New patient-centered ethical theory honored with Philosopher’s Annual inclusion

LAWRENCE — The comedy troupe Monty Python famously featured a faux football match pitting philosophers representing Greece against those from Germany. (“Socrates has scored!”)

But while they don’t meet in head-to-head competition, an all-star team of philosophers does appear in the esteemed Philosopher’s Annual, which gathers the top 10 articles in all of the field. This year’s just released edition includes a contribution by Brad Cokelet, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas.

“My article began by asking, ‘What new kind of ideas can you generate in contemporary Western ethical philosophy?’” Cokelet said.

The answer is “Competitive Virtue Ethics and Narrow Morality.” It introduces a new form of virtue ethics — patient-centered virtue ethics — and argues it is better placed to compete with contractualism, Kantianism and utilitarianism than existing agent and target-focused forms.

Cokelet said, “There are a lot of complaints about what we philosophers do. ‘Oh, this person said this. I’m going to add this little tweak or little criticism.’ People want more ambitious stuff.”

In his paper, which originally appeared in Philosophical Studies, Cokelet wrote that philosophers are often trying to come up with an account of what individuals are morally obligated to do. They often focus on, “What would a good person do or what would a good person think?” — essentially analyzing how a virtuous person would behave and then trying to imitate it.

“What I realized by studying Eastern traditions is you can just flip the script,” he said. “We should be asking the person who’s going to be affected by one’s action how are they going to react. That’s why I called it ‘patient-centered virtue ethics’ rather than ‘agent-centered.’”

He also built this upon one of the most renowned moral concepts: the golden rule.

“This rule tells you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he said. “But now imagine you were a really good and wise version of yourself. If you were in the other person’s shoes, would you want that person to do what you’re doing to them?

“Like, what if Confucius was in their shoes?”

Virtue ethics is a movement in philosophy associated with proponents such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and Elizabeth Anscombe. The latter wrote a prominent paper in which she argued that if there’s no supreme deity laying down a decree that everyone must follow, then having any moral obligations at all doesn’t make much sense.

“So where did the idea of morality come from?” Cokelet said. “We’re not talking about a government. You might think it came from the idea that there was this divine lawgiver, and he could hold you accountable if you didn’t follow his rules. So if there’s no government in the sky, what does this even mean?”

Thus, radical virtue ethical philosophers dispute whether moral obligations are necessary in society.

“Competitive virtue ethics involves having to come up with some new account of obligation that’s secular,” he said.

A native of Montana who was raised in Rochester, New York, Cokelet is in his eighth year at KU. He is an expert in ethical theory and often works with psychologists on ways of measuring character development. He intends on writing a book partly based on his latest theory.

“There’s a lot of cynicism around now regarding ethics,” Cokelet said.

“We are faced with many hard issues that people just intractably disagree on. I think this kind of project — and what philosophers are currently doing — involves trying to help people understand what they are actually disagreeing about when they’re disagreeing about things morally.”