The founders of the United States, most notably Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin, held that for a republic to long
endure, its citizenry must be virtuous and of a minimum education. Public
education would be established, such that the common man could render a
reasoned judgment at the ballot box. The dictum that the popular sovereign
(i.e., the electorate) should be broadly educated
resulted in law and medical schools in the U.S. requiring entering students to
have a bachelor degree in another school before beginning the bachelor’s degree
in the professional school. In short, public policy is an effective means of providing
a people with the opportunity to gain an education, which at least in theory
enhances the wisdom of a self-governing people.
Virtue is another story. Law seems ill-equipped to form a
virtuous people. It is one thing to outlaw vice in its outward conduct; how can
legislation instill virtue within a soul?
Mandating virtuous conduct, such as in Massachusetts’ “Good Samaritan”
law, may be possible where the conduct is in public and thus readily
enforceable. Virtue within the home is far more difficult for the law to reach
and thus foster. Even vice behind closed doors, such as incest as well as
physical and emotional abuse more generally, is difficult for police to catch.
To an extent, property rights enable such vice and allow people the option of
not being virtuous in a family context. Yet
in countries in which an authoritarian state trumps even property rights, such as China, the question
becomes whether legislation is the sort of thing that can foster or mandate
virtuous conduct and even a virtuous character.[1]
Filial piety, one of the fundamental Confucian virtues
Image Source: WUJIFA
[1] An
alternative means, which I do not discuss here, involves the future possibility
of scientists being able to “tweak” the human genome to make human beings less
inclined to vice and more virtuous. For example, if greed is an instinct or
urge to “get still more,” perhaps through genetics that instinct can be
expunged from human nature. In terms of virtue, genetics might make it more
pleasurable in being generous. Where such genetic treatments are available to
everyone, it seems to me that a good ethical argument could be made on their
behalf.
