Volume 23, Issue 3-4, November - December 2024, Page 219-244.

As organizations take on grand challenges in gender equality, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ protections and workplace inclusion, many well-intentioned individuals from dominant groups (e.g., cisgender men, Caucasian, heterosexual) are stepping forward as allies toward underrepresented or marginalized group members (e.g., cisgender women, People of Color, LGBTQ+ identified employees). Past research and guidance assume an inevitable need for external motivation, reflected in the ‘business case’ for diversity and in top-down policies to drive equity and inclusion efforts. This qualitative study explored _internal_ motivations in (...) the form of morally motivated virtues of 25 peer-nominated exemplary allies serving in leadership positions. In-depth life/career story interviews were used to identify the virtues that supported their allyship journeys. Findings demonstrated that they tapped into several virtues that served distinct functions in a 4-stage allyship development process: Stage 1—Energizing psychological investment (compassion, fairness); Stage 2—Thinking through allyship-relevant complexities (intellectual humility, perspective-taking, wisdom); Stage 3—Initiating action (prudence, moral courage, honesty); Stage 4—Committing to allyship (perseverance, patience). We call this the ‘EThIC model of virtue-based allyship development.’ This study has implications for theory and research on a virtue-based approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. (shrink)

In ‘Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions’ Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In ‘Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,’ she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims (...) that couples with an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairment. This claim, she maintains, reveals that the flourishing of a child should be understood as requiring environment-specific characteristics. I argue that McDougall's argument begs the question. More importantly, it does not do justice to virtue ethics. I also question to what extent a virtue ethics framework can be successfully applied to discussions about the moral permissibility of reproductive actions. (shrink)

Technological advancements in information systems over the past few decades have enabled firms to work with the major suppliers and customers in their supply chain in order to improve the performance of the entire channel. Tremendous benefits for all parties can be realized by sharing information and coordinating operations to reduce inventory requirements, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction; but the companies must collaborate effectively to bring these gains to fruition. We consider two alternative methods of managing these interfirm supply (...) chain relationships in this article. The first, which we have named “dictatorial collaboration,” occurs when a dominant supply chain entity assumes control of the channel and forces the other firms to follow its edicts. We compare and contrast this method with “sustainable collaboration,” in which the parties share resources and engage in joint problem solving to improve the performance of the system as a whole. We use a virtue ethics lens to describe these methods of relationship management to suggest that sustainable collaboration is preferable to dictatorial collaboration both operationally and ethically in the long run. (shrink)

This article elaborates on Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, exploring the plausibility of his claim that each praxis has its own appropriate set of virtues. The exploration will be applied to what I term military praxis. Firstly, the article analyses what is meant by the concept of a praxis and how a military praxis can be defined, as well as the wider purpose of military praxis. From there it proceeds to the “internal goods”, the desires, to be realized in joining (...) the military. Which are these desires that are satisfied by participating in military praxis? Next, by combining the preceding steps, the article suggests which virtues are appropriate to the military praxis, focusing on seven virtues of military character: responsibility, competence, comradeship, respect, courage, resilience and discipline. This framework is completed by practical wisdom, the military virtue of intellect. I will conclude my article by elaborating on the role of narrative in integrating the virtues and by giving some concrete directions about ways in which education in the military virtues could take place. (shrink)

Research on ethical leadership in organizations has been largely based on Western philosophical traditions and has tended to focus on Western corporate experiences. Insights gained from such studies may however not be universally applicable in other cultural contexts. This paper examines the normative grounds for an alternative Confucian virtue-based ethics of leadership in China. As with Western corporations, organizational practices in China are profoundly shaped by their own cultural history and philosophical outlook. The ethical norms guiding both the practice (...) and theory of leadership in China are underpinned by indigenous Chinese wisdoms imbued in their own traditions and China’s collective psyche. Focusing on three fundamental aspects of Confucian virtue ethics: _ren_ (仁 benevolence), _yi_ (义 righteousness) and _li_(礼 ritual propriety), this paper proposes that an ideal Confucian leader regards self-cultivation as a first priority; status and material gain, whilst important, are not the foremost concern. S/he exemplifies the virtuous role model, exudes moral charisma and influences others by shaping an organization’s ethical culture through the process of ritualization. The paper concludes by claiming that amplifying the explicit discourse around Confucian virtue ethics will help contribute to the development of better ethical leadership in China. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in (...) doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

