Integrity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeIntegrityFirst published Mon Apr 9, 2001; substantive revision Sun Aug 10, 2008Integrity is one of the most important and oft-cited of virtueterms. It is also perhaps the most puzzling. For example, while it issometimes used virtually synonymously with ‘moral,’ wealso at times distinguish acting morally from acting withintegrity. Persons of integrity may in fact actimmorally—though they would usually not know they are actingimmorally. Thus one may acknowledge a person to have integrity eventhough that person may hold importantly mistaken moral views.When used as a virtue term, ‘integrity’ refers to aquality of a person's character; however, there are other uses of theterm. One may speak of the integrity of a wilderness region or anecosystem, a computerized database, a defense system, a work of art,and so on. When it is applied to objects, integrity refers to thewholeness, intactness or purity of a thing—meanings that aresometimes carried over when it is applied to people. A wildernessregion has integrity when it has not been corrupted by development orby the side-effects of development, when it remains intact aswilderness. A database maintains its integrity as long as it remainsuncorrupted by error; a defense system as long as it is notbreached. A musical work might be said to have integrity when itsmusical structure has a certain completeness that is not intruded uponby uncoordinated, unrelated musical ideas; that is, when it possessesa kind of musical wholeness, intactness and purity.Integrity is also attributed to various parts or aspects of a person'slife. We speak of attributes such as professional, intellectual andartistic integrity. However, the most philosophically important senseof the term ‘integrity’ relates to generalcharacter. Philosophers have been particularly concerned to understandwhat it is for a person to exhibit integrity throughout life.Acting with integrity on some particularly important occasion will,philosophically speaking, always be explained in terms of broaderfeatures of a person's character and life. What is it to be a personof integrity? Ordinary discourse about integrity involves twofundamental intuitions: first, that integrity is primarily a formalrelation one has to oneself, or between parts or aspects of one'sself; and second, that integrity is connected in an important way toacting morally, in other words, there are some substantive ornormative constraints on what it is to act with integrity. Ordinary intuitions about integrity tend to allow both that integrityis a formal relation to the self and that it has something to do withacting morally. How these two intuitions can be incorporated into aconsistent theory of integrity is not obvious, and most accounts ofintegrity tend to focus on one of these intuitions to the detriment ofthe other. A number of accounts have been advanced, the most importantof them being: (i) integrity as the integration of self; (ii)integrity as maintenance of identity; (iii) integrity as standing forsomething; (iv) integrity as moral purpose; and (v) integrity as avirtue. These accounts are reviewed below. We then examine severalissues that have been of central concern to philosophers exploring theconcept of integrity: the relations between types of integrity,integrity and moral theory, and integrity and social and politicalconditions.1. Integrity as Self-Integration2. The Identity View of Integrity3. Integrity as Standing for Something4. Integrity as Moral Purpose5. Integrity as a Virtue6. Types of Integrity7. Integrity and Moral Theory8. Integrity in Relation to Social and Political ConditionsBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. Integrity as Self-IntegrationOn the self-integration view of integrity, integrity is a matter ofpersons integrating various parts of their personality into aharmonious, intact whole. Understood in this way, the integrity ofpersons is analogous to the integrity of things: integrity isprimarily a matter of keeping the self intact and uncorrupted. Theself-integration view of integrity makes integrity a formal relationto the self.What is a formal relation to the self? One answer is that a formalrelation can be attributed to a person without evaluating therelation's components. Strength of will is probably a formal relationone has to oneself. Very roughly, we might say that a display ofstrength of will is a particular relation between a person's intentionand corresponding action: it is a matter of acting on an intentiongiven serious obstacles to the action. This is a formal relation tothe self in the sense we are after because we don't need to evaluatethe appropriateness, value, justice, practical wisdom, and so on,either of the intention or corresponding action in order to identifythe whole thing as a case of strength of will. We might think that alldisplays of strength of will are valuable, so we might have certainpro-attitudes to an action simply because it is an attempt to fulfillan intention in the face of serious obstacles. Yet we don't need tomake this evaluation in order to attribute a display of strength ofwill to someone. All we need to do is inspect the corrspondence ofintention and action given the difficulty of acting on theintention. We don't need to evaluate whether the intention is directedat anything worthwhile, for example. Strength of will can be displayedby the deluded and the foolishly stubborn. Self-integration is aformal relation of this kind. In attributing self-integration to aperson we are making no evaluative judgement of the states that areintegrated within the person.One instructive attempt to describe the fully integrated self is HarryFrankfurt's. (Frankfurt 1987, pp. 33-34) Frankfurt does not explicitlyaddress himself to the problem of defining integrity, nonetheless hedoes describe an important and influential account ofself-integration. According to Frankfurt, desires and volitions (actsof will) are arranged in a hierarchy. First-order desires are desiresfor various goods; second-order desires are desires that one desirecertain goods, or that one act on one first-order desire rather thananother. Similarly, one may will a particular action (first-ordervolition) or one may will that one's first order volitions are of aparticular sort (second-order volition). Second-order desires andvolitions pave the way for third-order desires and volitions, and soon. According to Frankfurt, wholly integrated persons bring thesevarious levels of volition and desire into harmony and fully identifywith them at the highest level. There are various ideas as to what itmeans to fully identify with higher-level desires and volitions.However, such identification appears to involve knowing them; notdeceiving oneself about them; and acting on them (usually).A person is subject to many conflicting desires. If one simply actedat each moment out of the strongest current desire, with nodeliberation or discrimination between more or less worthwhiledesires, then one clearly acts without integrity. Frankfurt calls sucha person a ‘wanton’ (Frankfurt 1971). Integrity thusrequires that one discriminate between first-order desires. One may dothis by endorsing certain first-order desires and‘outlawing’ others. For instance, one may endorse a desireto study and ‘outlaw’ a desire to party, and do so byreference to a higher order desire ranking success overfun. Second-order desires may conflict. One may value success overfun, but also both fear that a ruthless pursuit of success will makeone boring and value being fun over being boring. Fully integratedpersons will not fall victim to such conflict; they will either avoidit altogether (if they can) or resolve the conflict in someway. Resolution of self-conflict may be achieved by appeal to yethigher level desires or volitions, or by deciding to endorse one setof desires and outlawing others. At some point the full integration ofone's self will require that one decide upon a certain structure ofhigher level desires and order one's lower level desires and volitionsin light of it. As Frankfurt puts it, when a person unreservedlydecides to endorse a particular desire:the person no longer holds himself at all apart from the desire towhich he has committed himself. It is no longer unsettled or uncertainwhether the object of that desire—that is, what hewants—is what he really wants: The decision determines what theperson really wants by making the desires upon which he decides fullyhis own. To this extent the person, in making a decision by which heidentifies with a desire, constitutes himself. (Frankfurt1987, p. 38)When agents thus constitute themselves without ambivalence (that is,unresolved desire for a thing and against it) or inconsistency (thatis, unresolved desire for incompatible things), then the agent haswhat Frankfurt calls wholeheartedness. On one way of developing theintegrated-self view of integrity, wholeheartedness is equated withintegrity. It should be noted that self-conflict is not limited todesire. Conflict also ranges over commitments, principles, values, andwishes. Furthermore, all of these things—desires, commitments,values, and so on—are in flux. They change over time so thatachieving the kind of ‘wholeheartedness’ that Frankfurtdescribes is a never-ending process and task. Self-knowledge iscrucial to this process in so far as one must know what one's values,for example, are if one is to order them.Frankfurt's account illustrates one way of describing thefully-integrated self. (See Taylor 1981 for a different approach.) Thekey question, however, is whether the idea of a fully-integrated selfadequately captures the quality we ascribe when we say of someone thatthey are a person of integrity. There have been a number of criticismsof the integrated-self view of integrity. First, it places only formallimits on the kind of person who may be said to have integrity. Peopleof integrity, however, are plausibly thought to be generally honestand genuine in their dealings with others. (See Halfon 1989, pp. 7-8.)Imagine a person who sells used-cars for a living and iswholeheartedly dedicated to selling cars for as much money aspossible. Such a person will be prepared to blatantly lie in order toset up a deal. The person may well be perfectly integrated inFrankfurt's sense, but we should feel no temptation at all to describethem as having exemplary integrity.Second, a person of integrity is plausibly said to make reasonablejudgments about the relative importance of various desires andcommitments. Yet, again, the self-integration view places only formallimits on the kind of desires that constitute a self. (See McFall1987, pp. 9-11, Calhoun 1995, pp. 237-38). As McFall notes, one cannotsay with a straight face something like: ‘Harold demonstratesgreat integrity in his single-minded pursuit of approval.’