ethical actions in unfamiliar situations where one’s values and goals are challenged. If
one is operating predominately in the former then it may be relatively easy to establish,
or at least approximate, dispositional character traits, but it is within the latter that
enduring dispositions of character will be exhibited. Kupperman recognises that there
are occupations “ ... in which normal practice seems to differ significantly from what
[a] ... person’s previous moral training would have led him or her to expect”
(Kupperman 2001 p. 246). This point is often made in nursing where it is said that the
study ofhealth care ethics is necessary for nurses precisely because by becoming a
nurse a person enters an unfamiliar world for which experience of everyday acceptable
(moral) behaviour provides insufficient preparation for the difficult ethical issues that
arise in the practice ofhealth care (see, for example, Hussey 1990, Quinn 1990,
Edwards 1996).
Harman is right to doubt the reality of character despite, or even because of, most
people’s intuitive sense of its existence. It is, after all, the examination of fundamental
assumptions about the world around us that philosophy encourages. But for Harman this
is more that a merely academic exercise and he is correct to recognise that it may not be
possible to prove the existence of character, but that of itself does not prove its non-
existence. Nevertheless, he does seek to provide sufficient grounds for us to
acknowledge the possibility that we have been misled by our intuition and in this
respect he reminds us of the need to remain open-minded about the existence or
otherwise of character.
In addition, as Kupperman acknowledges, we are well advised not to neglect the effect
of situation on moral behaviour. For even if one is to accept the existence of character
virtues, to consider the expression of virtue as immune from the influence of
circumstance is to imagine something approximating perfection. Proponents of virtue
ethics have long recognised that difficult situations provide a test of character, and some
would argue that it is the capacity to exhibit virtue in the face of difficult situations that
proves the existence of character. However, Kupperman may be right to note that ‘full’
virtue may be rarer that we would like to imagine and that therefore few individuals are
able to act in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason and in relation to the
right person in situations that make the expression of virtue difficult. Perhaps modernity
has led us to become complacent about virtue as most of us find we are required rarely,
if ever, to put our character to the test. Yet we admire those whose character is tested
31