One important objection to virtue ethical theories is that they apparently must account for the wrongness of a wrong action in terms of a lack of virtue (or presence of vice) in the agent, and not in terms of the effects of the action on its victim. We take such effects to ground deontic constraints on how we may act, and virtue theory appears unable to account for such constraints. I claim, however, that eudaimonist virtue theory (...) can account for wrongness in just this way. I draw on recent work by Stephen Darwall on the “second-person standpoint,” in which we see others as independent sources of claims on us —as sources of “deontic constraints.” We have reason to occupy that standpoint as a matter of virtue, and thus virtuous agents should and will have reasons to respect deontic constraints. I argue for this claim as an element of a plausible eudaimonist virtue theory, and rebut objections that the view misunderstands the nature of or reasons for respecting such constraints. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss virtue ethics in relation to the rejection of the use of lethal violence. I argue that, given how I apply virtue ethics, a person of good character will have a very strong intrinsic desire to avoid the killing of another human being, so that only in rare circumstances where the alternative to violence is immensely evil would the use of violence to prevent the evil be the morally appropriate choice for the person to (...) make. I first give a brief summary of a neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. Then I explain why I think that a virtuous agent would be strongly averse to killing human beings. I go on to show that this does not mean that such an agent would never use violence on others, only that she would be very reluctant to do so. The circumstances in which she would do so are rare, but cannot be ruled out. For instance, virtuous agents may in very limited cases kill in self-defense despite a strong aversion to killing. The circumstances in which killings take place are found most of all in war, so I close by discussing where the virtue ethics approach to war is positioned in relation to just war theory and pacifism. (shrink)

In “A Virtue Ethics Critique of Ethical Dimensions of Behavioral Economics,” Professor Daryl Koehn criticizes the field of behavioral economics. She argues that behavioral economists ignore many important factors that affect how people make decisions, that their results are derived from experiments where subjects make choices in overly restrictive, artificial, and thin contexts that do not capture the richness of reality, and that the approach brings up psychological motivations that affect behavior in a piecemeal, ad hoc way that does (...) not capture the overall tapestry of the factors that influence the choices that we make. In this comment, I offer responses to many of these criticisms, and note where I think we have common ground. (shrink)

Recently, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have developed the capabilities approach to provide a model for understanding the effectiveness of programs to help the developing nations. The approach holds that human beings are fundamentally free and have a sense of human dignity. Therefore, institutions need to help people enhance this dignity by providing them with the opportunity to develop their capabilities freely. I argue that this approach may help support business ethics based on virtue. Since teleology has become problematic, (...) virtue ethics has had difficulty giving itself an ultimate justification. By combining virtue ethics with the capabilities approach, it becomes possible to ground virtue ethics on the basis of the existence of human dignity. This frees virtue ethics of the need for a strict teleology, replacing it with the notion that people must work to develop the capabilities of others although those capabilities are not pointed toward a definite goal. I further suggest that by grounding virtue ethics in capabilities, the actions of a virtuous manager become clearer. Rather than simply charging a manager with serving the public, the manager is charged with serving the stakeholders in a way that develops their capabilities. For example, a manager should not just give their employees what is just but must give them the environment and the encouragement to grow and to find fulfillment in their job. (shrink)

Business ethicists have increasingly used Aristotelian “virtue ethics” to analyze the actions of business people and to explore the question of what the standard of ethical behavior is. These analyses have raised many important issues and opened up new avenuesfor research. But the time has come to examine in some detail possible limitations or weaknesses in virtue ethics. This paper arguesthat Aristotelian virtue ethics is subject to many objections because the psychology implicit within the ethic is (...) not well-suited for analyzing some problematic forms of behavior. Part One offers a brief overview of the firm and of the good life from a virtue ethics perspective. Part Two develops a number of criticisms of this perspective. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, here presents a full exposition and defense of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions.

