This book argues that the question posed by virtue theories, namely, “what kind of person should I be?” provides a more promising approach to moral questions than do either deontological or consequentialist moral theories where the concern is with what actions are morally required or permissible. It does so both by arguing that there are firmer theoretical foundations for virtue theories, and by persuasively suggesting the superiority of virtue theories over deontological and consquentialist theories on the question (...) of explaining morally bad behavior. Virtue theories can give a richer account by appealing to the kinds of dispositions that make certain bad choices appear attractive. This richer account also exposes a further advantage of virtue theories: they provide the best kinds of motivations for agents to become better persons. (shrink)

In recent years, much uncertainty and outright scepticism surrounds the notion of character. In the arts—painting, the novel, drama, film—the notion of character has receded into the background. The loss of character is especially conspicuous in those artistic forms in which it traditionally occupied centre-stage: drama, the novel, films. The withdrawal of character from the arts has in fact become a topic of debate in the theory and criticism of the arts. In the arts themselves, the (...) difficulty, if not the impossibility, of attaining character is a common subject. Since ordinary sentiments are readily reflected in the fine arts, it is natural to suspect that character is not held in high regard in everyday life. Even if we take a dim view of the suggestion that the arts mirror ordinary sentiments with little distortion, a decline in the importance of character is evident in other humane disciplines: history is a striking example. Indeed, if we attend to our major social institutions—the family, the courts, the bureaucracy—it would be difficult to point to any in which the question of character is more than a peripheral concern. Indeed, it appears that the appraisal of character is of central concern in modern society only when the individual is in some way beyond the pale: in institutions of punishment, rehabilitation, mental health. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Initiatives to cultivate character and virtue in moral education at school continue to provoke sceptical responses. Most of those echo familiar misgivings about the notions of character, virtue and education in virtue ? as unclear, redundant, old-fashioned, religious, paternalistic, anti-democratic, conservative, individualistic, relative and situation dependent. I expose those misgivings as ?myths?, while at the same time acknowledging three better-founded historical, methodological and practical concerns about the notions in question.

Many jurisdictions prohibit or severely restrict the use of evidence about a defendant’s character to prove legal culpability. Situationists, who argue that conduct is largely determined by situational features rather than by character, can easily defend this prohibition. According to situationism, character evidence is misleading or paltry. -/- Proscriptions on character evidence seem harder to justify, however, on virtue ethical accounts. It appears that excluding character evidence either denies the centrality of character for (...) explaining conduct—the situationist position—or omits probative evidence. Situationism is, after all, presented as antithetical to virtue ethics. -/- This essay provides a virtue ethical defense of character evidence exclusion rules. We show that existing virtue ethical rebuttals to situationism themselves support prohibitions on character evidence; even if behavior arises from stable character traits, character evidence should be prohibited. In building our case, we provide a taxonomy of kinds of character judgment and reconcile the ubiquity and reasonableness of character judgments in ordinary life with the epistemic legitimacy of character evidence prohibitions in law. (shrink)

The concept of deep disagreement is useful for highlighting skills and resources required for reasons-giving to be effective in restoring cooperative or joint action. It marks a limit. When it is instead understood as a challenge to be overcome by using reasons, it leads to significant practical, theoretical, and moral distortions.

This paper develops a virtue-account of legal reasoning which significantly differs from standard, principle-based, theories. A virtue approach to legal reasoning highlights the relevance of the particulars to sound legal decision-making, brings to light the perceptual and affective dimensions of legal judgment, and vindicates the relevance of description and specification to good legal reasoning. After examining the central features of the theory, the paper proposes a taxonomy of the main character traits that legal decision-makers need to possess (...) to successfully engage in legal reasoning. The paper concludes by discussing an array of strategies in legal education, institutional design, and legal culture that can be put in place to work virtue in legal decision-making. (shrink)

