When I teach on virtue ethics in my Introduction to Ethics class, I have the students get into groups of 2-3 and talk about the people in their lives they admire the most, and then name a few characteristics they admire about those people.

I bet you can guess the most popular answers for who ranks at the top of their admiration list.

The most popular answer by far is…their mother, with dad trailing as the second most popular answer.

But I wonder if you would guess the most popular answers for the characteristics they admire.

So far, the most popular responses include a family of characteristics that center around…resilience.

Fortitude. Grit. Endurance. Perseverance. Self-determination.

I'm interested in this trend in part because even though it might be predictable that a parent ends up being the person most admired in someone's life, I'm sure their parents exhibit a wide range of admirable characteristics. It just so happens that resilience tends to stand out among students and across classes.

Now, most of the students I teach are 18-22, but not all. In almost every class I get a few dual-enrolled seniors in high school who sit next to a second-career FedEx worker in his 50’s (for example).

But in general, I’m continually surprised by the students’ responses, in part because the socio-psychological research suggesting that this younger generation is risk-averse at historic levels and, well, soft. Mostly the opposite of the characteristics they admire the most.

There’s a certain tragedy to that, because I get the sense that many students do not want to be that way.

Their first-order desires may involve screens and a solitary life, but their second-order desires (a desire to desire something) in many cases clash with their zombifying habits.

They recognize in themselves a lack of resilience and fortitude that they see in others, and they wish they had it. But they don't know how to get it.

The single greatest challenge and opportunity over the next ten years or more might be cultivating this desired virtue of resilience for the covid generation. We failed them by taking away their extended family, their friends, their social lives, their churches, and their education for an entire year or more.

If the older generations do have a greater measure of endurance, we should probably put it to good use by giving slow, intentional, long-term help with forming the virtue of resilience, among others.

Out of all the ethical approaches, I think virtue ethics might offer the best chance at meeting these resilience challenges. It’s the most popular ethical theory among philosophers, for whatever that’s worth, and the person-based nature of virtue theory understandably seems to have more appeal than act-based theories like duty ethics and consequentialism.

Those theories have their strengths, but there seems to be something more tangible and compelling about putting forward persons as moral exemplars who display excellence, good habits, and admirable characteristics.

Until next time.

Jared

P.S. If you're interested in hearing more about virtue ethics, anything by Christian Miller is worth reading, including his book on the virtue of honesty, and you can watch my conversation with him here. Sabrina Little wrote an excellent book on the connection between athletics and virtue called The Examined Run, and you can see us talk about it and her experience as an ultra-marathon runner.

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