Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
John M. Doris
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Normative Implications

This chapter is one of the initial contributions to philosophy’s virtue ethics-situationism debate, referencing psychology’s person-situation debate to argue that traditional conceptions of character and virtue in philosophical moral psychology are empirically inadequate. The chapter also examines the normative implications of this argument, defending a revisionary position: ethical thought would be best served by reduced reliance on traditional notions of character. This conjunction of empirical and normative theses later became known as character skepticism.

Nietzsche and Contemporary Ethics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Normative Authority ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Principal Parts

Nietzsche is one of the most subversive ethical thinkers of the Western canon. This book offers a critical assessment of his ethical thought and its significance for contemporary moral philosophy. It develops a charitable but critical reading of his thought, pushing some claims and arguments as far as seems fruitful while rejecting others. But it also uses Nietzsche in dialogue with, so to contribute to, a range of long-standing issues within normative ethics, metaethics, value theory, practical reason, and moral psychology. The book is divided into three principal parts. Part I examines Nietzsche’s critique of morality, arguing that it raises well-motivated challenges to morality’s normative authority and value: his error theory about morality’s categoricity is in a better position than many contemporary versions; and his critique of moral values has bite even against undemanding moral theories, with significant implications not just for rarefied excellent types but also us. Part II turns to moral psychology, attributing to Nietzsche and defending a sentimentalist explanation of action and motivation. Part III considers his non-moral perfectionism, developing models of value and practical normativity that avoid difficulties facing many contemporary accounts and that may therefore be of wider interest. The discussion concludes by considering Nietzsche’s broader significance: as well as calling into question many of moral philosophy’s deepest assumptions, he challenges our usual views of what ethics itself is—and what it, and we, should be doing.

Emotion and Virtue

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gopal Sreenivasan
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Character Trait ◽  
Full Measure ◽  
Traditional Definition ◽  
Definition Of

What must a person be like to possess a virtue in full measure? What sort of psychological constitution does one need to be an exemplar of compassion, say, or of courage? Focusing on these two examples, this book ingeniously argues that certain emotion traits play an indispensable role in virtue. With exemplars of compassion, for instance, this role is played by a modified sympathy trait, which is central to enabling these exemplars to be reliably correct judges of the compassionate thing to do in various practical situations. Indeed, according to the book, the virtue of compassion is, in a sense, a modified sympathy trait, just as courage is a modified fear trait. While the book upholds the traditional definition of virtue as a species of character trait, it discards other traditional precepts. For example, the book rejects the unity of the virtues and raises new questions about when virtue should be taught. Unlike orthodox virtue ethics, moreover, this account does not aspire to rival consequentialism and deontology. Instead the book repudiates the ambitions of virtue imperialism, and makes significant contributions to moral psychology and the theory of virtue alike.

Virtues and Capabilities

2018 ◽  
pp. 586-599
Author(s):  
Steven Torrente ◽  
Harry D. Gould
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Ethical Systems

After a long dormancy in the modern era, virtue-based ethical thought has once again become a subject of serious consideration and debate in the field of philosophy. The normative orientation of most International Political Theory, however, still comes primarily from principles-based (deontological) or outcome-based (consequentialist) ethical systems. Virtue ethics differs from focus deontological and consequentialist ethics by emphasizing character, context, and way of life, rather than rule-governed action. This chapter reviews the emergence of contemporary virtue ethics as a challenge to overly abstract, language-based analysis of moral concepts, and its development into a broad and nuanced ethical theory. It then connects virtue ethics to the capabilities approach to human development, which is similarly focused.

scholarly journals Charakter (Character)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bell
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
Political Resource ◽  
Virtuous Character ◽  
European Thought

The lexeme Charakter denotes the set of innate or acquired dispositions that make an individual or a nation distinctive, determine its behaviour, and give it psychological and moral strength. Charakter plays a central role in Goethe’s moral psychology and his ethical thought in general, as well as in his thinking on culture. His psychological and ethical thought is notoriously hard to classify or to align with the main traditions of European thought. His concern with Charakter could be said to belong to the broad classical tradition of virtue ethics, in the sense that Goethe placed moral character at the heart of ethics. However, in contrast to the classical tradition of virtue ethics, which holds that both the rational and the non-rational parts of humans contribute to a virtuous character, and that virtues can be conceptualized clearly, Goethe resists the claims of reason on our moral character. His early writings on culture and the drama Egmont have a Rousseauian flavour: Charakter represents a natural force that is endangered by civilization. After the French Revolution and in opposition to the emergence of liberalism, Goethe came to see Charakter as a political resource that was superior to political rationality. In his most sustained engagements with philosophical ethics—his essays on Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1805) and Isaac Newton (1810)—Goethe argues, in deliberate opposition to Kant, that natural Charakter has at least as much ethical force as reason and that naturalistic descriptions of human behaviour are at least as valid as moral ones. Moreover, Charakter has the advantage of leading us by a more direct and reliable route to morally good outcomes. In this sense, it can be said without risk of exaggeration that Charakter displaces rationality in Goethe’s ethical thought.

