Native American Ethics and the Tradition of Virtues

• In Event: Navigating Language and Power: Insights into Translation in Political Theory

Abstract

North American Indigenous philosophic perspectives have gradually moved towards the center of political theory. Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars alike are describing how Native thinking challenges dominant strains of Western philosophy that have been affiliated with political regimes that have marginalized Native peoples. Scholars suggest that Indigenous philosophic traditions offer different and potentially corrective ethical perspectives on human life and relations with the non-human world. Yet observers have struggled to describe how Indigenous ethical philosophy truly relates to “Western ethics,” or what sort of translation might be possible between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ethical traditions. The two most prominent ethical traditions in modern philosophy, deontology and consequentialism, have been roundly critiqued by Indigenous thinkers as too fundamentally different from Indigenous conceptions of ethical living.

In this paper, by contrast, I argue that Indigenous ethical philosophy bears striking resemblance to neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. By drawing from a range of contemporary Indigenous thinkers, I reveal that the prospect of such a translation has been proposed in passing by numerous scholars in the past. I take up the subject in detail, arguing that both are based on habituation, contextual decision-making, and the pursuit of certain characteristics of the person—virtues or values such as honesty, courage, and humility. Next, I argue that Indigenous and neo-Aristotelian thought provide similar reasons for why humans need to develop these specific virtues or characteristics. For both in academic terms, the good takes priority over the right, and I offer an analysis of how Indigenous and neo-Aristotelian thought distinguish themselves from deontology and consequentialism. I consider possible objections to the translation I make between Indigenous and neo-Aristotelian ethics. For one, many Indigenous thinkers caution against conceiving of one single ideal of the “good life,” arguing that this leads to the very sort of coerciveness that has characterized colonial efforts to eliminate Indigenous ways of life. While there is something to this objection, I ultimately show that neo-Aristotelian philosophers have the same concerns about narrowing the good life or human flourishing.

The paper offers two main concluding contributions. First, I establish more solid grounds for relating Indigenous ethics to the Western tradition—avoiding the negativity of critical theory and the formalism of deontology and consequentialism. These solid grounds of relation should make cross-cultural philosophic dialogue easier. Second, I suggest that this dialogue could inform Native nations’ efforts to reclaim control over criminal law on reservations. Since the late 19th century, Indigenous nations’ ability to exercise sovereignty over criminal law has been limited, even as Native peoples insist that they need this authority to truly assert their inherent sovereignty. I argue that the Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition, since it resembles Indigenous ethics in so many ways, might provide resource for both ethical modeling in new criminal laws in Native communities, and also complement traditional Indigenous accounts of restorative justice via ethical rehabilitation into community.

Author

• Samuel Piccolo, Gustavus Adolphus College