A Particularist but Codifiable Virtue Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 262-281
Author(s):  
Christine Swanton
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Moral Particularism ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Jonathan Dancy ◽  
The Core ◽  
Ethical View

Moral particularism of the kind developed by Jonathan Dancy is treated as a topic in meta-ethics. Until it is applied to a suitable type of normative theory criticisms which have assailed it are difficult to rebut. This chapter aims to apply Dancy’s particularism to target centred virtue ethics, showing how many of these criticisms are off the mark. At the core of these criticisms is that of uncodifiability. Virtue ethics is held to be codifiable through the virtue rules which encode virtue-reasons for action, reasons which are argued to be particularist in Dancy’s sense. That is it is possible even for reasons expressed through the thick virtue concepts to switch valence. In the course of the argument a virtue ethical view of right action (the target-centred view) is further developed.

Virtue Ethics, Thick Concepts, and Paradoxes of Beneficence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Swanton
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
Thick Concepts ◽  
Practical Reality ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
Mode Of Being

Reasons of beneficence are at the core of ethics and also of many of its paradoxes. What is needed for their resolution is an appreciation of the distinctive nature of what has been called the logos of ethics; an openness to a practical reality of notably reasons. That openness constitutes the mode of being of that reality and thereby its ontology. I propose a virtue ethical understanding of the logos of ethics. Here the thick virtue and vice concepts are central. This conception of the ethical provides a stark contrast to the narrowness and thinness of the “moral” as traditionally conceived. After outlining the basic theoretical position—the chapter deploys the view to resolve paradoxes of beneficence. These are the paradox of supererogation, the “It Makes No Difference” Paradox (e.g., that of pooled beneficence), and that of the underdetermination by reasons for action (e.g., of what charity to support).

Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Carr
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Psychological Status ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Mixed Emotions ◽  
Emotional Conflict ◽  
Moral Ambivalence

AbstractAristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One recent attempt to sustain this distinction – considered in this paper – maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions – in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason – this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict.

Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Tiwald
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Confucian Ethics ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
The Relationship

In this chapter the author defends the view that the major variants of Confucian ethics qualify as virtue ethics in the respects that matter most, which concern the focus, investigative priority, and explanatory priority of virtue over right action. The chapter also provides short summaries of the central Confucian virtues and then explains how different Confucians have understood the relationship between these and what some regard as the chief or most comprehensive virtue, ren (humaneness or benevolence). Finally, it explicates what most Confucians take to be a requirement of all virtues, which the author calls “wholeheartedness,” and concludes by highlighting some neglected implications of the wholeheartedness requirement for ethics more generally. These include reasons for linking conceptions of virtue and human nature, for thinking that good character necessitates that individuals change how things seem to them, and for endorsing automatic as opposed to intensively deliberative judgments and decisions.

Negotiating Virtue

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Amyn B. Sajoo
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
End Of Life Decisions ◽  
Genital Mutilation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Female Genital

Principlist modes of reasoning in bioethics – with autonomy at the core – resonate strongly with a legalism that dominates Muslim ethics, including the understanding of the shari’a. From abortion and organ donation/transplant to end-of-life decisions, both secular and Muslim bioethics generally apply “cardinal” principles in ways felt to be relatively objective and certain, though they may produce different outcomes. This article builds on recent critiques, notably that of virtue ethics, in drawing attention to the cost in sensitivity to context and the individual. The Aristotelian basis of virtue ethics has a venerable place in Islamic traditions – as does maslaha, the public good, which has long played a critical role in tempering formalism in the shari’a. In conjunction with the agent- and context-centred reasoning of virtue ethics, maslaha can contribute vitally to negotiating competing bioethical claims. It is also more inclusive than principlist legalism, given the latter’s traditionalist and patriarchal moorings. The shift is urgent amid the growing interface of religious and secular approaches to problems raised by biomedical technologies, and to biosocial issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and honour killings.

The Real Direction of Dancy’s Moral Particularism

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-612
Author(s):  
Edmund Wall
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Particularism ◽  
Jonathan Dancy ◽  
The Real ◽  
Moral Valence ◽  
Moral Absolutism ◽  
Reason For Action

Jonathan Dancy, who defends a version of moral particularism, is committed to the view that any feature or reason for action might, in logical terms, have a positive moral valence in one context, a negative moral valence in a different context, and no moral valence at all in yet another context. In my paper, I attempt to demonstrate that, despite the denial by Dancy that proposed grounding properties with invariant moral valences may play a foundational role in morality, his own approach toward moral reasoning unknowingly assumes such foundational grounding properties. I argue that Dancy’s moral particularism is unknowingly directed toward moral absolutism, and, in making that argument, uncover reasons, admittedly inconclusive, to favor an absolutist ethic.

Breakdown of the Teleological View of Life?