(McFall 1987, p. 9; we discuss McFall's views more fully inSection 4, below.) If integrity is nothing more than the perfectintegration of self, however, it is hard to see how one canautomatically deny Harold's integrity.Third, on some accounts, the fully and perfectly integrated personis not able to experience genuine temptation. Temptation requires thatthe full force of an ‘outlaw’ desire be experienced, butsuccessful integration of the self may mean that such desires are fullysubordinated to wholeheartedly endorsed desires and this may precludean agent fully experiencing them. (See Taylor 1981, p. 151 for anexample of a view like this.) That a person experiences, and overcomes,temptation would count against their integrity on such a view. Onemight think, however, that a capacity to overcome temptation anddisplay strength of character is in fact a sign of a person'sintegrity, not its lack. (Halfon 1989, pp. 44-7 urges thiscriticism.)Fourth, Cheshire Calhoun argues that agents may find themselves insituations in which wholeheartedness tends to undermine their integrityrather than constitute it. (Calhoun 1995, pp. 238-41. Analogously,Victoria Davion 1991, pp. 180-192 argues that a person may changeradically and yet maintain integrity.) In the midst of a complex andmultifaceted life one may have compelling reasons to avoid neatlyresolving incompatible desires. The cost of the resolution of allself-conflict may be a withdrawal from aspects of life that makegenuine claims upon us. Resolving self-conflict at the expense of fullyengaging with different parts of one's life does not seem to contributeto one's integrity. It seems rather like the sort of cop-out thatundermines integrity. (One should not confuse integrity withneatness.)2. The Identity View of IntegrityA related approach to integrity is to think of it primarily in termsof a person's holding steadfastly true to their commitments, ratherthan ordering and endorsing desires. ‘Commitment’ is usedas a broad umbrella term covering many different kinds of intentions,promises, convictions and relationships of trust and expectation. Onemay be, and usually is, committed in many different ways to manydifferent kinds of thing: people, institutions, traditions, causes,ideals, principles, projects, and so on. Commitments can beexplicitly, self-consciously, publicly entered into or implicit,unself-conscious and private. Some are relatively superficial andunimportant, like casual support of a sporting team; others are verydeep, like the commitment implicit in genuine love or friendship.Because we find ourselves with so many commitments, of so manydifferent kinds, and because commitments inevitably clash and changeover time, it will not do to define integrity merely in terms ofremaining steadfastly true to one's commitments. It matters whichcommitments we expect a person of integrity to remain true to.Philosophers have developed different accounts of integrity inresponse to this need to specify the kind of commitments that arecentrally important to a person's integrity.One option here is to define integrity in terms of the commitmentsthat people identify with most deeply, as constituting what theyconsider their life is fundamentally about. Commitments of this kindare called ‘identity-conferring commitments’ or sometimes‘ground projects’. This view of integrity, the identityview, is associated most closely with Bernard Williams. It is implicitin his discussion of integrity and utilitarianism (Williams 1973; weexamine this discussion below) and also features in his criticism ofKantian moral theory (1981b). The idea is that for people to abandonan identity-conferring commitment is for them to lose grip on whatgives their life its identity, or individual character. Anidentity-conferring commitment, according to Williams, is ‘thecondition of my existence, in the sense that unless I am propelledforward by the conatus of desire, project and interest, it is unclearwhy I should go on at all.’ (Williams 1981b, p. 12).One apparent consequence of defining integrity as maintenance ofidentity-conferring commitments is that integrity cannot really be avirtue. This is Williams's view. He argues that integrity is notrelated to motivation as virtues are. A virtue either motivates aperson to act in desirable ways (as benevolence moves a person to actfor another's good), or it enables a person to act in desirable ways(as courage enables a person to act well). If integrity is no morethan maintenance of identity, however, it can play neither of theseroles. On the identity view of integrity, to act with integrity isjust to act in a way that accurately reflects your sense of who youare; to act from motives, interests and commitments that are mostdeeply your own. (Williams 1981a, p. 49) A further consequence ofthis view of integrity as maintenance of identity-conferringcommitments is that there appears to be no normative constraintseither on what such commitments may be, or on what the person ofintegrity can do in the pursuit of these commitments. People ofintegrity can do horrific things and maintain their integrity so longas they are acting in accordance with their core commitments.A number of criticisms of the identity view of integrity have beenmade. First, integrity is usually regarded as something worth strivingfor and the identity account of integrity fails to make sense of this.(See Cox, La Caze, Levine 1999.) It disconnects integrity from theprevalent view that it is a virtue of some kind and generallypraiseworthy. Second, the identity theory of integrity ties integrityto commitments with which an agent identifies, but acts ofidentification can be ill-informed, superficial and foolish. Peoplemay, through ignorance or self-deception, fail to understand orproperly acknowledge the source of their deepest commitments andconvictions and we are unlikely to attribute integrity to people whohold true to a false and unrealistic picture of themselves. (On theother hand, this view of integrity as maintenance ofidentify-conferring commitments, recognizes the relevance ofself-knowledge to acting with integrity. If people fail toact on their core commitments, through self-deception, weakness ofwill, cowardice, or even ignorance, then to this extent they may besaid to lack integrity.)Third, on the identity view of integrity, a person's integrity is onlyat issue when their deepest, most characteristic, or core convictionsand aspirations are brought into play. However, we expect persons ofintegrity to behave with integrity in many different contexts, notonly those of central importance to them. (See Calhoun 1995,p. 245.)Fourth, as noted above, the identity view of integrity places onlyformal conditions upon the kind of person that might be said topossess integrity. The identity view of integrity shares this featurewith the self-integration view of integrity and similar criticism canbe made of it on this ground. It seems plausible to observe certainsubstantive limits on the kinds of commitments had by a person ofintegrity.3. Integrity as Standing for SomethingThe self-integration and identity views of integrity see it asprimarily a personal virtue: a quality defined by a person's care ofthe self. Cheshire Calhoun argues that integrity is primarily a socialvirtue, one that is defined by a person's relations to others (Calhoun1995). The social character of integrity is, Calhoun claims, a matterof a person's proper regard for their own best judgement. Persons ofintegrity do not just act consistently with their endorsements, theystand for something: they stand up for their best judgment within acommunity of people trying to discover what in life is worth doing. Asshe puts it:Persons of integrity treat their own endorsements as ones that matter,or ought to matter, to fellow deliberators. Absent a special sort ofstory, lying about one's views, concealing them, recanting them underpressure, selling them out for rewards or to avoid penalties, andpandering to what one regards as the bad views of others, all indicatea failure to regard one's own judgment as one that should matter toothers. (Calhoun 1995 p. 258)On Calhoun's view, integrity is a matter of having proper regard forone's role