Abstract

Integrity looks dangerous. Passionate willpower, focused devotion and driving self-belief nestle all-too-closely to extremism, narcissism and intolerant hubris. How can integrity skirt such perils? This question opens the perennial issue of whether devout, driven devotees can guard themselves from antisocial extremes. Current proposals to inoculate integrity from moral danger hone in on integrity’s reflective side. I argue that this epistemic approach disarms integrity’s dangers only by stripping it of everything that initially made it worthwhile. Instead, I argue that integrity contains substantive moral principles serving to surgically target the dangers the trait would otherwise pose. The person of integrity avoids extremism not by questioning whether her values are right, but by recognizing that in a social world whether her values are right is not the only factor that bears on how she should act. Normatively, the proposed account allows integrity to retain its intuitive allures of willpower, direction and unified character. Descriptively, it explains the surprising capacity for principled compromise displayed by canonical figures of integrity. Ultimately, integrity empowers us to be fit for society, even as we are true to ourselves.