Virtuous behavior: Practical Rationality

A chess championship recently took place in London between the reigning champion, Gary Kasparov, and a British challenger, Nigel Short. The winner of the tournament was to receive some $2 million in prize money. Imagine that one of the players, say Kasparov, is 'rational' in the economic sense as invoked by the finance paradigm, while the other player, Short, is 'rational' in the sense of Aristotelian practical rationality as invoked by virtue-ethics theory. How, exactly, would these two individuals differ in their approach to the chess tournament?
Clearly the actions of the two agents may be indistinguishable. They would both be playing chess to the best of their ability, and would both be playing to win.

Also, either player could win. The difference between the two players would likely rest entirely on their respective motivations for winning. Kasparov's motivation would derive from the external goods to be gained from playing chess, namely the $2 million prize money and perhaps also the fame and power that comes from being 'the champion'. In contrast, Short's motivation would derive from the internal goods to be gained from playing chess. These goods are less easily identified. They are, as MacIntyre notes,

"Those goods specific to chess, .. the achievement of a certain highly particular kind of analytical skill, strategic imagination and competitive intensity .." (1984, p. 188).

In essence, Kasparov views chess as a means to an end, where the end is wealth, fame, and power. Short, on the other hand, views chess as an end in itself. To the practically-rational Mr. Short chess is a "practice"; indeed an understanding of the concept of a practice is central to an understanding of practical rationality.

What the rationality embedded in virtue-ethics makes very clear is that excellence within a practice is in and of itself a moral excellence; the pursuit of excellence in a practice necessitates the exercise of the virtues. "A virtue tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which essentially prevents us from achieving any such goods" (1984, p. 191, emphasis added). Thus a practically rational financial manager would be one who views financial management as a practice, with goods internal to the activity itself. Contrarily an economically rational financial manager is one who views financial management primarily as a means to the attainment of external goods. This latter financial manager or agent is the one who currently populates the models of agency theory.
Both types of financial manager will pursue what they perceive as their self interest. In the case of practical rationality, however, the agent's self interest is defined in terms of the pursuit of excellence within the practice. Furthermore this pursuit will be undertaken through the exercise of the virtues within a community (the polis).

Thus practical rationality is an interactive or connected rationality. A practically rational agent pursues happiness or excellence (what Aristotle termed eudaimonia) while realizing that this pursuit cannot be successfully undertaken opportunistically: the achievement of happiness requires the exercise of the moral virtues such as honesty in dealings with others.