in a community process of deliberation over what isvaluable and what is worth doing. This, she claims, entails not onlythat one stand up, unhypocritically, for one's best judgment, butalso that one have proper respect for the judgment of others.Calhoun's account of integrity promises to explain why it is that thefanatic lacks integrity. It seems intuitively very plausible todistinguish between fanatical zeal and integrity, but theself-integration and identity views of integrity threaten to make thefanatic a paradigm case of a person of integrity. Fanatics integratedesires and volitions of various orders in an intimidatingly coherentpackage; they remain steadfastly true to their deepest commitmentslike no others. On Calhoun's view of integrity, however, we can locatea distinction between integrity and fanaticism. Fanatics lack one veryimportant quality that, on Calhoun's view, is centrally important tointegrity: they lack proper respect for the deliberations of others.What is not clear in Calhoun's account, and is in fact very hard toget clear on in any case, is what the proper respect forother's views in the end amounts to. Exemplary figures of integrityoften stand by their judgment in the face of enormous pressure torecant. How, then, is one to understand the difference betweenstanding up for one's views under great pressure and fanaticallystanding by them? Calhoun's claim that the fanatic lacks integritybecause they fail to properly respect the social character ofjudgement and deliberation sounds right, but most of the work is doneby the idea of ‘proper respect’—and it is not clearin the end what this comes to.Calhoun's account of integrity places no material constraints on thekinds of commitments that a person of integrity may endorse. It doesnot seem necessary on her view that a person of integrity has aspecial concern with acting morally. Although they have a specialconcern to understand what in life is worth doing, the person ofintegrity is not constrained to give moral, other-regarding answers tothis question. By contrast, the following account of integrity isexplicitly concerned with attitudes towards morality.4. Integrity as Moral PurposeAnother way of thinking about integrity places moral constraints uponthe kinds of commitment to which a person of integrity must remaintrue. There are several ways of doing this. Elizabeth Ashford arguesfor a virtue she calls ‘objective integrity’. Objectiveintegrity requires that agents have a sure grasp of their real moralobligations. (Ashford 2000, p. 246) A person of integrity cannot,therefore, be morally mistaken. Understood in this way, one onlyproperly ascribes integrity to a person with whom one finds oneselfcompletely in moral agreement. This concept of integrity does not,however, closely match ordinary use of the term. The point ofattributing integrity to another is not to signal unambiguous moralagreement. It is often to ameliorate criticism of another's moraljudgment. For example, we may disagree strongly with the Pope's viewsof the role of women in the Church, take this to be a significantmoral criticism of him, and yet admit that he is a man ofintegrity. In such a case it is largely the point of attributingintegrity to open a space for substantial moral disagreement withoutlaunching a wholesale attack upon another's moral character.Mark Halfon offers a different way of defining integrity in terms ofmoral purpose. Halfon describes integrity in terms of a person'sdedication to the pursuit of a moral life and their intellectualresponsibility in seeking to understand the demands of such a life. Hewrites that persons of integrity:…embrace a moral point of view that urges them to beconceptually clear, logically consistent, apprised of relevantempirical evidence, and careful about acknowledging as well asweighing relevant moral considerations. Persons of integrity imposethese restrictions on themselves since they are concerned, not simplywith taking any moral position, but with pursuing a commitment to dowhat is best. (Halfon 1989, p. 37.)Halfon's view allows that integrity is not necessarily‘objective’, as Ashford claims, and is similar in a numberof respects to Calhoun's. Both see integrity as centrally concernedwith deliberation about how to live. However, Halfon conceives thistask in more narrowly moral terms and ties integrity to personalintellectual virtues exercised in pursuit of a morally good life.Halfon speaks of a person confronting ‘all relevant moralconsiderations’, but this turns out to be quite a formalconstraint. What counts as a relevant moral consideration, on Halfon'sview, depends upon the moral point of view of the agent. Persons ofintegrity may thus be responsible for acts others would regard asgrossly immoral. What is important is that they act with moral purposeand display intellectual integrity in moral deliberation. This leadsHalfon to admit that, on his conception of integrity, it is possiblefor a Nazi bent on genocide of the entire Jewish people to be a personof moral integrity. Halfon thinks it possible, but not at all likely.(Halfon 1989, pp. 134-36)Other philosophers object to this consequence. If the genocidal Naziis a possible object of ascriptions of moral integrity, then we canproperly ascribe integrity to people whose moral viewpoint isbizarrely remote from any we find intelligible or defensible. (SeeMcFall 1987 and Cox, La Caze and Levine 2003, pp. 56-68. Putnam 1996draws on the work of Carol Gilligan 1982 to suggest a different way ofovercoming the problem of the Nazi of integrity.) Moral constraintsupon attributions of integrity need not take the form of Ashford's‘moralized’ view or Halfon's more limited formal view. Onemight say instead that attributions of integrity involve the judgmentthat an agent acts from a moral point of view those attributingintegrity find intelligible and defensible (though not necessarilyright) —and that this formal constraint does have substantiveimplications. It prohibits attributing integrity to, for example,those who advocate genocide, or deny the moral standing of people on,for example, sex-based or racial grounds. There are things which aperson of integrity cannot do. The Nazis and other perpetrators ofgreat evil were either committed to what they were doing, in whichcase they were profoundly immoral (or not moral agents at all) andlacked integrity; or else they lacked integrity because they wereself-deceived or dissembling and never actually had the Nazicommitments they claimed to have. Judgments of integrity would thusinvolve judgment about the reasonableness of others' moralpoints of view, rather than the absolute correctness of their view(Ashford) or the intellectual responsibility with which they generallyapproach the task of thinking about moral questions (Halfon).McFall (1987) contains an interesting discussion of the nature of theconstraints on proper attributions of integrity. She asks ‘Arethere no constraints on the content of the principles orcommitments a person of integrity may hold?’ and then invites usto consider the following statements. (McFall 1987, p. 9)Sally is a person of principle: pleasure.Harold demonstrates great integrity in his single-minded pursuitof approval.John was a man of uncommon integrity. He let nothing, notfriendship, not justice, not truth stand in the way of his amassmentof wealth.McFall holds that the fact that ‘none of these claims can bemade with a straight face suggests that integrity is inconsistent withsuch principles.’ (McFall 1987, p. 9) The question, however, iswhether this is down to the formal constraints or substantiveconstraints; that is, whether attributions of integrity areconstrained by the content of principles a person maintains, or by waycertain kinds of principle fail to meet formal constraints on the waypersons of integrity holds to their principles. McFallappears to suggest the latter interpretation.In providing reasons for our dismissal of [i] to [iii] she says (1987,9-10)A person of integrity is willing to bear the consequences of herconvictions, even when this is difficult … A person whose onlyprinciple is ‘Seek my own pleasure’ is not a candidate forintegrity because there is no possibility of conflict—betweenpleasure and principle—in which integrity could be lost. Wherethere is no possibility of its loss, integrity cannot exist. Similarlyin the case of the approval seeker. The single-minded pursuit ofapproval is inconsistent with integrity … A commitment tospinelessness does not vitiate its spinelessness—another ofintegrity's contraries. The same may be said for the ruthless seekerof wealth. A person whose only aim is to increase his bank balance isa person for whom nothing is ruled out: duplicity, theft,murder. Expedience is contrasted to a life of principle, soan ascription of integrity is out of place. Like the pleasure seekerand the approval seeker, he lacks a ‘core,’ the kind ofcommitments that give a person character and that make a loss ofintegrity possible. In order to sell one's soul, one must havesomething to sell.This is an argument that evokes formal incompatibility betweenparticular principles or goals and the proper attribution ofintegrity. The argument is not conclusive, however. Seeking pleasure,approval or wealth, is not always easy and it seems possible thatconflict could arise, for example, between determinations to pursuehigher or lower pleasures, long-term pleasures or immediategratifications. Perhaps McFall identifies too readily certain ways ofhaving a bad character with what it is to