WIPS - The Moral Psychology of Vice

Abstract: Aristotle contrasts vice with two other bad states of agency, incontinence and bestiality. The contrast with bestiality, an amoral state, indicates that vicious agents are sufficiently morally competent to be accountable for their bad actions; while the contrast with incontinence, which involves recognizing the wrongness of one’s action and regretting it, indicates that vice, which lacks this redeeming feature, is the worst moral state. But these two contrasts together introduce a dilemma: distinguishing vice from either contrasting state thereby makes it indistinguishable from the other. An alternative conception of vice is needed, then, to explain how vicious agents can be morally competent and yet act badly without recognition or remorse. This essay develops such a conception, on which vice is understood as a conditional functioning of the capacity for sound moral judgment. Specifically, the vicious are morally competent only when morality does not interfere with their prevailing practical concerns.