Abstract

The paper considers whether virtue ethics should be regarded as excluding duty ethics or any of its essential elements. The argument suggested here consists of two steps: (1) an argument that there are two different versions of virtue ethics (moderate and strong) and that moderate virtue ethics does not exclude the duty ethics; (2) an analysis of various difficulties with the strong version of virtue ethics, which shows that moderate virtue ethics is more plausible because of its capacity to avoid these difficulties. This capacity makes moderate virtue ethics more attractive as an ethical theory because it covers the entire range of moral phenomena described both by strong versions of virtue ethics and by duty ethics without the attendant difficulties.