lack character entirely. Theruthless seeker of wealth seems to have a‘core,’—albeit a nasty one—along with a set ofprinciples of a sort and a set of actions that are ruled out onprinciple. In ruling out these kinds of principle or goal inattributions of integrity, we appear to be making substantive claimsabout the content of a person of integrity's principles orgoals.McFall is surely right in claiming that the people she describescannot, under her descriptions, be persons of integrity; the questionremains as to how to distinguish such people from those we would claimdo have integrity, even though their principles are very differentthan our own. Is there a limit as to how different their principlesand commitments can be, or in what ways they can be different, andstill maintain their integrity? McFall does not specify‘core’ commitments necessary to a person'sintegrity, but she does introduce what appears to be a substantiveconstraint upon attributions of integrity. She says (1987, p. 11)When we grant integrity to a person we need not approve of his or herprinciples or commitments, but we must at least recognize them as onesa reasonable person might take to be of great importance and ones thata reasonable person might be tempted to sacrifice to some lesser yetstill recognizable goods. It may not be possible to spell out theseconditions without circularity, but that this is what underlies ourjudgments of integrity seems clear enough. Integrity is a personalvirtue granted with social strings attached. By definition, itprecludes ‘expediency, artificiality, or shallowness of anykind.’ [See Webster's Third New internationalDictionary, ‘integrity.’] The pleasure seeker isguilty of shallowness, the approval seeker of artificiality, and theprofit seeker of expedience of the worst sort.According to McFall, then, we judge people to be of integrity onlyif they have commitments which a reasonable person could accept asimportant. This turns out to be a morally substantive constraint.McFall says (1987, p. 11), ‘Whether we grant or deny personalintegrity, then, seems to depend on our own conceptions of what isimportant. And since most of our conceptions are informed if notdominated by moral conceptions of the good, it is natural that thisshould be reflected in our judgments of personal integrity.’ To saythat judgment of another's integrity depends on our ownconceptions of what is important, moral, and good implies substantiveconstraints on what a person may do and still be judged tohave integrity. It also consistent with the view that there areconstraints on the principles and commitments of a person of integrityper se. If there are objective moral constraints on adequateconceptions of the good, for example, then on the view McFallarticulates there will also be objective moral constraints on thepossession of integrity.McFall thus appears to defend the existence of substantiveconstraints on integrity. However, she also draws a distinction betweenpersonal and moral integrity. (McFall 1987, p. 14) On her view, aperson who, in acting on some morally deficient principle, does morallyabhorrent things may have personal integrity even if notmoral integrity. McFall gives the example of a utilitarian lover ofliterature who is willing to stop people burning books by killing them.She says of the utilitarian killer (1987, p. 14), ‘Although wemay find his actions morally abhorrent, we may still be inclined togrant him the virtue of personal integrity. We would not, however, holdhim up as a paragon of moral integrity.’ It is difficult toreconcile McFall's account of the distinction between moral andpersonal integrity with her more general characterization of theconcept of integrity. She appears here to be drawing the distinctionbetween moral integrity and personal integrity in terms of thereasonableness of a person's moral beliefs. The utilitariankiller exhibits personal integrity because he sincerelybelieves himself to be acting rightly, but he lacks moralintegrity because of the grossness of his moral error and thus theunreasonableness of his moral judgment.However, McFall also points out that integrity requires that onehold principles or commitments that a reasonable person might take tobe of great importance. It is hard to see how a reasonable person couldtake the importance of books to be sufficiently great to justifymurder. Where McFall talks of judgments of importance, it is naturalto interpret her as referring to judgments of value. But if this isso, her distinction between personal and moral integrity appears tocollapse. Personal integrity applied to an unambiguously moralpredicament just is moral integrity. The distinction between personaland moral integrity, it seems, is better drawn in terms of the kinds ofcommitments or kinds of activity that are in frame. Personal integritywould then refer to non-moral aspects of a person's life (ifthere are any); moral integrity would refer to aspects of aperson's life that have clear moral significance. It is unclear,however, whether this way of distinguishing between personal and moralintegrity captures ordinary use of the term ‘personalintegrity’. ‘Personal integrity’ appears to be a termused more or less synonymously with ‘integrity’.Nonetheless, distinctions between moral integrity, non-moral integrity,and overall integrity, i.e. integrity as a general cast of character,do seem well motivated and relatively clear. And if we accept thecompartmentalization of a person's life in this way, thenattempts to define integrity as moral purpose would be better describedas attempts to define moral integrity.Defining the overall integrity of character in terms of moral purposehas the advantage of capturing intuitions of the moral seriousness ofquestions of integrity. However, the approach appears toonarrow. Halfon's identification of integrity and moral integrityappears to leave out important personal aspects of integrity, aspectsbetter captured by the other views of integrity we have examined.Integrity does not seem to be exclusively a matter of how peopleapproach plainly moral concerns. Other matters like love, friendshipand personal projects appear highly relevant to judgments ofintegrity. Imagine a person who sets great store in writing a novel,but who postpones the writing of it for years on one excuse or anotherand then abandons the idea of novel-writing after one difficultexperience with a first chapter. We would think this person'sintegrity diminished by their failure to make a serious attempt to seethe project through, yet the writing of a novel need not be a moralproject.5. Integrity as a VirtueAll of the accounts of integrity we have examined have a certainintuitive appeal and capture some important feature of the concept ofintegrity. There is, however, no philosophical consensus on the bestaccount. It may be that the concept of integrity is a cluster concept,tying together different overlapping qualities of character under theone term. In Cox, La Caze and Levine 2003, we argue that integrity isa virtue, but not one that is reducible to the workings of a singlemoral capacity (in the way that, say, courage is) or the wholeheartedpursuit of an identifiable moral end (in the way that, say,benevolence is). We take ‘integrity’ to be a complex andthick virtue term. One gains a fair grasp of the variety of ways inwhich people use the term ‘integrity’ by examiningconditions commonly accepted to defeat or diminish a person'sintegrity. Integrity stands as a mean to various excesses. On the oneside we have character traits and ways of behaving and thinking thattend to maintain the status quo even where acting with integritydemands a change. These are things like arrogance, dogmatism,fanaticism, monomania, preciousness, sanctimoniousness, andrigidity. These are all traits that can defeat integrity in so far asthey undermine and suppress attempts by an individual to criticallyassess and balance their desires, commitments, wishes, changing goalsand other factors. Thus, refusing to acknowledge that circumstance ina marriage, or one's passionate desire to write a novel, havedramatically changed (for whatever reasons) may indicate a lack ofintegrity—a giving in to cowardice for example, and a refusal toacknowledge new or overriding commitments. These same factors candefeat integrity, or an aspect of one's integrity, whether one decidesto stay with a marriage or abandon it. In one case staying mayindicate a lack of integrity, while in a different case, abandoningthe marriage would indicate such a lack.On the other side, a different set of characteristics undermineintegrity. These do not undermine the status quo as much as they makeit impossible to discern stable features in one's life, and in one'srelations to others, that are necessary if one is to act withintegrity. Here we have capriciousness, wantonness, triviality,disintegration, weakness of will, self deception, self-ignorance,mendacity, hypocrisy, indifference. Although the second of these listsdominates contemporary reflection on the nature of integrity, thefirst also represents, in our view, an ever present threat to ourintegrity. The person of integrity lives in a fragile balance betweenevery one of these all-too-human traits. (Cox, La Caze, Levine 2003,p. 41). It is not that integrity stands as a mean between thevices that are represented in these two lists. Rather, the person ofintegrity will find a mean between the excesses of each one of thesevices, or traits or practices that can undermine—that doundermine—integrity. Some people