Topics in Virtue Ethics

Many theorists note the important role that wonder can play in our lives. Yet, little attention has been given to the associated character virtue; characterizations of it do not go much further than basic sketches that draw on Aristotle’s view about emotional dispositions that are proper to virtue. This paper fleshes out such sketches, which helps us understand what type of virtue this trait is. The account of virtuous wonder I develop here vindicates brief suggestions in the literature that this (...) trait is an intellectual and aesthetic virtue and reveals in what sense it is a moral and environmental virtue. (shrink)

Tha article concerns contemporary anglo american Virtue ethics and the role of phronesis.

The chapter "Zen-Buddhist Approaches" in the Digital Ethics handbook (Nomos Handbuch series) introduces a concept for applying ideas and maxims from Zen Buddhism to digitality, and the subdiscipline of digital ethics in particular, in a non-religious and critical way. It places Zen Buddhism in modernity by drawing on Byung-Chul Han's "The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism" (2022; original German edition 2002) and uses that work's main chapters – "A Religion without God", "Emptiness", "No one", "Dwelling nowhere", "Death" and "Friendliness" – as (...) a structure for identifying key phenomena of modern, 'digitizing' society such as the gradual replacement of linear-hierarchical relationships; the massive and yet invisible presence of digitality; overcoming ego and desire; renouncing one's self as a form of property and self-presentation; finitude and flexibility; and selfless open-mindedness; all of this illustrating, by way of a multitude of examples, Zen Buddhism's concept of learning to live with paradoxes, an idea that is certainly worthwhile pursuing in digital modernity. (shrink)

What’s so good about John Ames? The narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead has been much admired, but it’s far from obvious why. His life is quiet and unassuming, and has for the most part been uneventful in the extreme. In this chapter I draw on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy to explain the moral arc of the novel, and suggest that the novel in turn can shed light on Murdoch’s key ethical ideas. What is so notable about John Ames, I suggest, (...) is his commitment to seeing the world justly and lovingly—a commitment which for Murdoch is at the heart of virtuous agency. (shrink)

Recommender systems are artificial intelligence technologies, deployed by online platforms, that model our individual preferences and direct our attention to content we’re likely to engage with. As the digital world has become increasingly saturated with information, we’ve become ever more reliant on these tools to efficiently allocate our attention. And our reliance on algorithmic recommendation may, in turn, reshape us as moral agents. While recommender systems could in principle enhance our moral agency by enabling us to cut through the information (...) saturation of the internet and focus on things that matter, as they’re currently designed and implemented they’re apt to interfere with our ability to attend appropriately to morally relevant factors. In order to analyze the distinctive moral problems algorithmic recommendation poses, we develop a framework for the ethics of attention and an account of judicious attention allocation as a moral skill. We then discuss empirical evidence suggesting that attentional moral skill can be thwarted and undermined in various ways by algorithmic recommendation and related affordances of online platforms, as well as economic and technical considerations that support this concern. Finally, we consider how emerging technologies might overcome the problems we identify. (shrink)

In this short paper it is aimed to show that the concept of the “function”(the ergon) is such a concept that beyond its use in everyday language as a process or functioning, it can be considered as a mathematical function, and rather than modeling the phenomenon that is thought (by Aristotle)to correspond to reality, it models the derivative of this phenomenon, therefore it can be likened to a derivative function and the function obtained through its integration would better explain the (...) actual phenomenon, and interestingly, existentialists, who often reject the function argument, approach this more closely. (shrink)

Christopher Columbus Langdell has not only damaged the study of law with his three follies: his legal formalism, his redacted appellate case method, and his notion that legal practice taints the professor of law. His three follies have also impaired character development critical for legal actors. This Article focuses on four such critical character traits and virtues impaired by Langdell: (i) imagination, (ii) empathy, (ii) balance, and (iv) integrity. -/- This Article also calls out potential character issues with two professor (...) types inspired by Langdell: (v) the hazing professor who confuses intellectual rigor with intense discomfort and who uses the redacted appellate case method to inflict such discomfort at the expense of better pedagogy, and (vi) the professor without substantial practice experience who is substantially paid to teach what she has never practiced. -/- Agreeing with C.S. Pierce that the best argument is a cable rather than a chain, I end by weaving in a Langdell villanelle. I hope such a cable can help lift Langdell and his follies from legal education and the world. (shrink)

