Welfare, Freedom, and Virtue

How do you decide what is right and what is wrong? Most of us rely on some vague set of experiences and values we have learned, experienced, or been passed down to us from past generations. I have recently been thinking about how to articulate my method. This thought process was spured by my reading of the book Justice by Michael Sandel. This post will briefly summarize his first chapter which sets forth three basic methods for defining right and wrong.

Arguments about right and wrong generally fall into three categories: promoting the general well-being (welfare), maximizing liberty, or honoring virtue.

Welfare

An argument about welfare suggests than an action is correct when it produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. Any law or governmental action is justified if the sum total of the result is greater social happiness. The leading proponent of this theory was John Stewart Mill. Much of the contemporary well-being arguments revolve around improving the standard of living and spur economic growth. We care about these because we think prosperity makes us better off. I will have a posting on this theory later.

Liberty

An argument using liberty emphasizes individual rights and autonomy. Actions are right which respect an individual's autonomy and agency. Sandel, however, quickly points out that this theory is not as simple as it seems. Within it lies an argument between free-market libertarians and egalitarians. The question is whether free markets are in fact "free" or if they require some remedial work to equalize the playing field.

Virtue

An argument using virtue states that an action is right if it affirms certain virtues and conceptions of "the good life." While explicit virtue argument have fallen into disrepute in our modern democracy, they are still alive and well in many implicit arguments. In his defense of price gouging laws, Attorney General Crist (Florida) stated that it served the purpose of affirming that greed is an intolerable attribute. In this instance, the AG was prosecuting gougers who were taking advantage of homeless and suffering individuals following a hurricane. In his argument he implied that in America we come together in a time of crisis, we don't greedily take advantage of each other. In his view, one role of the law was to honor the virtues which make life good.

I will explore these topics more detailed as I go through the book. Just wanted to start off thinking about them.