will be more prone to a certainset of practices or character traits that undermine integrity thanothers. The defeaters of integrity are person-relative, and may evenbe situation-relative.This account of integrity makes it appear that integrity is much moredifficult to achieve than is often thought. It makes integrity aquality of character that one may have to a greater or lesser extent,in certain ways but not others, and in certain aspects or areas ofone's life but not others. Having integrity is not on this view an allor nothing thing. To say a person has integrity is to make an“all things considered” judgment: something that we maysay of people if we know—and even if they know—that incertain ways and about certain things, they lack integrity.A conception of integrity as a virtue—either developed along thelines described above or along different lines—is compatiblewith the existence of constraints on the content of the norms theperson of integrity is committed to. Profound moral failure may be anindependent defeater of integrity, just as hypocrisy, fanaticism andthe like are defeaters of integrity. One might judge as internal toour conception of the virtue the idea that integrity is incompatiblewith major failures of moral imagination or moral courage, or with themaintenance of wholly unreasonable moral principles or opinions. Onsuch a view, the Nazi could not, all things considered, be a regardedas person of integrity. The Nazi may be self-deceiver and a liar(which is highly probable), but even if he is not, his principles andhis actions are not rationally defensible under any coherent moralview. And this latter fact may by itself justify the judgment thatthe Nazi lacks the virtue of integrity.6. Types of IntegrityReferences to different types of integrity, such as intellectual andartistic integrity, abound in the philosophical literature onintegrity and everyday discourse. Because integrity involves managingvarious commitments and values, one might conjecture that such typesof integrity are simply manifestations of a person's overallintegrity, or of their personal integrity. However, there are manypeople who we are inclined to say have intellectual but not personalintegrity—or who have more of the former than the latter. Ifthere is a radical disjunction between the type of integrity which isdemanded in one sphere of life and another, integrity overall, orpersonal integrity, may be undermined, or at least profoundlychallenged. There may, for example, be conflict between types ofintegrity, such as between intellectual and moral integrity. (See Code1983, pp. 268-282; Kekes 1983, pp. 512-516.)Is integrity in one area of life likely to flow over into others?This is possible, in that the kind of reflection and self-assessmentwhich goes into maintaining integrity in one sphere of life may helppeople to reflect similarly in other spheres. However, given humanbeings' capacity and need for compartmentalization, orpsychologically separating out different parts of their lives, thiseffect will not necessarily occur. The relationship between differenttypes of integrity and moral and personal integrity needs to becarefully charted. Is integrity a zero-sum game, so that for example,the more artistic integrity a person has, the less she has in personallife? This does not seem necessarily to be the case. At the same time,a lack of integrity in one aspect of life does not necessarily meanthere will be a lack in other aspects of life. Presumably, a personcould lack personal integrity, but still have integrity in a number ofrestricted areas of life, such as in intellectual and artisticpursuits.A related question is how different types of integrity are associatedwith moral integrity. Stan Godlovitch (1993, p. 580) says thatprofessional integrity, for example, is weaker than moral integrity,and is more like etiquette. For him (1993, p. 573), integrity‘trades between the norms of unity and honesty’. Morespecifically, Godlovitch (1993, p. 580) argues that theresponsibilities of performers, for example, are quasi-moral; they arenot truly moral because they are internal to the profession. However,it seems plausible to maintain that professional integrity is betterunderstood as an important contribution to the living of a moral life.Professional integrity is specific to the sphere of a profession, butnot entirely independent of morality.One can also ask how types of integrity are distinguished from eachother. Halfon (1989, p. 55) argues that we distinguish between typesof integrity in terms of commitments to specific kinds of ends,principles and ideals. However, not every end creates a distinct typeof integrity. Trivial ends, like train-spotting, do not introduce anew species of integrity. To count as being a type of integrity, thesphere of action and commitment in question should be a complex andvaluable human pursuit that has distinct ways in which integrity isdemonstrated. Robust examples are intellectual integrity and artisticintegrity. On this way of looking at the matter, personal integrityand various specific types of integrity tend to be runtogether. Integrity is seen as the one virtue: essentially the samevirtue expected of one's life partner, a friend, an employee, apriest, a teacher, or a politician. (See Benjamin, 1990; Calhoun,1995; Halfon, 1989; and Grant, 1997.) Professional integrity thenbecomes a matter of the extent to which a person displays personalintegrity in professional life. Halfon (1989, p. 53), forexample, argues that types of integrity may overlap, ‘So aperson who is an artist by profession may come to possess professionaland artistic integrity in virtue of performing one and the same actionor fulfilling one and the same commitment’.There are, however, good reasons to resist this running together ofvarious types of integrity. In the first place, our legitimateexpectations of people must be sensitive to the roles we have tacitlyor explicitly agreed that they perform. If we expect people to actwith integrity in a certain professional context, then our judgmentof them should be based on an understanding of this context: itsspecial duties, obligations, rights, competencies, and so on. What itis to display integrity in one profession need not,therefore, carry over to other professions; and the difference betweenacting with integrity in one context may not share a common currencywith what it is to act with integrity in another context. It seemsthat the concept of integrity cannot be demarcated into types withoutspecific characterization of the kinds of challenges and hazardsencountered in the relevant field of action.Consider the example of intellectual integrity. The term‘intellectual integrity’ is ambiguous between integrity ofthe intellect and the integrity of the intellectual. While it should,in general, be construed broadly, as integrity of the intellect, andthus applicable to anyone who thinks, here we will concentrate on theintegrity of the intellectual, or integrity as the academic'svirtue, as Susan Haack puts it. (1976, p. 59) Intellectuals may differin the extent to which they exemplify intellectual virtues such ashonesty, impartiality, and openness to the views of others.Intellectual integrity may then be thought of as the over-archingvirtue that enables and enhances these individual virtues bymaintaining a proper balance between them.Halfon (1989, p. 54) argues that Socrates had a commitment to thepursuit of truth and knowledge, and he demonstrated his intellectualintegrity in the face of attacks on it. Socrates may be an outstandingexample of a person of intellectual integrity; nevertheless, there ismore to intellectual integrity than having a commitment to truth andknowledge. Intellectual integrity is often characterized as a kind of‘openness’— an openness to criticism and to theideas of others. However, if one is too open, one could absorb toomany influences to be able to properly pursue any line of thought. Soan adequate account of intellectual integrity must incorporateconflicting claims: that one must be open to new ideas but not beoverwhelmed by them. An account of intellectual integrity shouldrecognize other sources of conflict and temptations that impedeintellectual integrity, such as the temptations offered by thecommercialization of research, self-deception about the nature ofone's work, and the conflict between the free pursuit of ideas andresponsibility to others.There are a range of commonly cited intellectual virtues central toour conception of intellectual integrity, such as honesty, courage,and fairness. Plausibly, such virtues as sensitivity andperceptiveness or insightfulness should also be added. In Virtuesof the Mind, Linda Zagzebski (1996, p. 114) gives a verycomprehensive list of intellectual virtues, adding such items asintellectual humility, perseverance, adaptability andcommunicativeness. Possession of these virtues is part of what itmeans for a person to have intellectual integrity, although they mayexist in varying degrees without undermining a person's overallintellectual integrity. There are a range of kinds of actions onemight expect from a person of intellectual integrity as well: forexample, being against plagiarism, refusing to suppresscounter-arguments, and consistently acknowledging help. The fact thatthere are a number of distinct intellectual virtues, involvingdistinct, and sometime conflicting, dispositions to action, means thatwe have a need to balance or manage these virtues. For example, aperson who has too much intellectual courage may well