This collection focuses on virtue theory and the ethics of social science research. A moral philosophy that has been relatively neglected in the domain of research ethics, virtue ethics has much to offer those who wish to go beyond the difficulties generated by the biomedical model of research ethics and positively engage with the ethics of social scientific research. As the chapters contained in this volume show, the perspective provided by virtue ethics also exhibits a certain affinity (...) with the emerging discourse regarding research integrity. Contributors develop various facets of virtue ethics in order to illuminate a range of issues in the practice and governance of social science, including integrity, the ethics of ethical review, ethics education, and the notion of phrónēsis (wisdom). (shrink)

This volume presents the fruits of an extended dialogue among American and Chinese philosophers concerning the relations between virtue ethics and the Confucian tradition. Based on recent advances in English-language scholarship on and translation of Confucian philosophy, the book demonstrates that cross-tradition stimulus, challenge, and learning are now eminently possible. Anyone interested in the role of virtue in contemporary moral philosophy, in Chinese thought, or in the future possibilities for cross-tradition philosophizing will find much to engage with in (...) the twenty essays collected here. (shrink)

Virtue ethics faces two challenges based in ‘dual-process’ models of cognition. The classic situationist worry is that we just do not have reliable motivations at all. One promising response invokes an alternative model of cognition which can accommodate evidence cited in support of dual-process models without positing distinct systems for automatic and deliberative processing. The approach appeals to the potential of automatization to habituate virtuous motivations. This response is threatened by implicit bias which raises the worry that we cannot (...) avoid habituating reliably vicious motivations. I argue that the alternative model of cognition also offers the virtue ethicist a promising response to this second challenge. In particular, the virtue ethicist can respond to the implicitly biased by counselling the habituation of egalitarian virtue, rather than merely the control of anti-egalitarian vice. Research shows both the importance of automatized individual egalitarian commitments and the potential of habituation to automatize deliberatively endorsed egalitarian goals. However, individuals’ ability to sustain and implement their commitments depends crucially on hospitable environments. Communities which themselves embody egalitarian values and which encourage and support their members’ egalitarian commitments are therefore essential. As Aristotle said, individual virtue requires a virtuous community. (shrink)

Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003, pp. xii+312, £37 (cloth), £15.99 (paper). Virtue ethicists seem confronted with the following problem. Traits of...

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to elucidate Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy in terms of an ethics of virtue. This paper consists of four sections. In the first section I outline three major objections Schopenhauer raises for Kant’s moral philosophy. In section two I extract from these criticisms a framework for Schopenhauer’s own position, identifying how his moral psychology underpins a unified and hierarchical conception of virtue and vice. I then ascertain some strengths of this view. In section (...) three I focus in upon the issue of fixed character and moral education as at least one major point of divergence between Schopenhauer’s virtue ethics and typical trends within the tradition. In the fourth and final section, I consider and respond to this ethical framework’s possible susceptibility to the charge of egoism, and adjudicate among competing solutions in the secondary literature. I conclude that refined forms of Schopenhauer’s ethical views offer rich and plausible insights into both virtue and vice which have received less attention than they deserve. Hence, Schopenhauer warrants more serious concern in contemporary discussions of virtue ethics alongside the likes of Aristotle, Hume and Nietzsche. (shrink)

This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by offering a cross-cultural perspective. Since work shapes the kind of person that we are and plays an important role in our well-being, some theorists have adopted a virtue theory approach to meaningful work using an Aristotelian-MacIntyrean framework. For lack of a better term, I will call this a western virtue theory. This paper presents a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist perspective on the topic. While a virtue-ethics interpretation (...) of Buddhism is now widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. Buddhism is an important cultural component not only of countries that are predominantly Buddhist, but of other societies that have come in contact with it. To develop a Buddhist framework, I draw heavily from the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism on the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theory perspectives. In my analysis, I argue that consideration of Buddhist perspective will enable us to construct a cross-cultural, inclusive, and pluralistic conceptual model for the deliberation of meaningful work that complements the Western virtue theory. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore the prospects for a virtue ethic approach to business. First, I delineate two fundamental criteria that I believe must be met for any such approach to be viable: viz., the virtues must be exercised for the sake of the good of one’s life as a unitary whole (contra role-morality approaches) and for the common good of the communities of which one is a part as well as the individual good of their members (contra (...) egoist approaches). Second, I argue that these two criteria can be met only if we are able to reconceive and transform the nature of work within contemporary business organizations. In particular, what is needed, I argue, is a retrieval of something like the older ideal of work as a “vocation”, or “calling”, whereby work can be viewed as a specific aspect of a more general calling to pursue, through the practice of the virtues, “the good life” both for ourselves and for others. Lastly, I consider some important challenges to this “vocational virtue ethic” approach to work within contemporary business organizations and offer a few suggestions for how they might be met. (shrink)

