“Till we have faces”: Second-person relatedness as the object, end and crucial circumstance of perfect or “infused” virtues

Abstract

Does any child ever first acquire virtue in an Aristotelian manner? A subtle interpersonal play is the more typical locus of initial ethical formation. Moreover, many modern experiments, such as a picture of a pair of eyes being glued to an “honesty box” (Bateson et al. 2006), reveal how even a lifeless representation that evokes a sense of “second-person relatedness” (SPR) subtly encourages virtuous actions by adults. Classical virtue ethics does not easily accommodate these phenomena, but I have argued previously (Pinsent 2012) that the “infused” dispositions described by St Thomas Aquinas can be understood in terms of SPR. In this chapter, I propose that these insights, with some corroboration from contemporary social neuroscience, highlight the need for a “Copernican Revolution” of virtue ethics. I also review briefly some implications and propose ways in which the role of infused or second-person dispositions might be tested.