become adogmatist, and a person who is excessively impartial will probablylack conviction. It seems plausible to say that intellectual integrityis that quality that enables a person to balance the variousdemands of intellectual work and to manifest intellectual virtues in aproper order.This balance cannot be maintained without a certain degree ofreflection on the relationship between different intellectualcommitments. The importance of appropriate reflection to intellectualintegrity indicates that, like personal integrity, it is closelyrelated to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge appears essential tointegrity in general, and given that intellectual integrity concernsknowledge itself, the relationship between having intellectualintegrity and self-knowledge is particularly close. This closerelationship might lead one to assume that self-deception isantithetical to intellectual integrity because it undermines the kindof self-knowledge, such as knowledge of our intellectual strengths andcapacities, necessary to such reflection. However, self-deception doesnot necessarily undermine intellectual integrity. In fact,some self-deception might be necessary to pursue some lines of thoughtwell. Having integrity may be consistent with—may evenrequire—self-deceptive strategies to maintain one's equilibriumin the face of conflicts and obstacles. As Amélie OksenbergRorty (1994, p, 218) points out, self-deception can be necessary to beenergized to do anything. The mild self-deception that one has a goodidea before one really has an idea at all is often necessary to getstarted on a piece of work.Nonetheless, some forms of self-deception are seriously detrimental tointellectual integrity. Gabriele Taylor (1981, p. 146) believes thatself-deception constitutes the most fundamental and important case oflack of integrity. She discusses an example which shows in anexemplary manner the dangers of self-deception—that of Casaubonin George Eliot's Middlemarch (1994). Casaubon is a clericworking on the connections between different religions, a mammothscholarly work he has devoted himself to for many years. In Taylor'sview, he is self-deceived about his commitment toscholarship. Casaubon's problem may be seen as a conflict between hisbelief in his capacity and desire to write something very importantand his realization of the truth that he is incapable of doing so. Thekind of failure of integrity here is partly due to failure to take theviews of others seriously, and thus differs from cases where othersmight encourage one in self-deception. Casaubon acted to prevent hiswife Dorothea and others from realising the paucity of his researches.His case is more blameworthy because of this failure and itdemonstrates the way in which self-deception can undermineintellectual integrity.Another important type of integrity is artistic integrity. BernardWilliams (1981) discusses a fictionalized version of Gauguin'sstory, a discussion that raises questions about the relationshipbetween artistic integrity and other kinds of integrity. On Williams's(1981, p. 22) account, Gauguin ‘turns away from definite andpressing human claims on him in order to live a life in which, as hesupposes, he can pursue his art.’ In other words, the fictionalGauguin left his loved ones to paint in Tahiti. Williams's point isthat how Gauguin judges himself and how his actions are judged partlydepends on the success of his artistic project. In Williams's view, ifGauguin's artistic project fails, we are apt to judge him morallydeficient; if his artistic project succeeds, we are likely to see hisactions in a more favorable moral light. Although Williams'sdiscussion of this case is focused on the concept of moral luck,there are two important issues concerning artistic integrityhere. First, there is the issue of whether Gauguin acted with a kindof integrity at all, and second, there is the issue of whetherartistic integrity, if this is what Gauguin's actions manifest,conflicts with moral and personal integrity.Calhoun (1995, p. 244) notes that ‘… insofar as weimagine that Gauguin, in pursuing ‘what he found his life boundup with’, acted merely on a psychologically deep impulse withoutcritically reflecting on the value of doing so, we may suspect him ofnot acting with integrity’. He may have lacked personalintegrity because he did not take an assessment of his values andcommitments seriously enough. Calhoun (1995, p. 244) suggests thatperhaps Gauguin believes that morality does not demand he give uppartiality to his own artistic project. If this is his view, then thesuccess of his artistic project may contribute to a favorablejudgment of his moral integrity. Williams's argument that Gauguin'sactions are given some sort of justification by the success of hisartistic project is not entirely convincing. There is no reason tothink that Gauguin's project could only succeed if he turned away fromthe people that depend upon him, leaving them to a ‘grim’life. Posterity may think more of him as an artist because of hiswork in Tahiti, but it doesn't follow that we should think thatGauguin showed artistic integrity in taking his art to Tahiti, valuinghis drive to paint in an exotic location above other commitments. Noris it clear that being successful in Tahiti contributes to ourjudgment of his artistic integrity. Would our judgment of hisartistic integrity have suffered had he stayed at home producing hisart? Artistic integrity may come into conflict with personal and moralintegrity, but it is surprisingly difficult to characterize theprecise circumstances of such a conflict. Williams's fictionalizedportrait of Gauguin does not convincingly demonstrate such a conflict(and nor was it devised by Williams for such a purpose).There are certainly connections between artistic integrity and themoral integrity of artists, which in turn is connected to the moralfeatures of artworks themselves. Novitz (1990, p. 16), for example,argues that the values we bring to art are social ones, and thatso-called pure aesthetic values are themselves socially induced. Atthe very least, the moral values which artworks suggest or promote arerelevant to considerations of artistic integrity. On the one hand,artistic integrity and moral integrity can overlap, particularly ifthe standards of artistic integrity are high. On the other hand,artistic and moral integrity can come apart in situations of greatpressure. Circumstances also vary, and with them both the difficultyof pursuing integrity, and our assessment of its merit. StewartSutherland (1996) argues that the case of Dimitri Shostakovich createsdifficulties for an account of integrity developed in terms ofconsistency. The idea is that Shostakovich demonstrated equal if notgreater integrity than other more artistically consistent composerswriting in more congenial circumstances by coding his works withanti-Stalinist irony. More plausibly, however, one might argue thatShostakovich showed considerable strength of character in difficultcircumstances whilst also admitting to his many artistic compromises,compromises which affected his integrity as an artist. Thus, one mightrate his moral integrity more highly than his artisticintegrity. Expectations of artistic integrity have to be tempered byunderstanding of the conflicts and pressures, both commercial andpolitical, involved in pursuing artistic values.Does having one type of integrity mean that one is, to that extent,moral? Halfon says that integrity in one sphere of life is admirable,though less admirable than having integrity overall and a specifictype of integrity may interfere with moral integrity rather than beexpressive of it. Yet overall integrity demands that this conflict bemanaged in appropriate ways. Integrity is so broad that it has toencompass morality in a profound way. Artistic integrity is greater ifit involves not just following the demands of the profession, butdoing so in such a way that one does not diminish others'lives. Daniel Putnam (1996, p. 237) expresses the point well when hesays: ‘Integrity reaches its highest point when it unifies andmaintains a balance of virtues.’ In that sense, a particulartype of integrity, such as intellectual integrity, is greater when itdoes not interfere with personal and moral integrity.There certainly can be conflict between types of integrity,particularly where the demands of a profession interfere with personaland moral integrity. Pursuit of one particular project can prevent usfrom balancing our commitments, as in Williams's fictional Gauguincase. However, while different types of integrity can be sequesteredfrom each other, integrity of one type is more likely to flourish in acontext of greater integrity in various spheres of existence. The kindof virtues and skills which are developed in maintaining, say,intellectual integrity, are likely to be available to make use of indealing with the conflicts and temptations which threaten personal andmoral integrity, and conversely.7. Integrity and Moral TheoryDespite the fact that it is somewhat troublesome, the concept ofintegrity has played an important role in contemporary discussion ofmoral theory. An important and influential line of argument, firstdeveloped by Bernard Williams, seeks to show that certain moraltheories do not sufficiently respect the integrity of moral agents.