In the darkness of difficult times, in the degradation of human nature and in the slumber of consciences, we resolutely affirm with the accuracy of the hermeneutic lógos and the mild gentleness of the óneiro the centrality of the human person within the pedagogical discourse. In the knowledge and care of the dignity, richness and wholeness constitutive of the potential of intentional consciousness we recognize the specific object of educational theory and the safe path to the global empowerment of individual (...) and society. That is why we conceive of tea-ching as a paideia of virtues: that is to say, as a most excellent art to which the whole of existence is to be devoted. That is why our children and pupils are welcomed, loved and accustomed to freely exercise their will and judgment, guided by imagination, enthusiasm, history, great ideals, faith and example, so that their hearts and intelligence learn to recognize, cherish and grow the seeds of hope in a better future. (shrink)

Este artículo busca avizorar, desde el terreno de las pretensiones del humanismo, la posibilidad de una ética desprovista de «centro» que se asiente en la «compasión». Se buscará comprender la necesidad de abandonar los intentos de retornar al proyecto «humanístico» y se señalará su mayor riesgo: el «cínico ilustrado». Adicionalmente, se considerará «el humanismo» como el solemne destello de una «estrella que murió hace mucho» pero que da señales para la construcción de una ética excéntrica fundada en la compasión y (...) el dolor. Para tales efectos, se presentarán tres secciones: a) el humanista un cínico ilustrado b) mecanismos de evasión. La miseria y el modo de vida burgués y c) la ausencia de centro y la posibilidad de una ética excéntrica. (shrink)

Divide me from Myself. Love and Alterity in Rousseau Rousseau affirms that love is the extension of self-love to the others. This theory confronts with a tradition that considers the loved person as «another self», an alterity of selfness that the notion of extension—as we maintain—suppresses. Our thesis is that extended self-love is a form of amour-propre directed to a chimera embodied by means of a plastic imagination that adorns, embellishes the real beings with imaginary beings, rendering them loveable. Thus (...) Julia, the character, incarnates in Mme. Houdetot, the person, who therewith disappears. Lastly the others appear only in the joy of the innocent, once the extension, that is to say, love, disappears. Consequently we must change our subtitle in order to summarize our thesis: love or alterity. -/- Rousseau sostiene que el amor es la extensión del amor de sí en otro. Esta teoría se opone a una tradición que considera al amado como «otro sí mismo», una alteridad de la ipseidad que la noción de extensión, proponemos, suprime. Nuestra tesis es: el amor de sí extendido es un modo del amor propio que se dirige a una quimera encarnada gracias a una imaginación plástica que orna, reviste los seres reales con seres imaginarios, haciéndolos amables. Julia, el personaje, se encarna en Mme. Houdetot, la persona, quien desaparece. Finalmente, el otro sólo aparece en la alegría del inocente, ya suprimida la extensión, por lo tanto, el amor. Debemos pues modificar nuestro subtítulo para sintetizar nuestra tesis: amor o alteridad. (shrink)

This encyclopedia entry provides an introductory examination information communication technology (ICT) as a subject of moral, social, and legal analysis. The entry begins with a survey of philosophical perspectives on human-computer interaction such as the moral agency of artifacts, mediation theory, trans or posthumanism, and extension theory. The entry then turns to survey normative and epistemic issues in ICT including the nature of socially disruptive technology, the outsourcing of human capabilities, privacy, echo chambers, epistemic bubbles, and the effect of ICTs (...) on moral virtue and attention. (shrink)

