Table Of ContentVarieties ofMoral Personality
Varieties of
Moral Personality
Ethics and Psychological Realism
OWEN FLANAGAN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Copyright © 1991 by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 1993
Library 0/Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flanagan, OwenJ.
Varieties ofmoral personality: ethics and psychological
realism / Owen Flanagan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-93218-8 (alk. paper) (cloth)
ISBN 0-674-93219-6 (pbk.)
1. Ethics-Psychological aspects. 2. Psychology and
philosophy. 1. Title.
BJ45·F53 1991
170'.1'9-dC20
90-39222
elP
To myfather, Owen, Sr., and
to the memory ofmy mother, Virginia
Preface
This book is an attempt to solve a problem. Over the past decade I
have become increasingly aware that my two philosophical passions
philosophy ofmind and psychology, on the one hand, and ethical the
ory, on the other-have had little to do with each other. To be sure,
claims about human natureare ubiquitous in ethics. But most ethicists
pay no attention to the bearing on these claims of the exciting new
work in psychology and the other human sciences. The two literatures
almost never join the same debates, or ifthey do, they do so in com
plete ignorance of each other. It seemed to me, however, that the
opportunities for fruitful interaction were abundant, and that discuss
ing certain recent findings about the natureofmind, self, and identity,
the social construction of persons, and the nature of the emotions,
temperament, reasoning, and trait attribution in terms ofsome peren
nial ethical debates was long overdue. If the idea were to catch on, it
might also help diminish my sense that keeping up with the growing
literature in both ethics and the philosophy ofpsychology inevitably
brought me to disconnected places in philosophical space.
I drew inspiration from colleagues who were working, fairly suc
cessfully, to bring epistemology into greater contact with psychology
and cognitive science. And Itook heart from thespiriteddebatewithin
logic and normative epistemology about whether, and if so how, our
logical and epistemic norms should be adjusted in response to psycho
logical findings regarding actual logical and epistemic performance.
My problem concerning the relation of normative ethics to findings
about moral responsiveness and the psychological capacities subserving
morality seemed to mirror precisely the Inain issues in these debates.
Some of the thinking behind this work goes back to memorable
VB
viii / Preface
conversations I had with colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University during the summer
of 1979. I began actually writing the book while I was a visiting
professor at Duke University in 1985-86. I am grateful to my col
leagues and students at Duke for the wonderfully friendly, supportive,
and stimulating atmosphere they provided. Conversations with Robert
Brandon, Michael Ferejohn, Martin Golding, Kathryn Jackson, Rick
Roderick, and David Sanford were invaluable in the beginning stages.
I tried out the early chapters of the book on the students in my
seminar, Contemporary Ethical Theory, at Wellesley College in 1986-
87. Their responses helped me gain a clearer sense of what I wanted
to say and how it ought to be said. The entirefirst draft was completed
during my sabbatical from Wellesley in 1987-88. I spent that year as
avisiting scholarin psychologyat Harvard University. The Psychology
Department at Harvard is housed in William James Hall. It was a
source of special inspiration and delight to be writing each day in a
building named for my favorite philosopher. The understandable irony
that the psychologists had claimed him for their own did not escape
me. James was skeptical about the possibilities for smooth relations
between psychology and ethics. But, like me, he took the relation
between the two inquiries to constitute one ofthe central problems in
philosophy. James, I am fairly sure, would have found what I say here
too naturalistic for his taste. But I also think that he would have
approved of drawing psychology and ethics back toward each other,
even ifit meant that seemingly intractableproblems would be brought
once again to the fore.
I deeply appreciate the generosity of the Psychology Department
at Harvard for giving me visiting-scholar status and an office in which
to work. I am grateful to Wellesley College for providing me with a
sabbatical and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for
awarding me aFellowship for CollegeTeachers and IndependentSchol
ars, which provided a fair portion of my salary during the 1987-88
academic year. Grants from the Mellon Foundation and research funds
associated with the Class of 19I9 Professorship at Wellesley enabled
me to hire able student-scholar assistants to help with bibliographic
research.
Numerous philosophers, psychologists, political theorists, friends,
and acquaintances provided inspiration along the way. Some of them
simply encouraged me and gave me confidence in the worthwhileness
ofthe project. Others made comments and suggestions that sent me
Preface / ix
back to the drawing board. Many, especially the psychologists I
probed, gave me important leads and clarified points I did not fully
understand. Jeffrey Abramson, Robin Akert, D. Yvonne Allison,
David Brink, Kendra Bryant, Claudia Card, Jonathan Cheek, Patricia
Smith Churchland, Paul M. Churchland, Judy DeCew, Stephen Eng
strom, Juliet Floyd, Steve Gerrard, Gerd Gigerenzer, Carol Gilligan,
Martin Golding, Henry Grunebaum, Michael Hardimon, Stanley
Hauerwas, Kathrynjackson,jerome Kagan, Nannerl Keohane, Daniel
Little, Alasdair MacIntyre, Mary McGowan, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Michele
Moody-Adams, Susan Moller Okin, David Pillemer, Adrian M. S.
Piper, Hilary Putnam, jennifer Radden, Andrews Reath, Margaret
Rhodes, Annie Rogers, Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, George Sher, Susan
Silbey, Michael Stocker, Frank Sulloway, Andreas Teuber, Lawrence
Walker, Joyce Walworth, Sheldon White, and Kenneth Winston all
served in one or more ofthese capacities.
Several people-Jonathan Adler, Lawrence Blum, Robert Bran
don, Marilyn Friedman, Marcia Lind, Ruth Anna Putnam, Bernard
Williams, Ken Winkler, and David Wong-provided detailed written
comments on various parts ofthe manuscript. I am especially grateful
to them for helping me make this book far better than it would oth
erwise have been. I also thank Kathryn jackson for letting me use a
few paragraphs from an article we wrote together and published in
Ethics in 1987 in Chapters 9 and 10. Michael Aronson of Harvard
University Press has been enthusiastic about the project from the
beginning. His support, guidance, and excellent comments and sug
gestions have been invaluable. Finally, three reviewers for the Press
and the students in my seminar Moral Psychology in the fall of 1989
provided one last round ofextremely helpful comments on the manu
script.
Although they have already been mentioned, I have had the great
fortune to have as friends Larry Blum, Ruth Anna Putnam, Amelie O.
Rorty, Ken Winkler, and David Wong. In addition to the goods of
friendship, these five have provided me with continuous conversation
over the course ofseveral years on matters ofmoral psychology, and on
the question of the relation between normative ethics and empirical
psychology. I am deeply indebted to them. They have all in their own
way inspired me and deeply affected my thinking about the issues
discussed here.
My wife, joyce Knowlton Walworth, and our children, Ben and
Kate, took great interest in the project. Ben provided suggestions for
