Civilizational Virtue, Civilizational Autonomy, and Existential Risks
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55613/jeet.v35i2.170Keywords:
virtue ethics, collective virtue, civilizationAbstract
Virtues are traits or qualities that are morally good, expressed as behaviour that does what is right and avoids what is wrong. Individual virtues have been discussed in ethics since classical times. Collective or group virtues are a more recent and somewhat contested concept, attributing virtues that cannot be held without the existence of the group. Collective agents might even be virtuous without being moral patients. Could there be virtues applying to the largest groups, civilizations themselves? In existential risk scholarship human civilization is sometimes reified as a relevant actor, and virtue terms are applied to its behaviour, in particular related to long-term survival. This paper analyses whether a civilization can be virtue-apt, and what civilizational virtues may be. I argue that it makes sense to claim humanity has character, shows collective agency, something akin to free will (meeting an objection from macrohistory), and might (perhaps in the future) count as a form of truly autonomous agent. I give examples of putative civilizational virtues that are not just summative, but only makes sense as held by a civilization. It hence appears possible in principle for civilizations to be virtuous, and that there are unique civilization level virtues.
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