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Vos
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ethical View

In response to Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Brad Gregory’s claim—that the Reformation’s concept of morality in terms of obedience to divine commandments has been a major factor in a catastrophic breakdown in modernity of the teleological view of life and the virtues—this essay aims both to correct this criticism and to reread Calvin from the perspective of virtue ethics. Calvin’s utterances about the nature of the law, virtue, the self before God, one’s calling in the world, natural law and reason appear to be much more in alliance with a teleological, virtue ethical view than MacIntyre suggests. This opens up the possibility of a fruitful interplay between a Reformed account of law and Christian virtue ethics.

scholarly journals Eudaimonism about Virtue and Qualified Agent Right Action: Some Prospects for Environmental Virtue Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Duncan Christian Martin
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Environmental Virtue ◽  
Concrete Action ◽  
Environmental Virtue Ethics ◽  
The Right ◽  
Action Guidance

<p>In this thesis, I aim to show that virtue oriented approaches to environmental ethics are in a position to provide satisfying answers to two central ethical questions: “What kind of person should I be?”, and “What should I do?” I argue that two such approaches – Rosalind Hursthouse’s environmental virtue ethics and Philip Cafaro’s account of environmental vice – provide insights about how we ought to be with regard to the environment, in terms of character and attitudes. I then defend Hursthouse’s account of right action against several objections. First, I respond to the worry that a shortage of environmental exemplars might count against Hursthouse, by showing that non-virtuous agents can conceive of what to do by seeking to avoid acting from environmental vices. Second, I respond the worry that her account of right action fails to generate the right result for non-virtuous agents in some cases, by showing that such cases can be accounted for by appeal to the distinction between action guidance and action assessment. Third, I consider the worry that her theory will fail to provide concrete action guidance. Theories which seek to provide concrete action guidance in all contexts face serious problems of their own, I respond. Further, I maintain that Hursthouse is not ruled out from providing the sort of action guidance her critics are interested in.</p>

scholarly journals THE REVIVAL OF VIRTUE ETHICS AS AN ETHICAL VIEW

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Chris O. Abakare
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
New Form ◽  
Kantian Deontology ◽  
Ethical View

<span lang="EN-US">Aristotle and Plato were the chief architects of virtue ethics, but their own formulation of virtue ethics was mostly subdued with the appearance of consequentialism as well as Kantian deontology. However, modem thinkers have attempted to revive virtue ethics in its new form and in this regard the name which is popularly known is G.E.M. Anscombe. In fact Anscombe clearly indicates in what sense virtue ethics can be revived and what was wrong with the traditional virtue ethics as expounded by Aristotle and Plato. Anscombe points out three important issues for which traditional virtue ethics perhaps lost its glory. First, moral philosophy in general cannot survive without an adequate philosophy of psychology and this thing was absent in the traditional virtue ethics. Secondly, without psychological possibility the concepts of moral obligation and moral duty, the moral sense of ought to be jeopardized. Thirdly and importantly, the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance. This task of this paper is to review the revival of virtue ethics</span>

Consequentialism, Virtue, and Character

2020 ◽  
pp. 462-473
Author(s):  
Julia Driver
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Right Action ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do So

This essay argues that consequentialist theories can both accommodate virtue evaluation, and, indeed, the most plausible versions must do so, and that consequentialist theories can also be structured as forms of virtue ethics. Different strategies available to the consequentialist are presented and criticized, including indirect strategies which argue that the right action is the action that the virtuous person would perform. The best way for the consequentialist to approach virtue is as another form of moral evaluation understood in consequentialist terms which is distinct from consequentialist act evaluation; that is, evaluating action is only one part of an overarching consequentialist account of moral evaluation, and the theory can also be applied to dispositions, motives, intentions, etc.

Integrity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Davis
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Leading Role

The possession (or lack) of integrity is something that all morally serious people care about and think important. In both personal relationships and public life, to describe someone as exhibiting a lack of integrity is to offer a damning diagnosis. It carries the implication that this individual is not to be relied upon, that in some fundamental way they are not someone who we can, or should, view as being wholly or unequivocally there. The foundations of self and character are not sound; the ordering of values is not coherent. Important as the notion of integrity is, it is nevertheless difficult to characterize with precision. Attempts to analyse it seldom do justice to its complexity, or adequately reflect the diverse concerns that generate and sustain either philosophers’ or non-philosophers’ interest in it. Contemporary interest in the notion of integrity has a number of different, often overlapping, sources. It has been accorded a leading role in the debate between consequentialists and non-consequentialists; revived interest in virtue-ethics has naturally focused attention on it; and its connection with unity or coherence of personality make it central for moral psychology. As well as occupying a central position in three major topics within academic moral philosophy, integrity has also come to wider prominence in at least two ways: as a virtue increasingly missed in public life; and as a transcultural virtue that reflects a world that has become increasingly morally pluralistic. The notion of integrity, though complex, elusive, and analytically intractable, is one that goes to the core of our moral thinking, both in theoretical and practical terms.

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