The relation between sport and a good life presents a fruitful philosophical challenge and it has been discussed extensively within the philosophy sport literature. This paper will investigate the role of sport in a good life in the philosophical conceptions of Aristotle and Suits. Both authors paid attention to sport and its significance in the context of living well. However, their approaches differ, partly because they emerge in a different historical and cultural context. My aim is to analyse relevant texts (...) of these two authors, presenting their major points, commonalities, and differences. The debate, to a certain extent, highlights instrumental (educational) and autotelic (intrinsic) value of sport. In order to conceptualize properly the role of sport in a good life, we need to take into account both of these aspects. The originality of this contribution can be found in presenting relevant implications of the contrasting positions of Suits and Aristotle to our thinking about modern sport. Finally, I point to the complementarity of their positions and demonstrate their impact on the broader debate concerning good sport and its role in a good life. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea of authenticity, both what it is and why it’s valuable. First, I identify and criticize three popular approaches to authenticity: Individual Authenticity, Natural Authenticity, and Truthful Authenticity. Second, I defend a fourth approach to authenticity – what I call Existential Authenticity (EA) – which is comprised of three basic elements: (a) self- understanding, (b) self-expression, and (c) self-concern – in particular, concern about what kind of person one is and what type of life one lead. (...) Third, I explore why EA is valuable in both instrumental and non-instrumental ways. (shrink)

Příspěvek se věnuje problematice antického řeckého sportu, konkrétně významu sportovních zápolení a jejich výchovné a vzdělávací roli. Pozornost autor věnuje rozboru pozic filosofů Sókrata, Platóna a Aristotela. Po nastínění kontextu tématu představuje a interpretuje základní filosofické a náboženské premisy sportovního výkonu a jeho výchovné role. Řadí mezi ně úsilí o dosažení božské přízně, nesmrtelnosti, vyššího společenského postavení, ale i ideálů kalokagathia, areté a dalších ctností. Důležitý rozměr antického sportu spatřuje rovněž v jeho formativním potenciálu směřujícímu k přípravě na duševní život. (...) Hlavní část příspěvku se věnuje přístupu k pohybovým zápolením u filosofů Sókrata, Platóna a Aristotela, kteří svými úvahami k chápání výchovné role sportu podstatně přispěli. Následně se autor zaměřuje na identifikaci dobrého sportu podle zmíněných myslitelů a na zkoumání role sportu v kontextu dobrého života, který nahlíží v aristotelském rámci jako dosahování blaženosti. Cílem textu je identifikovat a vyzdvihnout výchovný smysl sportování, poukázat na jeho filosofické konotace a možnou roli sportu v otázce vedení dobrého života. ----------- This manuscript deals with the problematics of ancient Greek sport, specifically with the significance of sporting practices and their educational role. Attention is given to a detailed analysis of the positions of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. After demonstrating the context, the author presents and interprets fundamental philosophical and religious premises of the athletic performance and its educational role. Among the identified features are the effort of acquiring divine favour, immortality, higher social status, but also the ideals of kalokagathia, areté, and other virtues. Important dimension of ancient Greek sport is also found in its formative potential which aims at the preparation for intellectual life. The main part of the article is focused on the approaches of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle towards the sporting practices. These thinkers made an important contribution to the understanding of the educational role of sport. Then, the author identifies a good sport according to these thinkers and examines the role of such sport in the context of a good life, which is considered in the Aristotelian perspective as achieving beatitude (eudaimonia). The aim of this article is to identify and highlight an educational purpose of sport, underlines its philosophical connotations, and demonstrate its possible role in the context of a good life. (shrink)

