Recently, I've had some thoughts about the relationship among virtue ethics, utilitarianism and Kantianism. My hope is, from this relationship, we can develop a kind of non-linear libertarianism, whereby our ethical intuitions about freedom are simultaneously reinforcing and constraining -- which is to say they 'cohere' well -- making us more balanced advocates of freedom. None of this is an attempt to ground ethics or propound Truth, but rather to think about freedom more holistically.
(Full disclosure: I am a metaethical skeptic, which is to say I don't think one can ground ethics, nor do I believe there are ethical truths 'out there' to be discovered. Nevertheless, I hope the following is a useful way of thinking about freedom.)
Let's take the three major categories of ethics: consequentialist-, non-consequentialist- and virtue ethics. Consequentialists think along these lines about freedom: 'Free societies tend to bring about some aggregate happiness, or prosperity.' Non-consequentialists tend to think like this: 'Freedom is good for its own sake and is not merely a means to some end.' And virtue-ethicists tend to think freedom 'enables one to live purposefully by engaging in activities that move him (and thereby society) towards both excellence and happiness.'
Now, I look at these three ethical intuitions as being like a triangle. But not just any triangle (say right or isosceles), but an equilateral triangle. The latter triangle (as a symbol for balance) shows that each angle of the triangle constrains and supports the other angles. This is the start of making our ethical intuitions cohere, as well as making them non-linear.
Consider that the linear way of talking about consequences is incomplete standing all on its own. "Freedom first" libertarians (rightfully) fret about the worrying contingency built into consequentialism, i.e. that if we could prove that freedom-destroying acts yielded greater aggregate prosperity (good social consequences), then individual freedom could be tossed out with the proverbial bathwater. On the other hand, we can't simply argue that freedom (rights) is simply good for its own sake, because we open ourselves to charges that freedom - come what may - not only challenges our sense that we should live purposefully (i.e. get our faces off the bong long enough to feed the kids), but that consequences matter. And of course, questions of virtue have built into them considerations of both excellence and happiness, which are more-or-less consequentialist notions (never mind that excellence at trimming one's fingernails, or doing some activity that adds no societal value, is probably not virtuous in any sense we can all agree on). Upon a little reflection, the mutually challenging and reinforcing aspects of these three libertarian intuitions aren't tough to spot, but we tend to think of these three different types of ethics as silos, i.e. mutually exclusive (with ethical kooties, cross-contamination, and so forth). For one to be right, the other two have to be wrong.
Maybe these three ethical types don't have to be mutually exclusive, though, but rather mutually constraining. We can successfully build in reasonable premises about consequences, the human desire for freedom and virtue/eudaimonia without committing to one or the other as the ULTIMATE foundational premise. Instead, we should learn how to speak the language of all these ethical dimensions as libertarians, without dogmatism -- allowing them simultaneously to support and constrain each other. In doing so, we may persuade others that freedom is both beautiful and multi-dimensional. Most importantly, we'll persuade others that freedom is worth having. Because that's really what it's all about.
So how does virtue figure in? This is not easy. But borrowing from the above:
I know that there is happiness to be found in purposeful living. When I am productive and end-driven, particularly in intellectual and career pursuits, I tend to find a kind of satisfaction I can't get from "baser" pleasures (although those are nice, too). The wider project of excellence - at least striving for excellence - is ongoing, and the purposeful life is fulfilling as motion towards (never really as an arrival at). I tend to feel hostility towards forces that interfere with this process of continuous becoming. Similarly, I feel hostility to those who use government power to take my freedom and destroy societal value. I also realize that the question of my excellence is determined mostly by others (agreeing intersubjectively). So, while I am freely going about my eudaimonaic pursuits, I am also, paradoxically perhaps, serving others. If I am not, then I am on something of a gerbil wheel. If I can find happiness in moving another human being with my (freely chosen) efforts, it compounds my sense that freedom, freedom's consequences, and virtue can be a three-fold cord (like an equilateral triangle). But what does this cord do? Does it argue in a circle? Does it offer us a guide? I'm not sure.
Perhaps we'll come back to this idea of a holistic, mutually constraining libertarianism. Instead of trying to ground our philosophy in something, we should instead think of our worldview as a framework or something like Neurath's boat. Maybe, after it's all said and done, we'll find a raw, naked anti-authoritarian disposition and nothing more.
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