The Philosophy of Moral Development

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Anna Abram
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

This article presents a view of moral development based on the interdisciplinary study of moral psychology and virtue ethics. It suggests that a successful account of moral development has to go beyond what the developmental psychology and virtue ethics advocate and find ways of incorporating ideas, such as “moral failure” and “unpredictability of life.” It proposes to recognize the concept of moral development as an essential concept for ethics, moral philosophy and philosophy of education, and as a useful tool for anyone who wants to engage constructively in dialogues of religions, cultures and personal interaction.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Simon Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Ethical Project

This opening chapter explains the book’s overarching aims, themes, structure, and approach. The book’s aim is to critically assess Nietzsche’s ethical thought and its significance for contemporary (broadly analytic) moral philosophy. It does this in two main ways: by developing a charitable but critical reconstruction of his ethics; and by using Nietzsche to contribute to a range of longstanding issues within normative ethics, metaethics, value theory, practical reason, and moral psychology. The chapter locates Nietzsche’s ethical project in his ‘revaluation of all values’, outlining a variety of interpretive and philosophical puzzles this raises. It then gives a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book’s topics and direction, and addresses some methodological matters bearing on its interpretive and philosophical ambitions.

Moral psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Slote
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Issues ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Moral Weakness ◽  
Moral Requirements ◽  
Wrong Action

Moral psychology as a discipline is centrally concerned with psychological issues that arise in connection with the moral evaluation of actions. It deals with the psychological presuppositions of valid morality, that is, with assumptions it seems necessary for us to make in order for there to be such a thing as objective or binding moral requirements: for example, if we lack free will or are all incapable of unselfishness, then it is not clear how morality can really apply to human beings. Moral psychology also deals with what one might call the psychological accompaniments of actual right, or wrong, action, for example, with questions about the nature and possibility of moral weakness or self-deception, and with questions about the kinds of motives that ought to motivate moral agents. Moreover, in the approach to ethics known as ‘virtue ethics’ questions about right and wrong action merge with questions about the motives, dispositions, and abilities of moral agents, and moral psychology plays a more central role than it does in other forms of ethical theory.

VIRTUE ETHICS AND THE PUBLIC CALLING OF REFORMATIONAL THOUGHT

2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Richard J. Mouw
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Time Magazine ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
John Howard Yoder ◽  
The Public ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The People ◽  
Duke University ◽  
John Howard

In 2001 the leading American newsweekly, Time magazine, ran a series featuring the people who (according to the magazine’s researchers) were considered to be the most influential in their fields of leadership. The religious thinker who was given the title “America’s Best Theologian” was Stanley Hauerwas, who teaches ethics at Duke University. There is an element of irony in the fact that one of the leading arbiters of cultural popularity would choose to honor Hauerwas in this manner. While Hauerwas is officially a Methodist, he identifies closely with the Anabaptist tradition of ethical thought, often citing the late Mennonite theological ethicist John Howard Yoder as the primary influence on the development of his ethical thought. The Anabaptists, as we all know, make much of the need to form communities of radical disciples of Jesus who stand over against the dominant cultural patterns, and Hauerwas, like his mentor Yoder, is not shy about calling for this over-against-ness.

Toward an Empirically Informed Approach to Medical Virtues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Medical Role ◽  
The Impact

Several philosophers have developed accounts of virtue ethics that are more empirically informed than previous versions of this approach; however, such accounts have had only a limited impact on virtue ethical approaches to medical ethics. This chapter demonstrates how empirical research can help in the development of a strong evidence-based moral psychology of medical virtue. It draws out some general desiderata for an adequate moral psychology of medical virtue, and shows how empirical research is crucial for devising well-grounded accounts of medical role virtues, such as medical beneficence and medical courage. It also explains how research into the impact of policy changes on medical practice and doctors’ medical virtues can help with deriving defensible policy applications from medical virtue ethics.

The Divine Relationship Ethics of Kierkegaard’s Love-Sleuth in Works of Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. P. Marcar
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Existential Anxiety ◽  
Works Of Love

Despite traditionally being characterised as a melancholy thinker with a propensity to dwell on existential anxiety, sin and despair, scholarly interest in the place of love in Søren Kierkegaard’s ethical thought is currently gaining significant traction. In particular, Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (1847) has increasingly come under the academic spotlight as a text with potentially rich and previously underappreciated insights for Christian ethics. This article aims to contribute to this ongoing illumination, by highlighting the moral psychology and theological anthropology of Kierkegaard’s Christian lover in discourses II–V of Works of Love’s second series. In doing this, I aim to put forward an overarching ethical framework which can be seen to structure these moral deliberations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document