temperament or due to the constraintsof the discussion. For example, economists and business people are morelikely to look at the social benefits and costs of some proposed policy, andoften they talk mostly to other economists and business people. The religiouscommunity may be more apt to look at virtues or rights, and to talk mostly toothers among the religious. In this case, each debate remains a family affair,and there may not be much crossover between the families involved.

Cross-Family Debates

Just as often, values conflict across families. We need to draw our arrows in adifferent direction.

Suppose you argue for welfare on the grounds of its benefits to otherwisedestitute people (a "pro" goods argument: an argument about social benefits).Someone responds that the welfare system isn't fair to the people who supportit with their tax dollars (a "con' rights argument: an appeal to fairness). Thepicture then must look like Figure 5.

This time the contention is between values that belong to different fam-ilies, rather than between two different values within a single family. Here abenefit is opposed not to a cost but to a right. Social goods come into conflictwith individual entitlements. We have for the first time a conflict that goesbeyond the boundaries of one family.

Virtues may get into the fight too. Suppose, for example, that the "con'

rights argument against welfare is met in turn with an argument from thevirtue of open-heartedness. We might then picture the situation as in Figure 6.

Once again, this is an argument across families and not merely within oneof them. A "coif argument from rights is met with both a "pro" argumentfrom social benefits and a "pro" argument from the virtues of independenceand self-reliance.


Good effects/benefits: ,the welfare system relieves "the burden of poverty and I 1

elps people escape.

Bad effects/ costs:the welfare systemmay perpetuate povertyand dampen the economy.

S.

Equality/fairness:Benevolencethe welfare system corrects I ,radical disparities and 1 1 Charity, Open heartsmeets basic needs

I1

Fairness/rights: I I Self-responsibilitytaxpayers have the right to Pulling your own weightuse their $$ as the see fit.

I 1

..•

II

II

II

II

II

Good effects/benefits:I 1 Equality/fairness:

the welfare system relieves the welfare system correctsthe burden of poverty and 1 I radical disparities and

c i's people escape. 1 1 meets basic needs.

1Benevolence

1 Charity, open hearts

Bad effects/ costs: 1the welfare systemmay perpetuate povertynd dampen the economy. .I

I Fairness/rights: 1 I Self-responsibilitytaxpayers have the right to 1 Pulling your own weightuse their $$ as they see fit.

I I

Figure 7 Allied pro-welfare values across families

Picture the situation as in Figure 7.The solid-line oval now connects pro-welfare values across all the families:

it marks out the common pro-welfare cause. These values work together;together they confront the other side.

Of course, anti-welfare values also may make common cause. Opponentsargue from welfare's social costs and the rights of taxpayers and the virtues ofself-reliance and independence (of avoiding dependence.) Suppose we picturethe allied anti-welfare values in the same way, as in Figure 8.

One step now remains. These two allied sets of values, pro- and anti-welfare, of course come into conflict themselves. Rather than conflict betweenspecific values either within or across families, however, conflict here is globalin nature. The entire set of pro-welfare values, allied across all three families,conflicts with the entire set of anti-welfare values, again allied across all threefamilies. Picture this as in Figure 9.

Again, the solid-line ovals combined here represent the two allied sets ofvalues across the families. Notice that the arrows of contention run betweenthem. All of the other kinds of contention we've looked at—between specificvalues both within and across families—also remain, of course. But all ofthat contention can be viewed against the background of the overall debatebetween the two allied sets of values we have pictured.

Good effects/benefits:the welfare system relievesthe burden of poverty andhelps people escape.

Bad effects/costs: 1 1 Fairness/rights: 11 Self-responsibilitythe welfare system taxpayers have the right to I 1 Pulling your own weightmay perpetuate poverty use their $$ as the see fit.and dampen the economy. 1 1 1 1

Figure 8 Allied anti-welfare values across families

Figure 9 Allied pro- and anti-welfare values in conflict

Much moral argument is like this. Each side in the debate uses a variety ofkinds of reasons, not always dearly distinguished, to argue a case pro or con.Each value invoked thus has affinities both with its other allied values—theyall favor or oppose a certain conclusion—and also has affinities with othervalues in the same family (its "relatives," so to speak) though some of its"relatives" point toward opposite conclusions.

In short, then, both conflict and common cause weave through this (andany) debate. Tension and harmony, agreement and disagreement, are thenatural state of our values. It gets complicated. Remember one more timeChapter 3's guidelines: expect diversity and look in depth!

Exercises and Notes

IDENTIFYING FAMILIES AND CONFLICTS

Identify the family or families of moral values involved in each of the followingmoral debates. Take the conflicts as described (all ofthem could be interpretedin more complex ways, I'm sure, but here just work from the descriptionoffered). Is the conflict within one family, across families, or between alliedsets of values across families? Compare your answers.

Here's an example:

Your freedom to ride your motorcycle without a helmet versus society's wish

to require a helmet for your own safety and to keep medical costs down.

Your freedom to ride your motorcycle without a helmet would be a right.Regulation for your own good (safety of life and limb) and society's (loweredmedical costs) would be a good. And this conflict is across families: betweenwhat's (claimed to be) good and what's (claimed to be) right.

Save your answers to these questions—you'll need them again for theexercises in Chapter 6.

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Benevolence


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