Philosophical Perspectives on Trustworthiness and Open-mindedness as Professional Virtues for the Practice of Nursing: Implications for he Moral Education of Nurses

The professional virtue of trustworthiness

I suggested earlier that it may be wise to reserve judgement on the question of whether
or not trustworthiness is a virtue. While the idea of the virtues has a tradition that
predates Aristotle there remains contention about the exact nature of virtue. It is not my
intention to enter this particular debate; it is mentioned merely in passing to
acknowledge the definitional difficulties. How then are we to assess the claims of one or
other writer that such and such is a virtue? One feature consistent with my brief sketch
of virtue in Chapter 1 (and with an Aristotelian account of the virtues) is that a virtue is
a more or less permanent disposition from which an agent is guided to act in ways that
encourage rather than discourage human flourishing⁶. In this respect, especially with
Potter’s emphasis on its relationship with human flourishing, trustworthiness looks like
a candidate for being classed as a virtue. However, as I noted at the beginning of this
section, there are tensions involved in being trustworthy that may preclude it from being
a virtue as such. The capacity to be trustworthy is not in question (although, as Potter
notes, one may not be the best judge of one’s own trustworthiness) rather it is that it
seems to be possible for an act to be both trustworthy and untrustworthy at the same
time. This is to be contrasted with virtues such as honesty and courage where the
assessment of a person’s honesty or courage does not change depending upon their
relationship with others. It is not possible to be both truthful and untruthful at the same
time, even if some others would rather not hear the truth. In being truthful one may be
less or more sensitive and caring, but being brutal with the truth does equate with
untruthfulness as such. Ajudgement about one’s honesty relies on an assessment of
correspondence between reality and what one says, and this is so regardless of who is
making that judgement. Furthermore, and leaving aside the capacity to fool oneself,
self-assessment of one’s honesty is relatively straightforward. In contrast, the
assessment of one’s trustworthiness is complicated by the necessity to decide to whom
one should be trustworthy. However, just as Williams (2002) claims that there are
virtues (rather than a single virtue) of truthfulness, and MacIntyre (1999) talks of the
virtues of independent practical reason, it may be that we should think of the virtues of
trustworthiness.

⁶ It should be noted that not all versions of virtue ethics accept this link between virtue and human
flourishing. For a discussion on this point see, for example, Statman 1997

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