Gadamer’s retrieval of phronēsis lies at the heart of his philosophical hermeneutics. This paper argues that this retrieval requires a co-retrieval of what Aristotle referred to as character virtue, and that Gadamer’s work largely neglects this. In part one, I review Aristotle’s analysis of the relationship between phronēsis and character virtue. In part two, I show how Gadamer’s double insistence on the importance of phronēsis for his hermeneutics and on taking responsibility for concepts generates the requirement (...) of a co-retrieval of character virtues and vices. Following this, I then survey four ambiguous tendencies in Gadamer’s work that seem to militate against such a retrieval. I conclude with some remarks for future work. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as evil character? Philosophers and social psychologists have cast doubt on the idea that evil behaviour is due to a defect in character formation, which some people have, and some have not. I will argue that their claims are misguided by putting forward the following thesis: evil character traits exist, but they are typically less stable, albeit more prevalent, than good character traits. This is because they typically do not receive the (...) backing of formation, which, in the Aristotelian sense, is responsible for the development of firm character traits such as virtues. (shrink)

Dans son ouvrage, McKinnon a pour but de démontrer que l’éthique de la vertu est une alternative valable et plus prometteuse que ses pendants traditionnels que sont l’éthique du devoir et les différents types d’utilitarismes. Elle reconnaît toutefois que l’éthique de la vertu à cette étape de son développement a besoin d’être peaufinée. Premièrement, il semblerait que la connexion entre ce qui est bon pour les humains et ce que c’est que d’être un bon être humain soit manquante et que (...) donc, au point de vue théorique, le fondement soit manquant. Deuxièmement, il semblerait que les différentes versions proposées de l’éthique de la vertu ne définissent pas assez clairement ce que sont la vertu et le vice et ne posent pas de façon distincte les liens existants entre ceux-ci et le caractère. McKinnon réussira dans son ouvrage à pallier ces deux manques. (shrink)

This paper humbly attempts to explore Descartes’ conception of generosity as an ideal character virtue which can address the problems of the global world like struggle, intolerance and segregation; and thereby creates healthy routes for universal dialogue. The first part attempts to clarify Descartes’ conception of the foundations of generosity. The second part narrates Descartes’ views on generosity as passions and as a virtue. The third part explores the possibility of generosity as a virtue of the (...) individual as well as social character. It also proposes to take the practice of generosity as a mechanism of developing cooperation, tolerance, and, consequently, universal dialogue and harmony. (shrink)

This paper introduces a body of research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial/organizational Psychology that expands the range of empirical evidence relevant to the ongoing character-situation debate. This body of research, mostly neglected by moral philosophers, provides important insights to move the debate forward. First, the OB/io scholarship provides empirical evidence to show that social environments like organizations have significant power to shape the character traits of their members. This scholarship also describes some of the mechanisms through which this (...) process of reshaping character takes place. Second, the character-situation debate has narrowly focused on situational influences that affect behavior episodically and haphazardly. The OB/io research, however, highlights the importance of distinguishing such situational influences from influences that, like organizational influences, shape our character traits because they are continuous and coordinated. Third, the OB/io literature suggests that most individuals display character traits that, while local to the organization, can be consistent across situations. This puts pressure on the accounts of character proposed by traditional virtue ethics and situationism and provides empirical support to interactionist models based on cognitive-affective processing system theories of personality. Finally, the OB/io literature raises important challenges to the possibility of achieving virtue, provides valuable and untapped resources to cultivate character, and suggests new avenues of normative and empirical research. (shrink)

Character education is an increasingly discussed topic drawing upon virtue ethics as a moral theory. Scholars have predominantly understood educating character as a process that entails the formation of certain distinct character traits or functions through practice and habituation. However, these approaches present some problems. This paper explores the educational implications of various accounts focusing on the relationship between phronesis and other virtues. In particular, our focus will be on those that Miller (2023) has classified as (...) Standard Model and Eliminativist Model of practical wisdom. Starting from these accounts, we will outline three specific problems that the latter models appear to generate at a theoretical level in character education. Finally, we will address the task of demonstrating why the monist account of moral virtue recently proposed by the Aretai group—which conceives being virtuous in possessing phronesis understood as ethical expertise—might offer a refined response to these challenges. In addition, we will illustrate three educational pathways that can emerge from the same model. (shrink)

