Quandary Ethics

1. Looking at ethics as specific moral dilemmas and how to decide what to do is a new idea that Aristotle and other early philosophers did not practice. How to resolve moral problems should not be the main focus when developing our individual characters and how to live.
2. Instead of focusing on moral problems, we should focus on maintaining a “healthy moral life.”
3. Quandary ethics looks at situations where the right answer would be the answer that is right for everyone. Ethics should look at the individual and what principles the person has set for his or herself. What is right for everyone might not be right for me.
4. Conscientiousness is only one feature of moral character. Pincoffs thinks that quandary ethics only concerns itself with conscientiousness, but he argues that other qualities should make up a person’s moral character.
5. Even though we teach children and others to develop certain virtues and values, they are their own person and inevitably will develop their own character. Everyone will end up with their own moral life that differs from others, no matter what.

Since most people think of ethics in terms of quandary ethics, what is so bad about it?
Pincoffs begins his article by showing us that the idea of ethics as moral decision-making is a new idea. His biggest fear is that ethics will be thought of only as how to make difficult decisions. He says that if we think of ethics this way, then the great ethicists’ theories will be distorted by our quandary ethics lenses (166). These ethicists were concerned with “moral enlightenment, education, and the good for man” (166) instead of decision-making. Pincoffs points out that Aristotle concerned himself with studying qualities of characters to be followed or avoided (166).
Pincoffs wants to show that thinking about moral problems is not worthless, but should not be given too much emphasis. What is left out of quandary ethics is the idea that we were raised in a certain way and holds certain values. Pincoffs says, “The ‘we’ in question is not a mere place holder; rather, it refers to those of us who were well brought up, who have had some experience of life, who know something of the way in which the social order operates, who have some control over the direction of our lives…” (167). Pincoffs is afraid that quandary ethics may deal too much with a fixation on the negative perplexity that moral dilemmas offer. He states, “A well-founded ethics would encourage the development of moral sensitivity but would discourage the entertainment of moral quandaries that arise out of moral ineptness or pathological fixation,” (167). This is where Pincoffs brings in his analogy as a moral philosopher prescribing a way for a healthy moral life instead of curing moral illnesses.
Pincoffs then anticipates an argument in favor of quandary ethics that people might conceive our times as more problematic than other periods in history, and therefore it is necessary to think of ethics in the form of moral problems. However, Pincoffs proves this theory to be wrong for two reasons. The first is that we can see that there have been previous moments in history were this is just not true. Character ethics existed in times where there were just as much moral problems. The second reason he gives is that even if this were true, there would be no good reason why rules and decisions that came out of quandary ethics would be any more effective and transcend change when the qualities of character ethics do not (168).
Then Pincoffs goes on to attack why quandary ethics is wrong when we think about it as what is the correct thing to do for anyone in a given situation. He does this by bringing up the question of who the “we” are in this problem that is at hand. When using quandary ethics we look at what would be the correct thing to do after reviewing the rules and exceptions we have laid out for ourselves through our deliberations. He says, “What is supposedly relevant is the agreements I have made; what is supposedly not relevant is any personal wants or desires or characteristics that I may have,” (170). He then compares quandary ethics to traffic court, where hurrying to get home or wanting to go to the concert is irrelevant to the court or the decision made by quandary ethics.
Instead, Pincoffs suggests this idea that personal considerations should be relevant in moral situations that are not relevant in legal cases. He illustrates this by showing that to him, the school-board meeting may be a big deal if segregation is a big part of his life and people associate him with the school-board decision. This is an example where what might be right for him is not necessarily right for everyone else. He then describes this idea of commands versus orders, and how even if we think of ethics in this way, we still let our own character enter in the back door by interpreting situations in our own discretion. He says, “They [orders] do not tell us exactly what to do so much as they indicate what we should struggle toward in our own way. But since we are already moral beings with characters formed, the way in which I will abide by an order/rule is not the same as the way in which you will,” (173).
Pincoffs then goes onto explain why character ethics has to be formed based on every individuals’ own experience and moral values. He says that when a person does something out of a sense of moral obligation, he does so because he holds himself to this moral, not others. And if he is to have his own moral character, then he must only hold himself to his own moral obligations, not others (174).
And Pincoffs wants to point out that while acting out of moral obligations that arise out of moral decision-making may be considered socially responsible, he does not want to underemphasize other qualities that he feels are just as important as conscientiousness. He notes that while developing certain virtues may be an individualistic process (we will all come up with different ideals and emphasize certain things over others), we still have some qualities that are socially essential. But he is quick to point out that he wants expand this list past rule responsibility (177). He states that “We may encourage children and ourselves in the development of certain virtues, but the form that each person’s character assumes will inevitably be the result of his own selective cultivation and his own conception of what is and is not worthy of himself. It is, once we move beyond the minimal needs of society, his problem, peculiar to him, his training, and his ideals,” (178).
Given all that Pincoffs has said, what if there is a person who is brought up under bad instruction or has been taught vices instead of virtue? What happens to that person? Are they just on their own to make “bad” moral decisions?