Folly is an under-explored vice, despite its common occurrence and close relationship to core aspects of practical rationality and the good life. This paper develops an account of folly as a subspecies of imprudence and distinctive source of wrongdoing, with a special focus on its relational, social or inter-personal aspect. Drawing on Rotenstreich’s historically-based account, folly is defined as a form of practical irrationality resulting from closedness to the world. I expand Rotenstreich’s view and depart from him on two key (...) points. First, I argue that folly should be cleanly differentiated from stupidity. Second, I show that the wrong in folly—i.e. the harms it involves intrinsically, as opposed to as a matter of causal consequence—is partly obscured by Rotenstreich’s exclusive focus on the fool as an isolated individual agent. When, instead, we consider folly as a pathology of interpersonal relations, it reveals itself to be a vice which infects and undermines human relationships of love and care, and thus to be a serious threat to living well or human flourishing in almost all of their forms. (shrink)

A dataset was created of the character strengths reported by each of the 300 #iwill Ambassadors to examine trends and discrepancies between cohorts. The researchers applied categories of strengths from the JCCV’s ‘Building Blocks of Character’ to the dataset in order to categorise these character strengths into intellectual, moral, civic and performance domains (Jubilee Centre, 2017: 5). This article explores the dataset, details initial findings and considers implications for practice and further research.

We are political creatures, and we all need others who care about the development of our character and who offer guidance and advice; “if this were not so, we there would be no need for an instructor” (N. Ethics, 1003b12-3). We imitate those who have already successfully developed courage or moderation, acting as if we were brave or moderate, struggling at first, but slowly training ourselves...but, if “acting-as-if” and imitation are the keys to developing virtue, then surely the Poetics will (...) provide a clue to Bk. II of the Ethics, and in a way that may add to our understanding of how ethics and aesthetics are connected. (shrink)

According to many virtue ethicists, one of Aristotle’s important achievements was drawing a clear, qualitative distinction between the character traits of temperance and self-control. In an influential series of papers, John McDowell has argued that a clear distinction between temperance and self-control can be maintained only if one claims that, for the virtuous individual, considerations in favor of actions that are contrary to virtue are “silenced.” Some virtue ethicists reject McDowell’s silencing view as offering an implausible or inappropriate picture of (...) human virtue, but they argue that virtue can still be clearly distinguished from self-control by the absence of motivational conflict alone. In this paper, I argue that this criticism of McDowell is at most half right. If the silencing view is false, so that virtue can have a cost and the virtuous person can justifiably feel negative emotions in response to that cost, there is no principled reason why the virtuous person cannot also have motivational conflict. So, if one rejects the silencing view, then one must allow that the distinction between virtue and self-control is at most a matter of degree. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Freundschaft ist ein wichtiges Thema der aristotelischen Moraltheorie. Aristoteles versteht unter Freundschaft die optimale Form der Beziehung, in der sich die Beteiligten gegenseitig schätzen und Wohltaten leisten. Im Rahmen seiner Freundschaftstheorie hat Aristoteles auch eine Auffassung der Freundschaft zwischen Eltern und Kindern entworfen. Im Vergleich zu seiner allge-meinen Freundschaftstheorie haben seine Ansätze zur Freundschaft zwischen Eltern und Kindern sowohl in der historischen als auch in der systematischen Forschung wenig Aufmerksamkeit gefunden. Das Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, die Auffassung dieser (...) speziellen Beziehung im Kontext seiner Moral- und Freundschaftstheorie darzustellen, zu interpretieren, aber auch weiterzuentwickeln bzw. zu vervollständi-gen. Zudem wird eine kritische Beurteilung sowie Korrektur einiger Aspekte dieser Theorie, insbesondere der Gläubiger-Schuldner-Auffassung der Eltern-Kinder-Beziehung, vorgenommen. Diese Auseinandersetzung mit Aristoteles’ Theorie führt zu einer klareren, systematischeren, aber auch attraktiveren und angemesseneren aristotelischen Theorie der Eltern-Kinder-Freundschaft, als sie in den Schriften des Aristoteles vorliegt. -/- Summary: Friendship (philia), the optimal form of a relationship, in which the friends love and do good things for each other, is an important theme of Aristotle’s ethics. In the framework of his friendship theory, Aristotle also outlined an account of the specific friendship emerging within the relationship between parents and their children. In comparison to his general theory of friendship, which has been widely discussed both by historians of philosophy and by ethicists, has this account received little at-tention. The objective of this article is to present and interpret, but also to develop and qualify, this account of parent-child friendship in the context of Aristotle’s general friendship theory. I shall also suggest that some aspects of this theory, in particular the debtor-creditor account of filial duties, need to be reassessed. This interpretation and discussion should yield a clearer, more systematic but also more attractive and adequate Aristotelian account of the optimal parent-children relationship than the one we find in the texts of Aristotle. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes contends that a wise sovereign would censor books and limit verbal discourse for the majority of citizens. But this article contends that it is consistent with Hobbes’s philosophy to claim that a wise sovereign would allow a small number of citizens – those individuals who engage in scientific discourse and who are magnanimous and just – to disagree freely amongst themselves, engaging in discourse on controversial topics. This article reflects on Hobbes’s contention that these individuals can tolerate one (...) another’s differences and engage in verbal disagreement without any risk to the commonwealth. By engaging in open discourse, these individuals can better create valuable technology and provide counsel to the sovereign that is necessary to maintain peace. (shrink)