Standard characterizations of virtue epistemology divide the field into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Virtue reliabilists think of intellectual virtues as reliable cognitive faculties or abilities, while virtue responsibilists conceive of them as good intellectual character traits. I argue that responsibilist character virtues sometimes satisfy the conditions of a reliabilist conception of intellectual virtue, and that consequently virtue reliabilists, and reliabilists in general, must pay closer attention to matters of (...) intellectual character. This leads to several new questions and (...) challenges for any reliabilist epistemology. (shrink)

The problem : commerce and corruption -- Smith's defense of commercial society -- What is corruption? : political and psychological perspectives -- Smith on corruption : from the citizen to the human being -- The solution : moral philosophy -- Liberal individualism and virtue ethics -- Social science vs. moral philosophy -- Types of moral philosophy : natural jurisprudence vs. ethics -- Types of ethics : utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics -- Virtue ethics : modern, ancient, and (...) Smithean -- Interlude : the what and the how of TMS VI -- The what : Sith's "practical system of morality" -- The how : rhetoric, audience, and the methods of practical ethics -- The how : the ascent of self-love in three stages -- Prudence or commercial virtue -- The challenge : from praise to prudence -- Educating the vain : fathers and sons -- Self-interest rightly understood -- The advantages and disadvantages of prudence -- Magnanimity or classical virtue -- The problems of prudence and the therapy of magnanimity -- Up from individualism : desert, praiseworthiness, conscience -- Modernity, antiquity, and magnanimity -- The dangers of magnanimity -- Beneficence or christian virtue -- Between care and caritas -- Benevolence and beneficence and the human telos -- The character and purposes of the wise and virtuous man -- Wisdom and virtue and Adam Smith's apology -- Epilogue: The "economy of greatness". (shrink)

This book investigates the ubuntu theory-based conception of virtue and moral character formation in the northern, western, and eastern regions of Africa, suggesting a critical reconstruction of ubuntu by conceptualising the four different forms of practices in moral character formation. Arguing for the critical reconstruction of ubuntu virtue theory as more nuanced than simply the standard ubuntu normative virtue theories (which give priority to the community as the sole locus for understanding virtues and character (...) formation in Africa), the book builds a comprehensive model of virtue and moral character formation that draws insights from the reconstructed notion of ubuntu and other theories within and beyond the African thought. Chapters feature experience from across Africa including Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, and centre on topics such as traditional cultural views and practices, political systems in various nations, neoliberalist thought, and primary, secondary and tertiary education systems in Africa and further afield. This is a valuable resource for scholars, academics, and postgraduate students, working in the fields of moral and values education, philosophy of education, and the theory of education more broadly. Those also interested in educational psychology may also find the volume of interest. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has often been regarded as complementary or laissez-faire ethics in solving business problems. This paper seeks conceptual and methodological improvements by developing a virtue character scale that will enable assessment of the link between organizational level virtue and organizational performance, financial or non-financial. Based upon three theoretical assumptions, multiple studies were conducted; the content analysis of 158 Fortune Global 500 firms ethical values and a survey of 2548 customers and employees. Six dimensions of organizational (...) virtue (Integrity, Empathy, Warmth, Courage, Conscientiousness and Zeal) are identified through confirmatory factor analysis, and validated against satisfaction measure. Strategic implications of virtue characters are discussed. (shrink)

Military ethics seeks to provide practical guidance for the resolution of real ethical problems associated with the conduct of military operations. In doing so, it must reflect how actual persons give and take-up reasons when deliberating what actions to take. The Just War Tradition, for example, provides deontological and consequentialist considerations soldiers should take up when considering how to conduct operations. Sometimes, unfortunately, soldiers may find themselves in tragic situations where principles and consequences provide no clear guidance. To fill that (...) gap, a full account of military ethics requires an account of virtue, which focuses more on the agent than the act and can provide resources necessary to avoid, or failing that, resolve, otherwise unresolvable ethical dilemmas that can arise during military operations. This point does not mean virtue ethics supersedes or assimilates other ethical approaches. Rather it means that in the context of a process aimed at establishing reflective equilibrium, it provides important beliefs, judgments, and ways of thinking about applied ethics that are critical not just to building a robust, maximally coherent equilibrium but also to maintain it. These resources are especially critical when one is faced with the kind of tragic situations soldiers confront in war. (shrink)

