The Journal of Ethics 13 (2-3):117-144 (2009)
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Abstract |
Situationists argue that virtue ethics is empirically untenable, since traditional virtue ethicists postulate broad, efficacious character traits, and social psychology suggests that such traits do not exist. I argue that prominent philosophical replies to this challenge do not succeed. But cross-cultural research gives reason to postulate character traits, and this undermines the situationist critique. There is, however, another empirical challenge to virtue ethics that is harder to escape. Character traits are culturally informed, as are our ideals of what traits are virtuous, and our ideals of what qualifies as well-being. If virtues and well-being are culturally constructed ideals, then the standard strategy for grounding the normativity of virtue ethics in human nature is undermined.
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Keywords | Culture Normativity Personality Self concepts Situationism Virtue ethics Well-being |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10892-009-9053-3 |
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References found in this work BETA
Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach.Martha C. Nussbaum - 2000 - Cambridge University Press.
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior.John M. Doris - 2002 - Cambridge University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs: The Problems and Promise of Situationism in Moral Philosophy.Hagop Sarkissian - 2010 - Philosophers' Imprint 10.
Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education.Duncan Pritchard - 2013 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 47 (2):236-247.
Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches.John Doris & Stephen Stich - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Situated Agency: Towards an Affordance-Based, Sensorimotor Theory of Action.Martin Weichold - 2018 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (4):761-785.
View all 25 citations / Add more citations
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