The first on the topic of environmental virtue ethics, this book seeks to provide the definitive anthology that will both establish the importance of environmental virtue in environmental discourse and advance the current research on environmental virtue in interesting and original ways. The selections in this collection, consisting of ten original and four reprinted essays by leading scholars in the field, discuss the role that virtue and character have traditionally played in environmental discourse, and reflect upon (...) the role that it should play in the future. (shrink)

Professionals, it is said, have no use for simple lists of virtues and vices. The complexities and constraints of professional roles create peculiar moral demands on the people who occupy them, and traits that are vices in ordinary life are praised as virtues in the context of professional roles. Should this disturb us, or is it naive to presume that things should be otherwise? Taking medical and legal practice as key examples, Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking develop a rigorous articulation (...) and defence of virtue ethics, contrasting it with other types of character-based ethical theories and showing that it offers a promising new approach to the ethics of professional roles. They provide insights into the central notions of professional detachment, professional integrity, and moral character in professional life, and demonstrate how a virtue-based approach can help us better understand what ethical professional-client relationships would be like. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Rise of Virtue Ethics Essential Features of Virtue Ethics Virtue Ethics Approaches to Bioethics Criticisms of Virtue Ethics Conclusion References Further reading.

Controlled human infection studies (CHIs) involve the intentional infection of human subjects for a scientific aim. Though some past challenge trials have involved serious ethical abuses, in the last few decades, CHIs have had a strong track record of safety. Despite increased attention to the ethics of CHIs during the COVID‐19 pandemic, CHIs remain controversial, and there has been no in‐depth treatment of CHIs through the lens of virtue ethics. In this article, we argue that virtue theory can (...) be helpful for addressing CHIs that present a constellation of controversial, unresolved, and/or under‐regulated ethical issues. We begin with some brief background on virtue ethics. We then substantiate our claim that some CHIs raise a constellation of ethical issues that are unresolved in the ethics literature and/or lack adequate regulatory guidance by demonstrating that CHIs can present indeterminate social value, risks to third parties, limitations on the right to withdraw from research, and questions about the upper limit of allowable risk. We argue that the presence of a virtuous investigator, with virtues such as prudence, compassion, and integrity, is especially important when these unresolved research ethics issues arise, which is the case for certain types of controlled human infection studies. We use the historical example of Walter Reed and the Yellow Fever Commission to illustrate this claim, and we also highlight some contemporary examples. We end by sketching some practical implications of our view, such as ensuring that investigators with experience running CHIs are involved in novel CHI models. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive virtue ethics that breaks from the tradition of eudaimonistic virtue ethics. In developing a pluralistic view, it shows how different ’modes of moral response’ such as love, respect, appreciation, and creativity are all central to the virtuous response and thereby to ethics. It offers virtue ethical accounts of the good life, objectivity, rightness, demandingness, and moral epistemology.