This groundbreaking handbook of character strengths and virtues is the first progress report from a prestigious group of researchers who have undertaken the systematic classification and measurement of widely valued positive traits. Character Strengths and Virtues classifies twenty-four specific strengths under six broad virtues that consistently emerge across history and culture. This book demands the attention of anyone interested in psychology and what it can teach about the good life.

Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate goal of (...) responding to the question whether virtue ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a character-based moral theory in business ethics and organizational behavior. In the course of this paper, I shall defend the claim that the situationist argument relies on a misinterpretation of the experimental evidence. (shrink)

In Character and Environment, Ronald L. Sandler brings together contemporary work on virtue ethics with contemporary work on environmental ethics.

In this paper we consider the prospects for an account of good argument that takes the character of the arguer into consideration. We conclude that although there is much to be gained by identifying the virtues of the good arguer and by considering the ways in which these virtues can be developed in ourselves and in others, virtue argumentation theory does not offer a plausible alternative definition of good argument.

Virtue ethics is now widely recognized as an alternative to Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories. However, moral philosophers have been slow to bring virtue ethics to bear on topics in applied ethics. Moreover, environmental virtue ethics is an underdeveloped area of environmental ethics. Although environmental ethicists often employ virtue-oriented evaluation and appeal to role models for guidance, environmental ethics has not been well informed by contemporary work on virtue ethics. With _Character and Environment_, Ronald Sandler (...) remedies each of these deficiencies by bringing together contemporary work on virtue ethics with contemporary work on environmental ethics. He demonstrates the many ways that any ethic of character can and should be informed by environmental considerations. He also develops a pluralistic virtue-oriented environmental ethic that accommodates the richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment and provides effective and nuanced guidance on environmental issues. These projects have implications not only for environmental ethics and virtue ethics but also for moral philosophy more broadly. Ethical theories must be assessed on their theoretical and practical adequacy with respect to all aspects of the human ethical situation: personal, interpersonal, and environmental. To the extent that virtue-oriented ethical theory in general, and Sandler's version of it in particular, provides a superior environmental ethic to other ethical theories, it is to be preferred not just as an environmental ethic but also as an ethical theory. _Character and Environment_ will engage any reader with an interest in environmental ethics, virtue ethics, or moral philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued that traditional discussions of virtue and character presuppose an account of behaviour that experimental psychology has shown to be false. Behaviour does not issue from global traits such as prudence, temperance, courage or fairness, they claim, but from local traits such as sailing-in-rough-weather-with-friends-courage and office-party-temperance. The data employed provides evidence for this view only if we understand it in the light of a behaviourist construal of traits in terms of stimulus and response, rather than (...) in the light of the more traditional construal in terms of inner events such as inclinations. More recent experiments have shown this traditional conception to have greater explanatory and predictive power than its behaviourist rival. So we should retain the traditional conception, and hence reject the proposed alteration to our understanding of behaviour. This discussion has further implications for future philosophical investigations of character and virtue. Key Words: character traits • situationism • social psychology • virtue ethics. (shrink)

Character plays a central role in our everyday understanding and evaluation of ourselves and one another. It informs the expectations that ground our plans and projects, our moral responses to other people's behaviour and to opportunities we ourselves face, and our political decisions concerning formal education, criminal punishment, and other aspects of social organisation. These philosophical essays clarify this idea of character, analyse its relation with the findings of experimental psychology, and draw out the implications of this for (...) education and for criminal punishment. They emphasise that character is inherently dynamic, challenging the tendency among personality psychologists and virtue ethicists alike to focus on static snapshots of traits, and they emphasise the close integration of character with the individual's social context. The volume is intended to demonstrate the deep conceptual affinity of moral philosophy and social psychology and the consequent potential for each to benefit from the other. (shrink)

Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the “machine question” by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes (...) situations where either human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On “relational” views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, a growing philosophical literature has subjected virtue ethics to empirical evaluation. Drawing on results in social psychology, a number of critics have argued that virtue ethics depends upon false presuppositions about the cross‐situational consistency of psychological traits. Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has been a prime target for the situationist critics. This essay assesses the situationist critique of MacIntyre’s account of virtue. It argues that MacIntyre’s social teleological account of virtue is (...) not what his situationist critics take it to be. Virtues, for MacIntyre, are not reducible to psychological traits. They are qualities of one’s socially constituted character, and their intelligibility as virtues derives from their role in the narrative of one’s life. Recognizing this both clarifies and complicates debates about the implication of situationist social psychology for virtue ethics. It also grants a new significance to MacIntyre’s attention to the socio‐historical context of virtue, a significance that should be especially interesting to religious ethicists. (shrink)

Character education in schools in England is flourishing. I give many examples of the enthusiasm for it as well as drawing attention to the UK government's new ambivalence towards it. Character education seems largely impervious to the many criticisms to which it has been subjected. I touch on these only briefly as my focus is on a criticism that has received little coverage. This is because the virtues on offer are unstable. They are best understood as sites on (...) which we contest our understanding of what it is to be a good person rather than reach conclusive answers. There is support for this argument in Aristotle, notwithstanding its many oddities and those of some modern uses of his conception of the virtues. The proliferation of the virtues in the practice and theory of education today is, I suggest, a sign of weakness and not of strength, while the very instability of the virtues demands that they be continually discussed and debated. This places them at the heart of any vision of education worth having. (shrink)

The recent literature on ad hominem argument contends that the speaker’s character is sometimes relevant to evaluating what she says. This effort to redeem ad hominems requires an analysis of character that explains why and how character is relevant. I argue that virtue epistemology supplies this analysis. Three sorts of ad hominems that attack the speaker’s intellectual character are legitimate. They attack a speaker’s: (1) possession of reliabilist vices; or (2) possession of responsibilist vices; or (...) (3) failure to perform intellectually virtuous acts. Legitimate ad hominems conclude that we should not believe what a speaker says solely on her say-so. (shrink)

The domain of modal epistemology tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (i.e., possibility and necessity), and what justifies our beliefs about modalities. Virtue epistemology, on the other hand, aims at explaining epistemological concepts like knowledge and justification in terms of properties of the epistemic subject, i.e., cognitive capacities and character traits. While there is extensive literature on both domains, almost all attempts to analyze modal knowledge elude the importance of the agent’s intellectual character (...) traits in justifying beliefs about what is possible or necessary. My aim in this paper is to argue that intellectual traits of character, like thoroughness, autonomy, epistemic courage and open-mindedness, are relevant to modal epistemology. (shrink)

I examine the Aristotelean conception of virtuous character as firm and unchangeable, a normative ideal endorsed in the currently influential, broadly Aristotelean school of thought known as 'virtue ethics'. Drawing on central concepts of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, I offer an account of how this ideal is supposed to be realized psychologically. I then consider present-day empirical findings about relevant psychological processes, with special attention to interpersonal processes. The empirical evidence suggests that over time, the same interpersonal processes that (...) sometimes help to sustain character may also disrupt it, even among agents who have the right values in principle. Fortunately, the evidence also suggests some remedial measures. An important philosophical measure, I conclude, is for advocates of virtue ethics to address agents' psychological need for a systematic decision procedure that will focus attention primarily on substantive ethical considerations, rather than characterological assessment. (shrink)

This paper extends previous discussions of corporate character and corporate virtues. By drawing particularly on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, it offers a perspective on context-dependent categories of the virtues. It then provides a philosophically grounded framework which enables a discussion of which virtues are required for business organizations to qualify as virtuous. It offers a preliminary taxonomy of such corporate virtues and provides a revised definition of corporate character.

