Practically Virtuous: Instrumental Practical Reason and the Virtues

Instrumental accounts of practical reason are usually thought to have few or no implications for the moral virtues. I argue, on the contrary, that the social characteristics of instrumental practical reasoning give us very good reasons to be virtuous. I work to show this by first confronting with one another four recent accounts of practical reason (those of Simon Blackburn, Candace Vogler, David Gauthier, and Philippa Foot) in order to develop a powerful account of instrumental practical reasoning as an irreducibly social practice. I then connect this to a much older account of practical reasoning drawn from St. Thomas Aquinas which is both instrumental and deeply connected to the moral virtues. After showing how this Thomistic account of instrumental practical reasoning both accommodates the insights gained from the contemporary accounts and includes a clear and persuasive grounding for practical deliberation as a social activity, I argue that the resulting picture of practical reason gives us very good reason to be virtuous. In short, we are always in need of others' good counsel, since our knowledge of the means to and parts of our final end is both always open to revision and essentially limited (because of the infinite number of potentially relevant particulars, our propensity for making mistakes, and the necessary role played by those who participate with us in the pursuit of a common good). In turn, successful deliberation with others regarding the means to and parts of one's final end requires aiming at the final ends of those with whom one is deliberating. And to aim at the final end of another is to treat that person virtuously.