Este artículo compara y contrasta la ética de la virtud con la del cuidado, a fin de determinar su mutua relación. Se afirma que existe una tradición en la ética de la virtud que enfatiza que la virtud es conocimiento, e igualmente se concentra en el altruismo. No existe oposición entre esta forma de virtud y la ética del cuidado. Además, hay objeciones de principio a generalizar la necesidad de relaciones asimétricas de una ética del cuidado con el caso de (...) la justicia entendida como justicia recíproca. (shrink)

In this paper I examine and reply to a deflationary challenge brought against virtue ethics. The challenge comes from critics who are impressed by recent psychological evidence suggesting that much of what we take to be virtuous conduct is in fact elicited by narrowly specific social settings, as opposed to being the manifestation of robust individual character. In answer to the challenge, I suggest a conception of virtue that openly acknowledges the likelihood of its deep, ongoing dependence upon (...) particular social relationships and settings. I argue that holding this conception will indeed cause problems for some important strands of thought in virtue ethics, most notably in the tradition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But an approach to virtue ethics modeled on David Hume's treatment of virtue and character in A Treatise of Human Nature promises to escape these problems. (shrink)

Behavioral economics is the latest trendy form of economics. Increasingly theorists are advocating using behavioral economics to do normative ethics or claiming that the behavioralists’ findings render normative claims otiose. I argue in this paper that we should be extremely wary when it comes to accepting any such normative pronouncements. I argue that behavioral economics: (a) minimizes and/or misunderstands the role that character and architectonic life goals play in accounting for the why of ethical behavior, (b) fundamentally misconceives human practical (...) rationality, (c) often unduly narrows the range of human action and choice, (d) misleadingly assumes that options are merely given to us rather than generated by us in accordance with our character, (e) is parasitic upon normative ethics, (f) results in an unhelpful ad hoc approach to ethical thinking, which is unlikely to prove all that useful and may even dangerously mislead ordinary agents or those who operate corporate compliance programs and who seek to improve corporate cultures, and (g) ignores the key role played in ethical behavior by meso‐ and macro‐factors. (shrink)

Within the nursing ethics literature, there has for some time now been a focus on the role and importance of character for nursing. An overarching rationale for this is the need to examine the sort of person one must be if one is to nurse well or be a good nurse. How one should be to live well or live a/the good life and to nurse well or be a good nurse seems to necessitate a focus on an agent's character (...) as well as actions because character is (for the most part) expressed in action (e.g. seeLaird). This paper will give an overview of the reasons for the role and importance of character in nursing practice and explain its relation to nursing's frequent use of virtue ethics in order to recommend caution. While the paper agrees that the role of character is important in nursing caution is needed in both how much moral and thus normative, emphasis is being placed on the psychology of character and on the drift to virtue ethics. The psychological which may be explanatory needs to be linked with the normative, and a justification for the normative is needed. A justification as virtue ethics is contested, and nursing practice does not need to take on this explanatory and justificatory burden.A tentative proposal raised but not discussed in depth in this paper is that when an ultimate explanation or explanatory ground is needed, nursing practice leads quite naturally to a form of consequentialism as well as a realist metaethic. On this account, there are two levels of moral thinking, and nursing practice entails the virtues at one level and leads quite naturally to moral thinking at another more critical level of the criterion of what makes something right and good independently of character. (shrink)

Is it accurate to speak of ‘Hindu virtue ethics’? Or would that amount to forcing the tradition into a conceptual framework it does not fit? The answers to these questions will depend upon (1) what one means by “virtue ethics”, (2) how one restricts the scope of the term “Hindu ethics”, and (3) whether one is construing the question as about the “external” or “internal” history of Hindu ethics. We consider three accounts of what it means to be (...) “an ethics of virtue” and use them to identify senses in which it is reasonable to speak of Hindu virtue ethics and senses in which it is not. We close with a look at one Indian philosophical school whose ethical commitments appear to fit within a virtue ethical frame, namely, the Yoga school. We argue that Yoga ethics offers the resources for developing a Hindu example of agent-based virtue ethics. The paper will be of value both to those with an interest in Hindu ethics as well as to those from other traditions who wish to understand the underlying structure of virtue ethical theories, in general, or of agent-based forms of virtue ethics, in particular. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In response to Anton Froeyman's paper, “Virtues of Historiography,“ this article argues that philosophers of history interested in why historians cherish such virtues as carefulness, impartiality, and intellectual courage would do wise not to classify these virtues unequivocally as either epistemic or moral virtues. Likewise, in trying to grasp the roles that virtues play in the historian's professional practice, philosophers of history would be best advised to avoid adopting either an epistemological or an ethical perspective. Assuming that the historian's virtuous (...) behavior has epistemic and moral dimensions (as well as aesthetic, political, and other dimensions), this article advocates a non-reductionist account of historical scholarship, which acknowledges that the virtues cherished by historians usually play a variety of roles, depending on the goals they are supposed to serve. Given that not the least important of these goals are epistemic ones, the articles concludes that virtue ethical approaches, to the extent that they are focused on the acquisition of moral instead of epistemic goods, insufficiently recognize the role of virtue in the pursuit of such epistemic aims as knowledge and understanding. (shrink)