In recent years, character traits in general and virtue-related concepts in particular have been of considerable interest to philosophers, psychological researchers, and practitioners in the business ethics field. Three approaches to character traits can be used to incorporate ethics into organizations: virtues, character strengths, and competencies. The aim of this article is to clarify the concept of character traits, or virtues, and provide a unified operational version of it for incorporation into management. To this end, (...) we first discuss the analogy among virtues, character strengths, and competencies. Then, we propose a list of moral competencies that can be implemented in competency-based human resource management. (shrink)

Virtues and reasons are two of the most fruitful and important concepts in contemporary moral philosophy. Many writers have commented upon the close connection between virtues and reasons, but no one has done full justice to the complexity of this connection. It is generally recognized that the virtues not only depend upon reasons, but also sometimes provide them. The essays in this volume shed light on precisely how virtues and reasons are related to each other and what can be learned (...) by exploring this relationship. Virtue’s Reasons is divided into three sections, each of them devoted to a general issue regarding the relationship between virtues and reasons. The first section analyzes how the virtues may be related to, or linked with, normative reasons in ways that improve our understanding of what constitutes virtuous character and ethical agency. The second section explores the reasons moral agents have for cultivating the virtues and how the virtues impact moral responsiveness or development. The final section examines how reasons can be employed in understanding the nature of virtue, and how specific virtues, like modesty and practical wisdom, interact with reasons. This book will be of major interest to scholars working on virtue theory, the nature of moral character, and normative ethics. (shrink)

There has been much debate recently about the meaning, place and function of “character” and “character traits” in Virtue Ethics. For example, a number of philosophers have argued recently that Virtue Ethics would be strengthened as a theory by the omission of talk of character traits; recent neuroscientific studies have suggested that there is scope for scepticism about the existence of such traits. I will argue that both approaches are flawed and unconvincing: in brief, the (...) first approach tends to be predicated on a narrow or insufficient conception of “character” and “character traits”; the second approach tends to go well beyond the available (empirical) evidence. Finally, I will argue that it is possible to point to a philosophy of education that is deeply informed by an understanding of virtue and ethics in which the concept of character has a coherent and meaningful role. (shrink)

덕인식론과 지행론의 전체적인 구도를 이해하기 위한 선행 과제로서 나는 이 글에서 德과 관련한 개념들 가운데 역량과 성품이 지적 덕성과 어떤 연관에 놓여 있는지 정리하고자 한다. 애초 이 글은 똑똑하다고 칭찬받는 사람들이 왜 나쁜 일들을 스스럼없이 저지르는가에 대한 소박한 의문에서 출발한다. 이런 의문은 윤리적인 문제일 수도, 인식론적인 주제일 수도 있다. 왜냐하면 무엇을 어떻게 인식할 것인가라는 인식론적인 질문은 결국 인식론이 규범적인 영역에 속하며 인식론적인 평가에서 지적인 행위자와 그 공동체를 중시해야 한다는 것을 의미하기 때문이다. 이것은 ‘덕인식론’의 핵심적인 관점이다. 지식의 정당화에 있어서 덕인식론이 ‘덕성’에 (...) 초점을 맞추고 있다는 점은 동아시아 전통의 ‘지행론’과 닮았지만 그 문제의식은 다르다. 따라서 덕인식론과 지행론의 같고 다른 점을 우선 살펴보고 『논어』를 중심으로 역량, 성품, 지적 덕성의 관계를 검토할 것이다. 이 작업에서 나는 역량과 성품이 규범적인 가치의 문맥으로 조율되지 않으면 올바른 행위를 산출하는 지적 덕성이 되기에 부족함을 말할 것이다. (shrink)

It is central to virtue ethics both that morally sound action follows from virtuous character, and that virtuous character is itself the product of habitual right judgement and choice: that, in short, we choose our moral characters. However, any such view may appear to encounter difficulty in those cases of moral conflict where an agent cannot simultaneously act (say) both honestly and sympathetically, and in which the choices of agents seem to favour the construction of different moral (...) characters. This paper argues, against possible counter-arguments, for a view of virtue ethics which embraces the diversity of moral character. (shrink)

