Disunity of Virtue

The Journal of Ethics 13 (2):195-212 (2009)
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Abstract

This paper argues against the unity of the virtues, while trying to salvage some of its attractive aspects. I focus on the strongest argument for the unity thesis, which begins from the premise that true virtue cannot lead its possessor morally astray. I suggest that this premise presupposes the possibility of completely insulating an agent’s set of virtues from any liability to moral error. I then distinguish three conditions that separately foreclose this possibility, concentrating on the proposition that there is more to morality than virtue alone—that is, not all moral considerations are ones to which some virtue is characteristically sensitive. If the virtues are not unified, the situationist critique of virtue ethics also turns out to be more difficult to establish than some have supposed.

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Gopal Sreenivasan
Duke University

Citations of this work

Murdoch's Ontological Argument.Cathy Mason & Matt Dougherty - 2023 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (3):769-784.
Virtue in a time of depraved ideals.Iskra Fileva - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Sincerity, Solidarity, and Deliberative Commitment.Adam Kadlac - 2014 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (2):139-162.

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References found in this work

On Virtue Ethics.Rosalind Hursthouse - 1999 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior.John M. Doris - 2002 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980.Bernard Williams - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Virtue and Reason.John Mcdowell - 1979 - The Monist 62 (3):331-350.
Moral Luck.B. A. O. Williams & T. Nagel - 1976 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 50 (1):115-152.

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