We argue that a turn toward virtue ethics as a way of understanding medical professionalism represents both a valuable corrective and a missed opportunity. We look at three ways in which a closer appeal to virtue ethics could help address current problems or issues in professionalism education—first, balancing professionalism training with demands for professional virtues as a prerequisite; second, preventing demands for the demonstrable achievement of competencies from working against ideal professionalism education as lifelong learning; and third, avoiding (...) temptations to dismiss moral distress as a mere “hidden curriculum” problem. As a further demonstration of how best to approach a lifelong practice of medical virtue, we will examine altruism as a mean between the extremes of self-sacrifice and selfishness. (shrink)

The revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics since the 1980s does not signify that it goes back to its original form; rather, it is generally manifested in three different variations: The first is a variation of what is known as communitarianism, the second is universalism, and the third is phronesis. On the social level of morality, the serious attempt of modern virtue ethics towards improving the moral spirit of society is laudable. However, its method and reasoning deviates greatly from (...) the demands of modern society’s integration of its operating rules and regulations, and concept of values; hence all of its attempts can hardly escape the fate of becoming just a fantasy. Yet, on the level of dealing with ethic conflicts and moral paradox, modern virtue ethics—via interpreting the theory of phronesis by Aristotle—proposes the valuable thought of a balanced morality that principlism should concern itself with and nourish itself from. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has been dogged by the objection that it lacks the ability to provide adequate action-guidance, that it is agent-centered rather act-centered. Virtue ethics has also been faulted for devolving into moral cultural relativism. Rosalind Hursthouse has presented an action-based, naturalistic theory of virtue ethics intended to defuse these charges. Despite its merits, I argue that Hurthouse’s theory fails to successfully solve the problems associated with action guidance and relativism precisely because her attempt to provide a (...) non-cultural basis for virtue ethics undermines the possibility of using virtue ethics to derive useful action-guidance. The action-guiding power of virtue is derived from culture; seeking to avoid the cultural grounding of virtue merely brings one back to the problem of how virtue ethics can provide action-guidance. (shrink)

Are there good grounds for thinking that the moral values of action are to be derived from those of character? This virtue ethical claim is sometimes thought of as a kind of normative ethical theory; sometimes as form of opposition to any such theory. However, the best case to be made for it supports neither of these claims. Rather, it leads us to a distinctive view in moral epistemology: the view that my warrant for a particular moral judgement derives (...) from my warrant for believing that I am a good moral judge. This view seems to confront a regress-problem. For the belief that I am a good moral judge is itself a particular moral judgement. So it seems that, on this view, I need to derive my warrant for believing that I am a good moral judge from my warrant for believing that I am a good judge of moral judges; and so on. I show how this worry can be met, and trace the implications of the resulting view for warranted moral judgement. (shrink)