Recently, Gilbert Harman has used empirical results obtained by social psychologists to argue that there are no character traits of the type presupposed by virtue ethics—no honesty or dishonesty, no courage or cowardice, in short, no virtue or vice. In this paper, I critically assess his argument as well as that of the social psychologists he appeals to. I suggest that the experimental results recounted by Harman would not much concern such classical virtue theorists as Plato—particularly (...) the Plato of the Republic—because they are pretty much exactly what these theorists would have predicted. The more difficult thesis that virtuous or vicious character traits exist, I do not here argue. Instead, the results of this paper focus on clarifying some of the ways in which character traits are understood by virtue ethicists, especially those who look to the classical philosophers. (shrink)

Are there key respects in which character and character defects are voluntary? Can agents with serious vices be rational agents? Jonathan Jacobs answers in the affirmative. Moral character is shaped through voluntary habits, including the ways we habituate ourselves, Jacobs believes. Just as individuals can voluntarily lead unhappy lives without making unhappiness an end, so can they degrade their ethical characters through voluntary action that does not have establishment of vice as its end. Choosing Character presents (...) an account of ethical disability, expanding the domain of responsibility and explicating the role of character in ethical cognition. Jacobs contends that agents become ethically disabled voluntarily when their habits impair their ability to properly appreciate ethical considerations. Such agents are rational, responsible individuals who are yet incapable of virtuous action. The view develops and modifies Aristotelian claims concerning the fixity of character. Jacobs' interpretation is developed in contrast to the overlooked work of Maimonides, who also used Aristotelian resources but argued for the possibility of character change. The notion of ethical disability has profound ramifications for ethics and for current debates about blame and punishment. (shrink)

Examining the complex role that motivation plays in creativity foregrounds the role of intrinsic motivation in paradigmatic cases of creative achievement. This is significant given the neglect of the role of motivation in the philosophical literature. Furthermore, given the way in which intrinsic motivation typically grounds and enables the cultivation of creativity for creatures like us, it pays to think of creativity in virtue-theoretic terms. As suggested by both empirical and conceptual considerations, intrinsic motivation insulates agents from pressures against (...) or inhibitors of creativity. It helps to explain robustness across different situations and influences. Conceiving of creativity as a virtue of character also makes best sense of how and why we praise or criticize as we do and shows us how to cultivate creativity. (shrink)

Neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethics makes essential reference to the notion of a stable, robust character‐trait. It also claims to be constrained by at least a minimal degree of psychological realism. Recent developments in empirical psychology have drawn into question the evidence for the existence of such robust traits, arguing that it rests on what has been called a ‘fundamental attribution error’. Virtue ethics has thus seemingly been made vulnerable to criticisms that it is essentially dependent on an erroneous, (...) folk‐psychological, notion of character and, so, must either abandon their characteristic notion of virtue or forego any pretensions to psychological realism. I develop a two‐pronged response to this objection. First, I argue that there is reason to question much of the empirical evidence and that such evidence as does exist can easily be accommodated by virtue ethics. Next, I argue that even if we allow that neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethical theories does sometimes presuppose a stronger conception of character‐traits than is warranted by the evidence, this does not significantly undermine the virtue ethicist's project. (shrink)

Classically-conceived accounts of character posit traits that are both dynamic and global. Dynamic traits produce behavior, and global traits produce behavior across the full range of situation kinds relevant to a particular trait. If you are classically just, for example, you would behave justly across the full range of situation kinds relevant to justice. But classical traits are too crude to fulfill trait attributions' intrinsically normative purpose, which is to reflect the moral merit agents deserve. I defend an extra-classical (...) account of character traits that endorses flexible traits that might issue in behavior across any narrow or broad range of situation kinds, and static traits that might issue in no behavior at all. Extra-classical traits are more subtle and sensitive, and so are normatively receptive to the credit that psychologically-complicated agents merit. Further, extra-classical traits can fulfill all the unproblematic roles of classical traits. Extra-classicism is, hence, a significant and substantial improvement upon classically conceived character traits and traditional virtue ethics. (shrink)