Planet of the Apes and Philosophy by John Huss Page A

character. “Virtue” here does not mean the standard concept found in the Christian tradition, having to do with purity and love of God. Aristotle was concerned with our character, as manifested in traits like courage, equanimity, kindness, and so on.
    Was Will virtuous in the Aristotelian sense of the term? Did he display courage, kindness, a sense of justice, compassion, and so on? It seems to me that the answer is an unequivocal yes. He clearly felt compassion for his father (and for Caesar). He had the courage to act on his convictions, which were themselves informed by compassion for both humans and animals. And he was kind to people around him, beginning with his father and with Caesar, and extending to his girlfriend, among others.
    All in all, then, we have three different views about Will and what he did. For a consequentialist, his actions were immoral because they led to horrible outcomes. For a deontologist the verdict is a mixed one, considering that he both did and did not use his father as a means to an end. For a virtue ethicist, Will was undeniably on the right track, despite the fact that things, ahem, didn’t exactly work out the way he planned them.
    Now, one could reasonably ask: okay, but given that the three major theories of ethics give us different results in the case of Will’s decision, is there any way to figure out if one of these theories is better than the others? That would be a separate discussion into what is called meta-ethics, that is the philosophy of how to justify and ground ethical systems. However, remember the analogy with math: it’s perfectly sensible to say that there is no answer as to which system is better, because their starting points (consequences, intentions, character) are all reasonable and cannot necessarily be meaningfully ranked.
    Just to come clean here, I lean toward virtue ethics, and I suspect most viewers of the movie do too—whether they realize it or not. If you saw Will as a positive character, felt the compassion he had for his father, and shared his outrage at the way Caesar was being treated, you cannot reasonably fault him for what happened. He tried his best, and Aristotle was well awareof the fact that sometimes our best is just not enough. Life can turn into a tragedy even for the individual endowed with the best character traits we can imagine.
Is It Inevitable?
    We’ve seen that there clearly are a number of ethical issues to consider when we contemplate human genetic enhancement, and that our conclusions about such issues depend on which set of moral axioms we begin with. But is any of the above relevant anyway? When it comes to new technologies like genetic engineering we often hear the argument to end all arguments: technological change, some say, is simply inevitable, so stop worrying about it and get used to it. François Baylis and Jason S. Robert, mentioned earlier, give a number of reasons to believe in what we might call techno-fate. Yet, holding something to be inevitable may be a way to dodge the need for tough ethical decisions, with potentially dire consequences, so it’s probably wise to take a closer look.
    Baylis and Robert base their “inevitability thesis” on a number of arguments.
    To begin with, they claim that capitalism rules our society, and bio-capitalism is going to be just one more version of the same phenomenon.
    Second, they quote Leon Kass as observing that the ethos of modern society is such that there is a “general liberal prejudice that it is wrong to stop people from doing something,” presumably including genetic engineering of human beings.
    Third, say Baylis and Robert, humans are naturally inquisitive and just can’t resist tinkering with things, so it’s going to be impossible to stop people from trying.
    Fourth, we have a competitive nature, and we eagerly embrace everything that gives us an edge on others, and that surely would include (at least