This paper addresses some of the contours of an ethics of knowledge in the context of ameliorative epistemology, where this term describes epistemological projects aimed at redressing epistemic injustices, improving collective epistemic practices, and educating more effectively for higher-order reflective reasoning dispositions. Virtue theory and embodiment theory together help to tie the cultivation of moral and epistemic emotions to cooperative problem-solving. We examine one cooperative vice, ‘knavery,’ and how David Hume’s little-noticed discussion of it is a forerunner of contemporary game (...) theory’s concern with behavior of ‘free riding’ on systems of trust or cooperation. We develop these and other examples as calling for “risk-aware” social epistemology, which ties epistemic risk with doxastic responsibility. Risk-aware social epistemology aims at describing and ameliorating epistemic practices, but without confusing over-generalizing about culpability in ways that would conflate philosophical censure or critique of bias, with “blameworthiness” in any stronger sense. (shrink)

There is a crisis of leadership in sport. Leadership as an athletic excellence is under threat from the deepening influence of coaches on in-game decision- making. To appreciate what is being lost in this shift of responsibility, it is necessary to understand the challenge of athlete leadership. Captaincy is the quintessential on-field leadership role. However, the role of captain, and athlete leadership more widely, remains philosophically untheorized. This paper initiates a discussion of leadership in sport by providing the first normative (...) account of captaincy. Rugby union is used as a case study, as this sport preserves an especially demanding and complex form of captaincy that may provide a rough template for the revival of athlete leadership in other sports. A virtue theoretical analysis of the role is developed based on a functionalist conception of virtue. It is argued that discharging the responsibilities of such captaincy requires two key virtues: ‘sporting judgement’ and ‘responsibility’. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is often understood as a rival to existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. But some have disputed the position that virtue ethics is a genuine normative ethical rival. This chapter aims to crystallize the nature of this dispute by providing criteria that determine the degree to which a normative ethical theory is complete, and then investigating virtue ethics through the lens of these criteria. In doing so, it’s argued that no existing account of virtue ethics is a complete (...) normative ethical view that rivals existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. Moreover, it is argued that one of the most significant challenges facing virtue ethics consists in offering an account of the right-making features of actions, while remaining a distinctively virtue ethical view. (shrink)

