Hitting the high Cs
Hehir, J. Bryan
J. Bryan Hehir HITTING THE HIGH Cs CHARACTER, CHOICE & COMMUNITY he conjunction of a presidential campaign and the commencement season produces some questions for the leadership of the country...
...In some form or other, the issue of values, ethics, and morality has run through presidential campaigns since 1976...
...At this level the moralists shift language and categories 8:19 June 1992 from virtues to principles and rules to judge actions of a personal or public nature...
...In addressing these questions, it is clear that the categories of an ethic of character by themselves are not a sufficient moral vision...
...shape political dialogue...
...The reaction to its persistence varies: some say discussion of morality diverts attention from "real issues" such as jobs, economic growth, and the security of the country...
...The ethic of choice, therefore, is particularly relevant to public officials and to professionals in law, medicine, science, and the military...
...the question which each person in some fashion must ask and answer about the direction of his or her life and the lives of their children...
...Imposing the test, however, requires that the citizenry have at least a basic conception of an ethic of choice...
...The ethic of choice can be minimally or narrowly defined...
...The topics can run from the ethics of war to patterns of income distribution to choices about care for the terminally ill...
...If some sense of this is lacking, neither public nor professional life can be adequately tested and judged...
...abortion and economic justice...
...An ethic of community seeks to frame the questions of social choice broadly, in light of a conception of the common-good...
...It can be shaped in an individualistic and purely procedural fashion...
...The health of a democracy depends upon the political wisdom and moral vision of both leadership and citizenry, so it is useful to test both parts of the body politic with the same questions...
...J. Bryan Hehir HITTING THE HIGH Cs CHARACTER, CHOICE & COMMUNITY he conjunction of a presidential campaign and the commencement season produces some questions for the leadership of the country and for the citizenry...
...The focus shifts from what kind of people we are to what kind of decisions we make...
...From Mr...
...The quality of the public argument about morality is directly tied to the categories by which ethics are defined...
...Character must be joined with a capability to define and decide issues involving both moral principles and contingent, debatable empirical data...
...The ethic of community requires a structured ethic of choice: one cannot build a just society without a secure grasp on the principles of distributive and social justice...
...Some of the graduates will ultimately seek leadership, but most will affect the public life of the nation as voters, citizens, and parents...
...This is the arena of social ethics, where the focus is on institutions, policies, laws, and programs...
...However the character question is defined, it needs to be related to an ethic of choice...
...Beyond character and choice lies the domain of an ethic of community...
...In political and professional life an ability to choose with professional competence and moral wisdom should be the test of performance...
...But the ethic of community often goes beyond the discourse of rules and principles...
...Clinton's early struggles with personal moral questions to Mr...
...In the political process this familiar question becomes more disputed: how important is the personal character and behavior of public officials...
...The expectation among political commentators is that the election could yield over a hundred new members of Congress and even the possibility of a presidential election being settled in the House of Representatives...
...This is the question which citizens are most familiar with...
...Commencements tend to focus attention not on singular public individuals, but on the quality, character, and competence of the citizenry...
...but the basic theme, by what moral criteria shall personal and public life be judged, never goes away...
...To hold all order, nor the responsibilities of citizens This triple agenda of moral questions three of these levels of moral argument can be captured by anything less than —character, choice, and community— together is often less tidy and more frus- the three taken as an integral whole...
...More specifically, which aspects of their personal lives are pertinent to test...
...An ethic of character focuses attention on what kind of people we are, on the moral fiber of our personal lives...
...race and family life...
...This is particularly useful when testing moral vision—a quality leaders should have, but often do not—hence the need to attend to the way moral vision is preserved among the citizenry...
...Quayle's recent foray into the terrain of public values, the campaign has been marked by a persistent although hardly profound concern for the question of ethics and American society...
...One senses in the public discussion a conviction that there must be some close connection between character and public performance, but the conviction quickly yields to confusion about which issues are good tests of that conviction...
...The policy debate is split between those who seek to define the cause of these problems in terms of character (with much less attention to social structure and social programs designed to address all three) and those who see the character question as an attempt to avoid a serious public effort to address questions of poverty, justice, and social equality...
...ciples and our understanding of what an ethics...
...The questions here are about the kind of society we seek to create locally, nationally, and internationally...
...It is the topic which moralists examine in terms of the role of virtue in the moral life...
...An adequate framework for testing both leadership and citizenry should examine three dimensions of ethical argument: an ethic of character, an ethic of choice, and an ethic of community...
...In 1992 the citizenry's conception of what "they" are like is notoriously volatile...
...Moving away from political candidates, there is the question about personal character and social issues: drugs, violence, stability of family life...
...The ethic of choice tests the ability of leaders, citizens, and the society as a whole to join a structured moral vision to empirical complexity...
...The questions have changed: Watergate and the war...
...In a campaign year the country naturally focuses on what "they" will do for "us," they being those willing or eager to stand for public office...
...Part of the volatility of the present campaign is fueled by the way citizens understand Commonweal 19 June 1992: 7 and weigh the moral dimensions of leadership...
...To raise the common-good issues is to affirm a conception of society that involves our view of human nature—that we are socially responsible to others—and our view of the state— that it has positive moral responsibilities...
...The notion of an ethic of communiCommonweal ty tests both the meaning of moral prin- cuts across the standard "schools" of trating than concentrating on only one...
...others welcome the theme, but despair of it being addressed carefully under the conditions of electoral politics...
...It also cuts across the way we But neither the needs of the public ethic of character requires...
Vol. 119 • June 1992 • No. 12
