7.4 Value profile: integrity  (Page 2/7)

2. integrity can be understood as a virtue

According to Aristotle, a virtue is “a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which [a person] of practical wisdom would determine it.” (From Ross’s translation of the Nichomachean Ethics in 1106b, 36.) Characterizing integrity as a virtue emphasizes integrity’s role in the choice of action in specific situations and in achieving consistency in choice of action throughout a professional career and even a lifetime. For Aristotle, moral virtue is characterized by a style of choice and career that consistently and even systematically avoids the vices of excess and defect. Integrity’s vice of excess lies in action and habits that tend toward rigidity and inflexibility; here the agent holds to a position no matter what and does so even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary; such a person falls prey to unreasonableness and irrationality. Integrity’s other vice, its vice of defect, emerges when the individual acts as a moral chameleon, a hypocrite, or a wanton. (Martin Benjamin in Splitting the Difference vividly describes the hypocrite and moral chameleon; Frankfurt characterizes the moral wanton as the psychotic whose actions are so inconsistent and unconnected that they express no, underlying, unified character.) Alongside these vices of excesses and defect are the vices of internal and external corruption described just above; internal (psychological) and external (organizational) corruption break down the integration of value, habit, emotion, and belief that characterizes the moral agent.

3. integrity as a meta-virtue, a virtue about the relation between virtues.

Many have characterized integrity as a special kind of virtue, a meta-virtue . In this case the subject matter of integrity consists of all the other virtues and how they fit in with one another. A person of integrity finds ways of integrating all the virtues so that she is truthful and also courageous, honorable and also humble, just and also compassionate. While there is nothing in the definition of the individual virtues that leads one to contradict another, in certain situations individual virtues become difficult to integrate. A strong sense of honor may lead one to act or appear arrogant; honor thus takes on the appearance of opposing humility because their integration in this situation is difficult. The fair and impartial judge may appear cold and devoid of compassion when she asserts justice over compassion in her decision. Integrity, because it pertains to all the virtues and to the relation in which they stand to one another, is a meta-virtue , one that posits the seamless

4. ways for building integrity: strong evaluation and aligning first and second-order desires.

• In Charles Taylor’s strong evaluation test, integrity emerges out of an intensive and radical examination of one’s core self. This examination evaluates identity-conferring beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and projects in terms of different moral “horizons.” Taylor’s test is hermeneutical because one can never completely step outside of one’s self when carrying out strong evaluation. Instead, one examines one part of the self using other parts that are kept provisionally outside the scope of criticism and examination. Then one reverses the poles of evaluation; what was formerly the target of strong evaluation now becomes the means of carrying out a new evaluation; and what provided the means of strong evaluation now becomes the target of a new evaluation. Because it is hermeneutical, strong evaluation is never complete; one is continually bootstrapping toward a more thoroughly understood and seamlessly integrated self by working toward higher and higher levels of refinement.
• Frankfurt also provides a test for integrity by distinguishing between first and second order desires. At the first level, I may desire to smoke a cigarette; I have been smoking for quite some time and feel a craving for one right now. Second-order desires evaluate first-order desires; I crave a smoke at the first level but now find smoking undesirable at the second level; second-order desires thus take an evaluative stance toward first-level desires. A new, moral goal has emerged that challenges me to reshape my first-order desires. I work to reduce my craving for a cigarette because I now find cigarettes undesirable; they are harmful, expensive, and annoy my friends. I take special measures to reduce my first order craving to align it with my second order project.
• In Taylor’s test, integrity emerges from a continual, intensive, and radical evaluation of my self-system in terms of its central, identity-conferring content. In Frankfurt’s test, integrity emerges as second-order desire motivates me to realign first-order desire.