In its ideal conception, the post-apartheid education landscape is regarded as a site of transformation that promotes democratic ideals such as citizenship, freedom, and critical thought. The role of the educator is pivotal in realising this transformation in the learners she teaches, but this realisation extends beyond merely teaching the curriculum to the educator herself, as the site where these democratic ideals are embodied and enacted. The teacher is thus centrally placed as a moral agent whose behaviour, in the classroom (...) space particularly, should, ideally, represent and communicate the values we aspire to cultivate in post-apartheid South African society generally. Thus, this notion of what teaching encompasses fits broadly into the conception of a “practice” in the sense developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, in that it is a transformative activity the enactment of which not only benefits the practitioner, but also extends to and benefits the broader community as well. Furthermore, practices are grounded in features of social or moral life we hold to be significant and, importantly, it is only through their active cultivation that they can be made tangible and further developed. MacIntyre’s theory of virtue is based on a three-fold interrelationship between practices, how they meaningfully narrate and shape an individual life, and how, in turn, this builds and sustains our moral and social traditions. Using these ideas to analyse post-apartheid South Africa, and the structural transformation paradox it is in, reveals the difficult and complex nature of a society that is in this transitional space. The claim is that attentiveness to practices in the educational space, and to the way they shape and inform moral and social traditions, is necessary to more fully understand and guide this societal transformation. (shrink)

This article discusses conceptions of modesty and humility and their key features. It gives a brief historical overview of debates about whether or not they’re really virtues at all. It also discusses theories of modesty and humility that root them in the presence or absence of particular beliefs, emotions, desires, and attention. it also discusses related phenomena in epistemology: rational limits on self-ascription of error, attitudes to disagreement, and openness to alternative views.

I discuss the second of the three theses advanced by Anscombe in ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. The focus is the nature of entities to which – if Anscombe’s diagnosis is correct – ought and cognate modals are assumed by modern moral philosophers to refer. I reconstruct the alternative account offered by Anscombe of viable and justified ‘Aristotelian’ modals – as contrasted with mysterious and unjustified ‘Kantian’ modals; I discuss the nature and status of ‘Aristotelian necessity’ to which such legitimate modals refer (...) to. I conclude with the claims that Anscombe’s account of modern moral philosophy is viciously parochial, reducing it to Oxford philosophy from the Thirties and Forties and its immediate antecedents; that her historical reconstruction is vitiated by lack of awareness of the existence of law-views of morality preceding Christian theology, artful anticipation of secularization in order to fit her picture of modern moral philosophy as the ‘day after’ of Christianity; that Aquinas’s and her own view of natural morality as made of rational moral judgments laws is incompatible with both her predilection for ‘divine law’ instead of plain down-to-earth ‘natural law’; that her strained reconstruction of a Christian-Jewish-Stoic view of morality as law promulgated by God has little to share with any reconstruction of the Biblical moral traditions meeting academic standard and in more detail there is no possible translation of Torah as Law; and that her criticism hits just targets from the old little British world she was familiar with, while leaving Kantian ethics unaffected. -/- . (shrink)

"This book establishes a profile of virtue in professional media practice by examining the experiences, perspectives, moral stances and demographic data of two dozen selected exemplars in journalism and public relations. It is based on both extensive personal "life story" interviews conducted with the exemplars between April 2010 and September 2012, and also survey data that assessed the exemplars' personality traits, ethical ideologies, moral reasoning skills and perceived workplace climate. The chosen exemplars span the United States and include Pulitzer Prize (...) winners and trendsetting PR corporate executives, rising stars and established veterans"--. (shrink)

The project of growing meat artificially represents for some the next best thing to humanity. If successful, it could be the solution to several problems, such as feed- ing a growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of raising animals for food and, of course, reducing the amount and degree of animal cruelty and suffering that is involved in animal farming. In this paper, I argue that the issue of the morality of such a project has been framed only (...) in terms of the best conse- quences for the environment, animals, and humans, or in terms of deontic princi- ples. I argue that to appreciate how deep and difficult this issue is, it is necessary to consider it in terms of a virtue-oriented approach. Such an approach will reveal aspects that are not apparent, not contemplated by typical approaches, but are essen- tial to our understanding of the morality of lab-grown meat. As I argue, evaluating the issue from a virtue-oriented perspective suggests that the project of in vitro meat should not be supported because it stems from unvirtuous motivations. (shrink)

This paper presents a puzzle for Act Consequentialists who do not want to shoot Pelé. The puzzle arises from cases involving the promotion of virtue, and motivates a systematic restriction on the separability of reasons.

