Summary
Humans occupy a variety of social roles - familial, professional or civic. Our objective is to probe into ethical implications of what happens when people exercise their agency, and live their lives, in and through roles. Some philosophers have seen the ethical significance of roles in their particularism: what we ought to do is determined by the specific roles we enact, rather than by universal moral norms. Recently, "roles" have also been entertained as potentially sui generis sources of moral normativity, alongside more established notions such as "virtues" and "duties". We intervene in these debates, but also develop new directions of research that help establish "role" as a pivotal concept in normative ethics. In particular, we explore "role" not only in the context of moral theories, but also as a starting point for accounts of a life lived well.
Methodologically, the project is unique in combining the research in contemporary ethics with the study of ancient philosophical texts from two different traditions: Greco-Roman and Chinese. The notion of "role" was central and explicit in Stoic and Confucian ethics, but the idea that what is good is rooted in one's roles, from specific political offices up to the role of being a human, was pervasive in ancient thought broadly considered. We believe that an exploration of the elements of role-ethics in ancient philosophy can stimulate contemporary ethical research in a manner comparable to the modern discovery of the ancient notion of "virtue" and the subsequent development of virtue-ethics.
What is a "role"? It could be a kind of "practical identity", as Christine Korsgaard puts it: a facet or a layer of who we are, which grounds our values and governs our action. But "role" in an important sense is not our identity. "Roles" are our personae, something that that we play, similarly to actors, rather than something that we are; they are other to us. If "roles" have this ambivalent relationship to identity, what does this imply for the account of human agency?
Causation plays a fundamental role in morality. It’s widely accepted that in order to bear moral responsibility for something you must also be causally connected to it. So what if we’re not causally responsible for the roles we inhabit? Do we have filial obligations given that we do not cause the child/parent relationship to come into existence? Conversely, is being the author of a causal connection sufficient to create special moral obligations? Do those who cause children to exist thereby incur an obligation that they are adequately cared for?
Roles, Identity and Agency
Roles and Morality
Consequentialism, deontology and the virtue ethics are the main strands in the contemporary moral theory. Is it appropriate, in this sense, to talk about a "role ethics" as an alternative form of morality? Or perhaps, rather, is "role" a more fundamental notion than both "duty" and "virtue", in the sense that all duties and virtues are relative to specific roles? Does, for instance, the wisdom of mothers (if there is such thing) belong to the same genus as the wisdom of rulers?
Ancient philosophers, both Greco-Roman and Chinese, have much to offer for the reflection on the relationship among role, virtue and duty as different but potentially interrelated sources of ethical normativity. One question recurrent in ancient texts is whether specific social role we occupy constrain the specific virtues we may have; for instance, as a craftsman in Plato's ideal city, you can become temperate but not wise. More positively, social role in ancient philosophy functions as a conceptual platform that integrates virtue and duty, instead of regarding them as competing moral notions: virtue is an excellence in grasping and fulfilling obligations that we have on account of occupying certain social roles.
In the contemporary discourse, the normativity of "roles" has been typically discussed in the context of theories of morality, or of what is right. But in the ancient context, or so we argue, enacting "roles" was also a part of what is "good" for the agent, in the sense of being conducive to living a good or happy life. This presupposes that roles are not only sources of do's and don'ts, but also structured frameworks that channel and maximize our agency, or life-projects that can make our life good by conferring upon it consistency and internal coherence.
Eudaemonism has become well-established among modern philosophical theories of well-being. Inspired by ancient eudaemonism, it has conceived well-being as a flourishing, a good conduct of life as a whole. In most contemporary accounts (LeBar, Russell), this good conduct is defined in terms of virtuous agency, where virtue is understood as the human perfection. But would there be a scope for a role-centered eudaemonism, which understands the flourishing not so much in terms of accomplishing the project of becoming a good human but, rather, and perhaps less ambitiously, in terms of succeeding in a limited number of key life projects, as defined by one's specific social roles?
Roles and the Good Life