Are men more virtuous than women?

Maybe.

P1: Individuals who overcome a greater inclination and capacity to engage in vice are more virtuous than those overcoming a lesser inclination and capacity to engage in vice; all else equal

P2: Men overcome a greater inclination and capacity to engage in vice than women; all else equal

C: Men are more virtuous than women; all else equal

The ‘overcoming’ word in the first premise of this argument could do with clarification. The overcoming as Immanuel Kant once wrote must come from the individual ‘doing his duty from duty’. When an individual happens to do that which morality requires and it’s also in their self-interest we properly praise such a person to a lesser extent than that person who has overcome a stronger inclination to do the contrary to morality’s demand. The first premise of this argument then is pretty much settled.

The second premise is where the argument may go astray. I think it will be admitted even by feminists that men are naturally predisposed to greater violence than women. I think a good indicator of this is the jail population in Britain is 96% male. I reckon having twice the upper body strength of women also inclines men to greater violence simply because of their greater capacity for success in it. As Louise Perry has put it: ‘Almost all men can kill almost all women with their bare hands, but not vice versa.’

The problem with the argument comes when we get into the tricky business of deciding how much virtue is lost by committing bad acts versus how much virtue is gained by avoiding them and doing good acts. ‘All else equal’ clearly doesn’t hold. Obviously, men fail pretty badly on committing bad acts. I’m going to ignore this problem altogether, abandoning the above argument, and, instead, focus on the easier question of how men and women who perform acts of equal worth can be evaluated in terms of virtue.

I contend such men are more virtuous than such women, because, again, these men are overcoming a greater inclination and capacity for vice than women. This is certainly true in regards to criminal justice where the strength of men enables them to dominate women at a greater rate; only see the fact 74% of the victims of domestic abuse are women. Now an empirical claim I am willing to make is that concerning the virtue of criminal justice the median man embodies greater virtue than the medium woman, because, neither committing any crimes, men overcoming a greater inclination and capacity makes them so.

I also think the median man may embody greater virtue insofar as he does not cheat on his wife though he probably has a greater desire to do so. This is backed up by husbands cheating in 20% of instances compared to wives cheating in 13% of instances. Men having twice the desire for sex as women also bolsters my argument. Though against this you could say women may have greater opportunities to commit affairs which they very often overcome insofar as they are in greater demand than their husbands. Maybe; probably. Much of this thinking cannot be done from the comfort of the armchair.

Now, I suppose the level of virtue could be the same in both sexes if both are acting in line with duty for duty’s sake. Is the first premise really true? Does overcoming a greater inclination to do bad things or wrong acts make you more virtuous per se than overcoming a lesser inclination to do such things, or, does it merely indicate a person is more likely to have acted in line with duty for duty’s sake, which is what we really care about? I am unsure, I think I err to the latter understanding. The argument originally presented holds on either interpretation, however, because, men overcoming their greater inclinations to the contrary are more likely to be acting from duty than the many women who simply act in line with duty (as is likely when it doesn’t diverge from self-interest).

Why should an individualist care about this moral observation? My brother asked this question of me and I have struggled to answer it. Three things now come to mind. One, I advance the publication by most discussions of gender politics. Two, making a moral observation can be interesting to readers; rather like pointing out a cock pheasant in a field. Three, this observation should inform how much we praise or evaluate men and women; men should be praised ever so slightly more for adhering to morality than women, because, ‘the monsters he has to fight’, to quote Kant, are greater in number.

Does virtue matter? Individuals should strive to be virtuous insofar as this requires acting in line with duty for the sake of duty, but obviously we shouldn’t be concerned with becoming maximally virtuous should that require deliberately creating inclinations to ‘the vices, the brood of dispositions against the [moral] law’, that can then be overcome. Provided women are acting from duty then they need not emulate men by acquiring their primitive inclinations at all.