Atticus Finch, the lawyer-hero of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, played by Gregory Peck in the classic 1962 film version, has been adopted as an exemplar by advocates of a virtue ethics approach to legal ethics. When Atticus condones a departure from the rules of law in order to spare Boo Radley a trial, these theorists argue, he displays practical wisdom, or phronesis, and shows that the good lawyer gives priority to judgement and character over rules and principles. (...) Yet Atticus can be understood in a quite different way as a tragic figure who, when faced with the possibility of a tragedy in Boo's case, abandons the commitment to law which earlier was a central part of his character. From this perspective, Atticus' lesson for legal ethics is not about the priority of judgement and character, but instead about the value of the rules and principles he abandons. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has emerged as an alternative to deontological and utilitarian theory in recent moral philosophy. The basic notion of virtue ethics is to reassert the importance of virtuous character in ethical judgement in contrast to the emphasis on principles and consequences. Since questions of virtue have been largely neglected in modern moral theory, there has been a return to Aristotles account of virtue as character. This in turn has been questioned as the basis of (...) class='Hi'>virtue ethics and there has been a search for alternative accounts of moral agency. One aspect of this critical reflection on virtue ethics is an engagement with social psychology as a source of criticism of the Aristotelian conception of character and as a more plausible alternative foundation for a theory of moral character with contemporary relevance. This paper aims to introduce this area of moral theory to a psychological audience and reflect on the interpretation of social psychological theory and evidence in criticisms of virtuous character, focusing on the use of Milgrams (1974) experiments on obedience to authority as an argument for situationism. A number of questions emerge concerning the interpretation and use of social psychological theory and evidence in debates within moral philosophy. (shrink)

This book argues that pre-modern societies were characterized by a common quest for human flourishing or excellence, i.e. virtue. The history of virtue is a particularly fruitful approach when studying pre-modern periods. Systems of moral philosophy and more day-to-day moral ideas and practices in which virtue was central were incredibly important in pre-modern societies within and among diverse scholarly, literary, religious and social communities. Virtue was a cornerstone of pre-modern societies, permeating society in many different ways, (...) and on many different levels, and it was conveyed in erudite and pedagogical texts, ritual, performance and images. The construction of virtues such as wisdom, courage, and justice helped shape identities and communities, but also served to legitimize and reinforce differences pertaining to gender, social hierarchies, and nations. On a more fundamental level, studying the history of virtue helps us understand the guiding principles of historical action. Thus, we believe that the history of virtue is central to understanding these societies, and that the history of virtue, including criticisms of virtue and virtue ethics, tells us important things about how men and women thought and acted in ages past. (shrink)

This essay develops a new conceptual framework of science and engineering ethics education based on virtue ethics and positive psychology. Virtue ethicists and positive psychologists have argued that current rule-based moral philosophy, psychology, and education cannot effectively promote students’ moral motivation for actual moral behavior and may even lead to negative outcomes, such as moral schizophrenia. They have suggested that their own theoretical framework of virtue ethics and positive psychology can contribute to the effective promotion of motivation (...) for self-improvement by connecting the notion of morality and eudaimonic happiness. Thus this essay attempts to apply virtue ethics and positive psychology to science and engineering ethics education and to develop a new conceptual framework for more effective education. In addition to the conceptual-level work, this essay suggests two possible educational methods: moral modeling and involvement in actual moral activity in science and engineering ethics classes, based on the conceptual framework. (shrink)

Governments and companies are increasingly promoting and organizing Responsible Innovation. It is, however, unclear how the seemingly incompatible demands for responsibility, which is associated with care and caution, can be harmonized with demands for innovation, which is associated with risk-taking and speed. We turn to the tradition of virtue ethics and argue that it can be a strong accomplice to Responsible Innovation by focussing on the agential side of innovation. Virtue ethics offers an adequate response to the epistemic (...) and moral complexity in innovation and encourages moral behaviour. We enumerate a number of virtues that people involved in Responsible Innovation would need to cultivate both related to responsibility, such as justice, anticipation, civility and inclusion, and virtues related to innovation, such as courage, dedication, curiosity and creativity. We put forward practical wisdom as a key virtue to regulate relevant virtues and to deal with the tension between responsibility and innovation. Practical wisdom helps an agent to find an appropriate mean in exercising and expressing the other virtues—where the mean is relative to the specific context of action and the role and abilities of the agent. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is standardly taught and discussed as a distinctive approach to the major questions of ethics, a third major position alongside Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. I argue that this taxonomy is a confusion. Both Utilitarianism and Kantianism contain treatments of virtue, so virtue ethics cannot possibly be a separate approach contrasted with those approaches. There are, to be sure, quite a few contemporary philosophical writers about virtue who are neither Utilitarians nor Kantians; many of these (...) find inspiration in ancient Greek theories of virtue. But even here there is little unity. Although certain concerns do unite this disparate group (a concern for the role of motives and passions in good choice, a concern for character, and a concern for the whole course of an agent''s life), there are equally profound disagreements, especially concerning the role that reason should play in ethics. One group of modern virtue-theorists, I argue, are primarily anti-Utilitarians, concerned with the plurality of value and the susceptibility of passions to social cultivation. These theorists want to enlarge the place of reason in ethics. They hold that reason can deliberate about ends as well as means, and that reason can modify the passions themselves. Another group of virtue theorists are primarily anti-Kantians. They believe that reason plays too dominant a role in most philosophical accounts of ethics, and that a larger place should be given to sentiments and passions -- which they typically construe in a less reason-based way than does the first group. The paper investigates these differences, concluding that it is not helpful to speak of virtue ethics, and that we would be better off characterizing the substantive views of each thinker -- and then figuring out what we ourselves want to say. (shrink)