Michael Barilan’s article “From Hope in Palliative Care to Hope as a Virtue and a Life Skill” is an interesting and informative contribution to the debate on the nature of ‘a good death.’ Broadly speaking, the author seeks to explore “the roles and meanings of promotion focus goals in human life” and how hope can aid in alleviating suffering (Barilan 2012, 171). The subject is topical and courtesy of being clinically active, Barilan is able to add a welcome perspective. Very (...) briefly, the article sets out to develop a more inclusive idea of hope, involving ‘personal freedom’ and ‘valuation.’ for example, and then proceeds to explore the role of hope, in this version, for the patients in palliative care .. (shrink)

Writing in the foreword to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and speaking of his upbringing in Chicago between the wars Saul Bellow attests that …as a Midwesterner, the son of immigrant parents, I recognized at an early stage that I was called upon to decide for myself to what extent my Jewish origins, my surroundings [‘the accidental circumstances of Chicago’], my schooling, were to be allowed to determine the course of my life. I did not intend to (...) be wholly dependent upon history and culture. Full dependency must mean that I was done for. The commonest teaching of the civilized world in our time can be stated simply: ‘Tell me where you come from and I'll tell you what you are’. (shrink)

Many forms of virtue ethics, like certain forms of utilitarianism, suffer from the problem of indirection. In those forms, the criterion for status of a trait as a virtue is not the same as the criterion for the status of an act as right. Furthermore, if the virtues for example are meant to promote the nourishing of the agent, the virtuous agent is not standardly supposed to be motivated by concern for her own flourishing in her activity. In this paper, (...) I propose a virtue ethics which does not suffer from the problem. Traits are not virtues because their cultivation and manifestation promote a value such as agent flourishing. They are virtues in so far as they are habits of appropriate response to various relevant values. This means that there is a direct connection between the rationale of a virtue and what makes an action virtuous or right. (shrink)

John Cottingham; I *—The Presidential Address: The Ethical Credentials of Partiality, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 98, Issue 1, 1 June 1998.

New moral ways of being are answers to fundamental problems in the human condition regarding the best way to be and the best way to be with each other. Entering a new way of being entails crossing a logical gap into a new interpretive framework. Michael Polanyi’s from-to structure of knowing and discovery is used to show both how we can acquire the state of the good person through an imitation of their behaviors and why those behaviors must be practiced (...) for themselves. The good person experiences a happiness that the person pursuing happiness as a goal cannot fully understand. One thus practices virtues, and heeds their codification into law, not for the sake of one’s own happiness, but for the sake of the happiness of the person one will become. (shrink)

One of the significant factors in the recent rehabilitation of medieval philosophy has been a renewed interest in virtue ethics, so-called, for which the credit must, in large part, go to Alasdair MacIntyre. However, some now working in the field of virtue ethics appear to be embarrassed by the metaphysical or theological context in which virtue ethics had its original expression, and attempts have been made to detach the ethics from the metaphysics and the theology. Two questions frame the structure (...) of Andrew Dell’Olio’s book: first, the historical and exegetical question of how St. Thomas manages to link up the secular and the religious orders of virtue without fragmenting the unity of the moral self; the second, the thematic question of the significance of St. Thomas’s account of the virtues to contemporary discussion. The early chapters of the book attempt to show that a de-theologized presentation of St. Thomas’s ethics fails to do justice to the rich vision of the good he presents in the Summa Theologiae. Dell’Olio, convincingly in my opinion, shows that Thomas succeeds in reconciling both a natural and a supernatural orientation of the will to the good, and thus that his ethics is more than a mere representation of Aristotle’s. The central chapters discuss the issues of God and the human good, and the connection of the virtues. (shrink)

