Table of Contents
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics is a family of normative ethical theories that centers moral evaluation on the character of the agent rather than primarily on the rightness of actions or the goodness of outcomes. On this approach, the central question of ethics is not “what should I do?” but “what kind of person should I be?” The scope of virtue ethics encompasses accounts of what virtues are, how they are acquired, how they relate to human flourishing, and how they bear on practical decision-making. Some scholars treat virtue ethics as a unified tradition; others argue that the term groups together substantially different theories that share only a broad family resemblance.virtue-ethics-unity-of-virtue-ethics-debate
Current State of Knowledge and Debate
Virtue ethics occupies one of three standard positions in contemporary normative theory, alongside consequentialism and deontology. Its modern revival is conventionally dated to Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 paper “Modern Moral Philosophy,” which argued that obligation-based moral frameworks presuppose a conception of moral law that modern secular philosophy cannot sustain, and redirected attention toward Aristotelian categories of character and flourishing.1) Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse subsequently developed distinct but related accounts that drew heavily on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
The Aristotelian strand - sometimes called neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics - holds that virtues are stable dispositions of character acquired through habituation, that they constitute the mean between extremes of excess and deficiency, and that their exercise is constitutive of eudaimonia (flourishing or happiness). Whether eudaimonia should be understood as an objective state, a subjective experience, or a life-relational condition is itself debated.virtue-ethics-eudaimonia-interpretation-debate
Beyond neo-Aristotelianism, the tradition includes agent-based virtue ethics, which locates moral value entirely in the motivational states of the agent; Stoic virtue ethics, which identifies virtue as both necessary and sufficient for flourishing; Confucian virtue ethics, which grounds character development in relational and ritual practice; and care ethics, which emphasizes responsiveness to particular relationships over universal character traits. Whether care ethics is a variety of virtue ethics or a distinct framework is contested.virtue-ethics-care-ethics-classification-debate
Ongoing debates concern: whether there is a single master virtue (practical wisdom, or phronesis); whether virtues are universal across cultures or partly constituted by social practice; how virtue ethics handles moral dilemmas; whether it provides sufficient action guidance; and its relationship to moral psychology and empirical character research.
Viewpoints
Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics holds that the virtues are grounded in human nature and the function proper to human beings, and that practical wisdom integrates and regulates the other virtues. virtue-ethics-neo-aristotelian-viewpoint
Stoic virtue ethics maintains that virtue alone is sufficient for flourishing and that preferred indifferents - health, wealth, social standing - have value but are not genuine goods. virtue-ethics-stoic-viewpoint
Agent-based virtue ethics (associated with Michael Slote) locates the moral valence of actions entirely in the admirable or deficient motivations of the agent, without grounding virtues in a prior account of human nature or flourishing. virtue-ethics-agent-based-viewpoint
Confucian virtue ethics situates moral cultivation within social relationships and ritual propriety (li), arguing that virtue is irreducibly interpersonal and that role-based obligations are constitutive of good character. virtue-ethics-confucian-viewpoint
Sentimentalist virtue ethics draws on Hutcheson and Hume to argue that virtues are traits that elicit approbation from an idealized impartial spectator, grounding moral evaluation in sentiment rather than reason or function. virtue-ethics-sentimentalist-viewpoint
Skeptical and situationist positions dispute whether stable character traits of the kind virtue ethics posits are empirically supported, drawing on social psychology research to argue that behavior is largely situation-dependent rather than trait-dependent. virtue-ethics-situationist-skeptical-viewpoint
Controversies
The situationist challenge: Beginning in the 1990s, Gilbert Harman and John Doris argued that empirical social psychology - particularly studies such as Milgram's obedience experiments and Darley and Batson's “Good Samaritan” study - undermines the existence of broad, stable character traits, posing a direct empirical challenge to virtue ethics as ordinarily construed. virtue-ethics-situationist-challenge-controversy
The action-guidance objection: Critics, including some consequentialists and deontologists, have maintained that virtue ethics fails to provide determinate guidance in cases of moral conflict, leaving agents without a decision procedure; defenders dispute both the objection's force and whether a decision procedure is a necessary feature of an adequate moral theory. virtue-ethics-action-guidance-controversy
Related Pages
Footnotes
1. G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33, no. 124 (1958): 1-19. 2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). 3. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). 4. Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 5. Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 6. Michael Slote, Morals from Motives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 7. John M. Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 8. Gilbert Harman, “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999): 315-331. 9. Bryan W. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).