In this essay, I first extend the insights of virtue ethics into environmental ethics and examine the possible dangers of this approach. Second, I analyze some qualities of character that an environmentally virtuous person must possess. Third, I evaluate “humility” as an environmental virtue, specifically, the position of Thomas E. Hill, Jr. I conclude that Hill’s conception of “proper” humility can be more adequatelyexplicated by associating it with another virtue, environmental “openness.”.

This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western theoretical and normative approaches of (...) virtue ethics in the field of consumer research. The subsequent systematic literature review then synthesizes empirical works in this field. Since only a few papers adopt a cross-cultural consumer research perspective, one of the main aims of this review is to encourage scholars to pursue both theoretical and empirical cross-cultural consumer research on virtue ethics. To this end, the paper closes by suggesting some fruitful directions for future research to stimulate this relatively under-researched area. (shrink)

My question in this paper concerns what eudaimonist virtue ethics (EVE) might have to say about what makes right actions right. This is obviously an important question if we want to know what (if anything) distinguishes EVE from various forms of consequentialism and deontology in ethical theorizing. The answer most commonly given is that according to EVE, an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances. However, understood as a (...) claim about what makes particular actions right, this is not especially plausible. What makes a virtuous person’s actions right must reasonably be a matter of the feature, or features, which she, via her practical wisdom, appreciates as ethically relevant in the circumstances, and not the fact that someone such as herself would perform those actions. I argue that EVE instead should be understood as a more radical alternative in ethical philosophy, an alternative that relies on the background assumption that no general account or criterion for what makes right actions right is available to us: right action is simply too complex to be captured in a ‘finite and manageable set of…moral principles’ (McKeever and Ridge, Principled ethics, Oxford University Press, 2006 , p. 139). This does not rule out the possibility that there might be some generalizations about how we should act which hold true without exception. Perhaps there are some things which we must never do, as well as some features of the world which always carry normative weight (even though their exact weight may vary from one context to another). Still, these things are arguably few and far between, and what we must do to ensure that we reliably recognize what is right in particular situations is to acquire practical wisdom. Nothing short of that could do the job. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is frequently billed as a remedy to the problems of deontological and consequentialist ethics that Bernard Williams identified in his critique of “the morality system.” But how far can virtue ethics be relied upon to avoid these problems? What does Williams’s critique of the morality system mean for virtue ethics? To answer this question, we offer a more principled characterisation of the defining features of the morality system in terms of its organising ambition—to shelter life (...) against luck. This reveals the system to be multiply realisable: the same function can be served by substantively different but functionally equivalent ideas. After identifying four requirements that ethical thought must meet to function as a morality system, we show that they can also be met by certain constellations of virtue-ethical ideas. We thereby demonstrate the possibility of virtue-ethical morality systems raising problems analogous to those besetting their deontological and consequentialist counterparts. This not only widens the scope of Williams’s critique and brings out the cautionary aspect of his legacy for virtue ethics. It also offers contemporary virtue ethicists a more principled understanding of the functional features that mark out morality systems and lie at the root of their problems, thereby helping them to avoid or overcome these problems. (shrink)