Most of the philosophical work written on environmental issues focuses on notions such as rights, consequences, duties, etc. And most of the theoretical philosophy done in environmental ethics focuses on questions of whether animals, plants, or ecosystems have inherent value or moral standing independently of their usefulness to humans. A character-based approach has been largely neglected (despite a few important works). In this paper, I consider what a plausible environmental virtue ethics would look like. Specifically, I argue (pace Sandler) that (...) it would not require any distinct eco-virtue but would involve merely widening the scope of traditional virtues to include the non-human world. I further argue that a successful environmental virtue ethics would have to be pluralistic (involving more than one virtue) and would require the formulation of prima facie (rather than absolute) v-rules. Finally, borrowing from Naess, I suggest a way that eco-friendly character could be acquired. (shrink)

In this paper I present criticism of Rosalind Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian naturalistic virtue ethics as elaborated in her book On Virtue Ethics. I argue that her theory is vulnerable to the charge of partially collapsing into a form of consequentialism that falls prey to a powerful objection to that theory: the problem of instrumentally successful action (or, in Hursthouse’s case, the problem of instrumentally successful vice). I consider several possible responses from Hursthouse, and argue that they are inadequate. As a result, (...) Hursthouse must either accept the likelihood that highly morally counterintuitive traits can, for some persons or circumstances, be virtues; or she must defend the implausible notions that human nature and flourishing are more or less invariable. As both of these options are undesirable, it may be best to reject Hursthouse’s form of neo-Aristotelianism altogether. (shrink)

Although ethicists are increasingly interested in virtue ethics, very little has been written about the nature of virtue. Yet understanding it is crucial for understanding virtue ethics. Some philosophers of science claim that virtue is a property reducible to the mere disposition to behave in certain specified ways given a particular situation. A virtue is correctly ascribed after the observation of the relevant behavior. This view reverses the classical virtue ethics of Aristotle. For him, behavior is identified as virtuous in (...) the proper sense after determining that the agent has the relevant virtue. The focus on virtue rather than action differentiates virtue ethics from the action-centered theories that have been dominant untiI recently.In this paper, I argue that virtue is an actual qualily. In the first part, I review Aristotle’s claim that virtue is not a mere potentiality. In the second part, I propose that this claim is supported hy the fact that we are aware of some virtues as actual qualities. If and only if virtues are actual qualities can they be the fundamental values virtue ethicists claim they are. (shrink)

My point of departure is Bernard WiIliams’ “moral luck” thesis and its claim that luck and success are an integral part of ethics. Some scholars think AristotIe’s ethics lends support to a version of the moral luck thesis. My claim is the exact opposite: Aristotle gives a subtle and interesting argument for keeping luck and ethics distinct. Luck plays Iittle role since the moral worth of action Iies in the agent’s choice, proairesis, not merely in the quality of the act (...) itself and even less the outcome or succcss of the action. Further, virtue and success are not equatable: although the courageous person must act with practical wisdom --- he must know who his enemy is and when to fight --- virtue does not require victory in battle. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has become an important rival to deontology and consequentialism, the two dominant moral theories in modern Western philosophy. What unites various forms of virtue ethics and distinguishes virtue ethics from its rivals is its emphasis on the primacy of virtue. In this article, I start with an explanation of the primacy of virtue in virtue ethics and two dilemmas, detected by Gary Watson, that virtue ethics faces: (1) virtue ethics may maintain the primacy of virtue and thus leave (...) virtue non-explanatory, or it may attempt to explain virtue in terms of something else and thus render virtue secondary at most; (2) the explanation of virtue may be objective and thus become morally indeterminate, or it may be normative and thus lack objectivity, merely re-expressing the virtue it intends to explain (Section II). After showing the failure of both classical Aristotelian and contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to escape these dilemmas, I turn to the ethical theory of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200)—the greatest synthesizer of neo-Confucianism, whose place in Confucianism is comparable to that of Thomas Aquinas in the Christian tradition—to show how it can successfully avoid both dilemmas. (shrink)