(See Williams 1973 & 1981.) This has become an important avenue ofcritique of modern moral theory. (See, for example, Scheffler 1993 andLomasky 1987.)Modern moral theories, the most representative of which areutilitarianism and Kantian moral theory, do not concern themselvesdirectly with virtue and character. Instead, they are primarilyconcerned to describe morally correct action. Theories of morallycorrect action generally aspire to develop criteria by which tocategorize actions as morally obligatory, morally permissible, ormorally impermissible. Some theories of morally correct action alsointroduce the category of the supererogatory: an action issupererogatory if and only if it is morally praiseworthy, but notobligatory. The two theories of primary concern to Williams areutilitarianism and Kantian moral theory, and both of these are usuallyinterpreted as eschewing the category of the supererogatory. (SeeBaron 1995 for an argument that Kantian moral theory has no need forthe category of the supererogatory.) Williams maintains that bothutilitarianism and Kantian moral theory are deeply implausible becauseof their integrity undermining effects. His argument againstutilitarianism makes the more transparent appeal to the concept ofintegrity and it is this argument that we examine here. (But seeHerman 1983, Rogerson 1983, Jensen 1989, and Baron 1995, chapter four,for critical discussion of the Williams's argument against Kantianmoral theory.)Williams's argument against utilitarianism is directed against aparticular version of utilitarianism—act-utilitarianism. This is,very roughly, the view that an agent is to regard as morallyobligatory all and only actions that maximize general well-being. Theact-utilitarian theory that Williams criticizes has an importantfeature: it aspires to describe the correct form of moraldeliberation. It does more than specify what it is for anaction to be morally correct, it specifies how an agent should thinkabout moral decisions. Agents should think about which of the actionsavailable to them will maximize general well-being and decide to actaccordingly. Notice that this theory is completely impartial and thatit makes no room for an agent to give special weight to personalcommitments, causes, projects, and the like. Act-utilitarianismrecognizes no personal sphere of activity in which moral reflectionoperates merely as a side-constraint.According to Williams, an agent who adopted this version ofutilitarianism would find themselves unable to live with integrity. Ashe puts it, to become genuinely committed to act-utilitarianism is fora person to become alienated:in a real sense from his actions and the source of his actions in hisown convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input ofeveryone's projects, including his own, and an output of optimificdecision; but this is to neglect the extent to which hisactions and his decisions have to be seen as the actions anddecisions which flow from the projects and attitudes with which he ismost closely identified. It is thus, in the most literal sense, anattack on his integrity. [Williams (1973, p. 117)]Williams's argument is based on the identity theory of integrity,discussed above. Integrity, on this view, requires that persons act outof their own convictions, that is, out of commitments with which theydeeply identify. Act-utilitarianism seeks to replace personalmotivations of this kind with impartial utilitarian reasoning.Williams's argument appears to make acting with integrity incompatiblewith acting in accordance with act-utilitarianism.Williams develops the point with two famous and much discussedexamples. (1972, pp. 97-99). The example which best illustrates hisargument involves the figure of George, a recent doctoral graduate inchemistry who is having difficulty finding work. George has youngchildren. He also has poor health, limiting his job opportunities.George's (unnamed) wife must work to support the family and onWilliams's story this causes a great deal of strain on the family.George has a strong commitment to pacifism, a conviction amounting toan identity-conferring commitment. A dilemma arises for George whenmore senior colleague tells him about a decently paid job in alaboratory doing work on biological and chemical warfare. If Georgedoes not take up the job, it will almost certainly go to anotherchemist, one without George's pacifist commitment, who will pursue thedevelopment of biological and chemical weapons more vigorously thanGeorge. Should George take the job or not?The most likely act-utilitarian conclusion here is that Georgeshould accept the job. This would contribute greatly to the well-beingof his family as well as probably contributing to general welfare byforestalling some relatively zealous development of weapons of massdestruction. Weighed in the balance are George's feelings in thematter. The utilitarian calculation, if it really does come out thisway, is demanding a sacrifice of George: that he put aside hisopposition to, and distaste for, biological and chemical weaponsdevelopment and deal with the anguish and alienation that may resultfrom working in the laboratory.According to Williams, however, act-utilitarianism in fact demands adifferent kind of sacrifice from George. It demands that he act withoutintegrity, abandoning or ignoring a longstanding, identity-conferringcommitment to pacifism simply because maximum general well-being is tobe found elsewhere. This is just one, particularly acute, example ofthe tendency of impartial utilitarian deliberation to run roughshodover identity-conferring commitments, treating them as no more than onesource of utility among others. In general, Williams concludes,identity-conferring commitments cannot play the kind of role inact-utilitarian moral deliberation that is required for an agent to actwith integrity, that is, for an agent to act with genuine conviction inmatters of grave, identity-determining importance to them.Williams's critique of utilitarianism has spawned a large andimportant literature in which the argument has been interpreted andreinterpreted, redrafted, and much criticized. There are, nonetheless,three main lines of response to the Williams's critique ofutilitarianism. We consider them in turn. The first reply essentiallyconcedes the point and offers in response a development of utilitarianmoral theory, one aimed at avoiding the flaws that Williams sought todemonstrate. One way to do this is by watering down the impartiality ofutilitarian theory, explicitly factoring in the permissibility ofgiving extra weight to one's own personal projects, commitments, and soon. (See Scheffler 1993 for a development of this view, and Harris1989a and 1989b for criticism of the adequacy of this response.)Another way to try and improve utilitarianism in response toWilliams's argument is to advance a less ambitious form of utilitarianmoral theory. Recall that Williams criticizes a version ofact-utilitarian moral deliberation, so one may respond to itby describing a version of act-utilitarianism that does not dictate theform of moral deliberation. A moral theory, on this view, primarilydescribes morally correct action and does not automatically entail atheory of correct moral deliberation. Thus one might subscribe to anact-utilitarian account of morally correct action whilst not demandingthat someone like George approach life by deliberating in strictlyutilitarian ways. There are however, a number of difficulties withseparating out theories of morally correct action and correct moraldeliberation in this way. For one thing, it appears to deprive a theoryof morally correct action of much point. What is the point, one mightask, of subscribing to a moral theory if it offers no clear practicalguidance on how one should act? (See Williams 1981a for a discussion ofthis point.) Nonetheless, there have been attempts to develop and tomotivate versions of utilitarianism not prescribing methods of moraldeliberation. (See Railton 1986 for development of such a view andHarcourt 1998 for criticism of it.)A second possible line of response to the argument is to deny thepresupposition of Williams's argument that it is absurd for a moraltheory to undermine integrity. It may just be that moral demands uponus really are very stringent, and identity-conferring commitments mustsometimes (perhaps often) be sacrificed in the interests of, say, ouracting to ameliorate preventable suffering. One might even consider ita virtue of utilitarianism that it demonstrates how genuinely difficultit is to preserve one's integrity when confronting a world of massiveand easily preventable suffering. (See Ashford 2000 for an argumentalong these lines.)The third, and most influential, line of response argues directlyagainst the idea that utilitarianism demands that agents act againsttheir convictions. Utilitarianism demands that agents adopt utilitarianideals; that agents give utilitarian ideals the kind of priority thatwould have them function as the central identity-conferring commitmentsof their life. Thus utilitarianism does not demand that one livewithout identity-conferring commitments at all, but that one live withutilitarian identity-conferring commitments. Were George autilitarian, he would not have been acting against his convictions bytaking a job in the chemical weapons factory. He does not lose hisintegrity simply in virtue of his commitment to utilitarianism.Williams appears to confuse the case in which a utilitarian George actsagainst his personal interests (in which case his integrity would bepreserved) with the case in which a non-utilitarian George is somehowpersuaded to act as a utilitarian (in which case his integrity wouldnot be preserved). Acting as a utilitarian when