John Waide

I respond to the following objection: It is sometimes said that any virtue judgement (that X is a virtue or that P is a virtuous person) always presupposes some moral principle (e.g., concerning the goodness or rightness of acts typically performed by people with the character trait X) which cannot be articulated as part of an ethics of virtue. Accordingly, the objection continues, virtue ethics is always derivative from principle ethics. I focus on an underlying assumption of the objection: that a principle is the only thing which can count as a good reason supporting a moral claim. I examine the assumptions Kant makes about the role of principles in morality and O'Neill's recent claims that Kant gives us primarily an ethic of virtue rather than rules. Finally, I suggest a possible justification for virtue claims that do not rely on principles.

In this paper I will criticize a common practice I call associative advertising. Briefly, associative advertising induces people to buy (or buy more of) a product by associating that market product with such deep-seated non-market goods as friendship, acceptance and esteem from others, excitement and power even though the market good seldom satisfies or has any connection with the non-market desire. The fault in associative advertising is not that it is deceptive or that it violates the autonomy of its audience — on this point I find Robert Arrington's arguments persuasive (Advertising and Behavior Control, Journal of Business Ethics 1 (1982), 3–12). Instead, I will argue against associative advertising by examining the virtues and vices at stake. In so doing, I will offer an alternative to Arrington's exclusive concern with autonomy and behavior control.My main criticism is two-fold: (a) Advertisers must surely desensitize themselves to the compassion, concern, and sympathy for others that are central emotions in a virtuous person, and (b) associative advertising influences its audience to neglect the nonmarket cultivation of our virtues and to substitute market goods instead, with the result that we become worse and, quite likely, less happy persons.