one has no sympathywith utilitarianism may well diminish one's integrity, but such a lossof integrity is not attributable to utilitarianism and has no bearingon utilitarianism's plausibility as a moral theory. (See Carr 1976,Trianosky 1986 and Blustein 1991 for versions of this criticism.)The matter is not finally settled, however, for notice thatWilliams's critique is premised on a version of the identity theory ofintegrity. As we have seen, there are other plausible candidates for anaccount of integrity and the critique of utilitarianism may wellsucceed better in their terms. The key issues are whether utilitariancommitment is compatible with a fully satisfactory account ofintegrity, and if so, whether integrity is of such value and importancethat the clash between integrity and utilitarian commitment underminesthe plausibility of utilitarian moral theory. An adequate account ofintegrity needs to deal with these issues and to capture basicintuitions about the nature of integrity: that persons of integrity maydiffer about what is right but a moral monster cannot haveintegrity.8. Integrity in relation to Social and Political ConditionsEven where the social and political dimensions of integrity arediscussed, integrity is often seen as largely a private or personalaffair—albeit one with important implications in the publicsphere. Less attention has been given to ways in which social (eg.family, business, religious) and political (eg. forms of government)structures and processes may affect personal integrity. They can dothis either by promoting or undermining features essential to havingor practicing integrity; or by aiding, abetting, or being inimical tothe defeaters of integrity (eg self-deception). If integrity is ascentral and important a virtue as recent work on the topic suggests,then ideally the institutions—including forms of government andeconomic arrangements—that help shape out lives should bestructured in ways that promote integrity. Arguably, this is not thecase, and why it may not be the case, and how to change it, is as mucha problem for social and political philosophy, and ethics generally,as it is for philosophical psychology.Susan Babbitt (1997, p. 118) says that an adequate account ofpersonal integrity must:…recognize that some social structures are of the wrong sortaltogether for some individuals to be able to pursue personalintegrity, and that questions about the moral nature of society oftenneed to be asked first before questions about personal integrity canproperly be raised. Questions about integrity may turn out to be, notabout the relationship between individual characteristics, interests,choices and so on, and a society, but rather about what kind ofsociety it is in terms of which an individual comes to possess certaininterests, characteristics, and so on. This does not imply thatquestions about personal integrity are entirely moral, not having todo with idiosyncratic characteristics of individuals; instead, itsuggests that the very meaning of personal integrity in particularcases sometimes depends upon more general considerations about thenature of the society that makes some idiosyncratic propertiesidentifying and others not. The pursuit of adequate personal integrityoften depends, not so much on understanding who one is and what onebelieves and is committed to, but rather understanding what one'ssociety is and imagining what it could be.Babbitt explicitly links personal integrity to political and socialstructures in a way that broadens the concept of integrity. What shesays is applicable to all of the views that we have discussed. But heraccount also enables us to raise questions about the relationshipbetween social structures and personal integrity. The most generalquestion is what kinds of society and what kinds of practice within asociety are most conducive to personal integrity?If society is structured in such a way that it undermines people'sattempt at either knowing or acting upon their commitments, values anddesires, then such a structure is inimical to integrity. And ifintegrity is connected to well-being, then adverse social andpolitical conditions are a threat—not merely an ultimate threat,but also a daily threat—to well-being. The twentieth centurytechnical term for this mismatch is alienation. Alienation resultswhen people are so confused or conflicted—are relentlesslyexposed, for example, to the social manufacture of incompatibledesires—that they take on roles they mistakenly believe theywant or deceive themselves about wanting.Are political and social conditions in contemporary liberaldemocracies conducive both to acquiring the self-understandingnecessary for integrity and, more generally, to the business of actingwith integrity? Historically, one of the governing ideals of liberaldemocratic societies is to provide its citizens, not with the goodsthey desire, but with certain primary goods, such as freedom, and withpolitical/social/cultural structures (laws, codes, institutions,practices, and so on) that facilitate their capacity to obtain goodsthey desire for themselves. This is one reason education has alwaysplayed a prominent role in discussion of liberal-democratic forms oflife. Education is seen as a crucial structure in the facilitation ofindividuals' pursuit of chosen goods. Such an instrumental viewof education is rather narrow and omits any role for inculcation ofthe means to choose goods wisely. Integrity requires more thanfacilitation of an instrumental capacity to acquired desired goods. Itrequires the wisdom and self-knowledge to choose appropriate goods,worthwhile goals, and so on. It is, perhaps, hard to see extant socialeducational structures playing a very significant role in thisprocess, and harder still to imagine realinstitutions—institutions compatible with the demands andlimitations of contemporary life—that would.If social educational structures fail to facilitate the life ofintegrity, other structures may be positively hostile to it. Arguably,and despite what might seem like overwhelming choice, job markets arestructured by financial and other incentives, restricted opportunitiesand economic rents. The result is that many people choose careers theydo not really want and for which they are barely suited. There areother perhaps more straightforward ways in which social and culturalstructures may be inimical to the pursuit of integrity. The ideologyof love, for instance, may undermine the integrity of lovers, as itmay undermine the possibility of genuine and realistic love. Inprofessional life, people may be called upon (not only tacitly) tolie, bluff or manipulate the truth in ways that directly or indirectlyaffect their integrity. The construction of a mission statement or astrategic plan is in some ways an open invitation to dissemble, panderand obfuscate. The expectation that one ‘sells oneself’ or‘sells the company’ provides explicit reward forhypocrites and sycophants. And there are many kinds of assessments,reports and application processes that foster both deception andself-deception. If this is right, then contemporary society isinimical to a life of integrity in many small-scale ways. Broad socialstructures also have a deleterious effect on our capacity to live withintegrity and here, of course, the effects of totalitarian regimes aremore extreme than those liberal democracies.Those who are oppressed seem to be in a paradoxical relation tointegrity. On the one hand, members of oppressed groups would seem tobe deprived of the conditions for developing integrity: the freedom tomake choices how to act and think. As Babbitt (1997, p. 118) notes,one needs to be able to make choices in order to develop the kinds ofinterests and concerns which are central to leading a life ofintegrity. On the other hand, oppressed people are often able toreflect on political and social realities with the greater insightbecause they do not benefit from them. They have no incentive to adoptself-deceptive/self-protective attitudes about circumstances ofoppression or to see past them with convenient blindness. Oppressedgroups therefore have all the more scope to think about social realitywith integrity, and to act out of this understanding with integrity. Acapacity for reflection and understanding enables one to work towardintegrity even if it does not ensure that one achieves an ideal ofintegrity.Any attempt to strive for integrity has to take account of the effectof social and political context. The kind of society which is likelyto be more conducive to integrity is one which enables people todevelop and make use of their capacity for critical reflection, onewhich does not force people to take up particular roles because oftheir sex or race or any other reason, and one which does notencourage individuals to betray each other, either to escape prison orto advance their career. 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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Other Internet ResourcesIntegrity and Supererogation in Ethical Communities, The Paideia Project, by Eugene Torisky, hosted by Boston UniversityThe Relationship Between Moral Integrity, Phsychological Well-Being, and Anxiety [PDF], by Leanne Olson (Wisconsin Lutheran College)Related Entries consequentialism | ethics: virtue | impartiality | moral psychology: empirical approaches Copyright © 2008 byDamian Cox<d.cox@mailbox.uq.edu.au>Marguerite La Caze<m.lacaze@mailbox.uq.edu.au>Michael Levine<mlevine@arts.uwa.edu.au> |
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