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

This is not to say that only virtue ethicists attend to virtues, anymore than it is to say that only consequentialists attend toconsequences or only deontologists to rules. Each of theabove-mentioned approaches can make room for virtues, consequences,and rules. Indeed, any plausible normative ethical theorywill have something to say about all three. What distinguishes virtueethics from consequentialism or deontology is the centrality of virtuewithin the theory (Watson 1990; Kawall 2009). Whereasconsequentialists will define virtues as traits that yield goodconsequences and deontologists will define them as traits possessed bythose who reliably fulfil their duties, virtue ethicists will resistthe attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that istaken to be more fundamental. Rather, virtues and vices will befoundational for virtue ethical theories and other normative notionswill be grounded in them.

We begin by discussing two concepts that are central to all forms ofvirtue ethics, namely, virtue and practical wisdom. Then we note someof the features that distinguish different virtue ethical theoriesfrom one another before turning to objections that have been raisedagainst virtue ethics and responses offered on its behalf. We concludewith a look at some of the directions in which future research mightdevelop.

• 1. Preliminaries
  • 1.1 Virtue
  • 1.2 Practical Wisdom
• 2. Forms of Virtue Ethics
  • 2.1 Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics
  • 2.2 Agent-Based and Exemplarist Virtue Ethics
  • 2.3 Target-Centered Virtue Ethics
  • 2.4 Platonistic Virtue Ethics
• 3. Objections to virtue ethics
• 4. Future Directions
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Preliminaries

In the West, virtue ethics’ founding fathers are Plato andAristotle, and in the East it can be traced back to Mencius andConfucius. It persisted as the dominant approach in Western moralphilosophy until at least the Enlightenment, suffered a momentaryeclipse during the nineteenth century, but re-emerged inAnglo-American philosophy in the late 1950s. It was heralded byAnscombe’s famous article “Modern Moral Philosophy”(Anscombe 1958) which crystallized an increasing dissatisfaction withthe forms of deontology and utilitarianism then prevailing. Neither ofthem, at that time, paid attention to a number of topics that hadalways figured in the virtue ethics tradition—virtues and vices,motives and moral character, moral education, moral wisdom ordiscernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept ofhappiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life and thefundamentally important questions of what sorts of persons we shouldbe and how we should live.

Its re-emergence had an invigorating effect on the other twoapproaches, many of whose proponents then began to address thesetopics in the terms of their favoured theory. (One consequence of thishas been that it is now necessary to distinguish “virtueethics” (the third approach) from “virtue theory”, aterm which includes accounts of virtue within the other approaches.)Interest in Kant’s virtue theory has redirectedphilosophers’ attention to Kant’s long neglectedDoctrine of Virtue, and utilitarians have developedconsequentialist virtue theories (Driver 2001; Hurka 2001). It hasalso generated virtue ethical readings of philosophers other thanPlato and Aristotle, such as Martineau, Hume and Nietzsche, andthereby different forms of virtue ethics have developed (Slote 2001;Swanton 2003, 2011a).

Although modern virtue ethics does not have to take a“neo-Aristotelian” or eudaimonist form (see section 2),almost any modern version still shows that its roots are in ancientGreek philosophy by the employment of three concepts derived from it.These arearête (excellence or virtue),phronesis (practical or moral wisdom) andeudaimonia(usually translated as happiness or flourishing). (See Annas 2011 fora short, clear, and authoritative account of all three.) We discussthe first two in the remainder of this section.Eudaimonia isdiscussed in connection with eudaimonist versions of virtue ethics inthe next.

1.1 Virtue

A virtue is an excellent trait of character. It is a disposition, wellentrenched in its possessor—something that, as we say, goes allthe way down, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker—tonotice, expect, value, feel, desire, choose, act, and react in certaincharacteristic ways. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort ofperson with a certain complex mindset. A significant aspect of thismindset is the wholehearted acceptance of a distinctive range ofconsiderations as reasons for action. An honest person cannot beidentified simply as one who, for example, practices honest dealingand does not cheat. If such actions are done merely because the agentthinks that honesty is the best policy, or because they fear beingcaught out, rather than through recognising “To do otherwisewould be dishonest” as the relevant reason, they are not theactions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identifiedsimply as one who, for example, tells the truth because itisthe truth, for one can have the virtue of honesty without beingtactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognises “That wouldbe a lie” as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reason fornot making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due,but not overriding, weight to “That would be the truth” asa reason for making them.

An honest person’s reasons and choices with respect to honestand dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty, truth, anddeception—but of course such views manifest themselves withrespect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuinghonesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honestpeople, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest.She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused bycertain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeedthrough deception rather than thinking they have been clever, isunsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, isshocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what isdishonest and so on. Given that a virtue is such a multi-trackdisposition, it would obviously be reckless to attribute one to anagent on the basis of a single observed action or even a series ofsimilar actions, especially if you don’t know the agent’sreasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002).

Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree. To possess such adisposition fully is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare,and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal(Athanassoulis 2000). Most people who can truly be described as fairlyvirtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can truly bedescribed as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have theirblind spots—little areas where they do not act for the reasonsone would expect. So someone honest or kind in most situations, andnotably so in demanding ones, may nevertheless be trivially tainted bysnobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and lessthan kind to strangers with the wrong accent.

Further, it is not easy to get one’s emotions in harmony withone’s rational recognition of certain reasons for action. I maybe honest enough to recognise that I must own up to a mistake becauseit would be dishonest not to do so without my acceptance being sowholehearted that I can own up easily, with no inner conflict.Following (and adapting) Aristotle, virtue ethicists draw adistinction between full or perfect virtue and“continence”, or strength of will. The fully virtuous dowhat they should without a struggle against contrary desires; thecontinent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise.

Describing the continent as “falling short” of perfectvirtue appears to go against the intuition that there is somethingparticularly admirable about people who manage to act well when it isespecially hard for them to do so, but the plausibility of thisdepends on exactly what “makes it hard” (Foot 1978:11–14). If it is the circumstances in which the agentacts—say that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a fullpurse or that she is in deep grief when someone visits seekinghelp—then indeed it is particularly admirable of her to restorethe purse or give the help when it is hard for her to do so. But ifwhat makes it hard is an imperfection in her character—thetemptation to keep what is not hers, or a callous indifference to thesuffering of others—then it is not.

1.2 Practical Wisdom

Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue isthrough lackingphronesis—moral or practicalwisdom.

The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes itspossessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent oradmirable person who acts and feels as she should. These are commonlyaccepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation to particular(putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may say ofsomeone that he is generous or honest “to a fault”. It iscommonly asserted that someone’s compassion might lead them toact wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example, intheir desire to prevent someone else’s hurt feelings. It is alsosaid that courage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wickedthings than he would have been able to do if he were timid. So itwould appear that generosity, honesty, compassion and courage despitebeing virtues, are sometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest,compassionate, and courageous might not be a morally goodperson—or, if it is still held to be a truism that they are,then morally good people may be led by what makes them morally good toact wrongly! How have we arrived at such an odd conclusion?

The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, whichpermits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms,combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that thevirtuous agent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rationalchoice.If one thinks of generosity or honesty as thedisposition to be moved to action by generous or honest impulses suchas the desire to give or to speak the truth,if one thinks ofcompassion as the disposition to be moved by the sufferings of othersand to act on that emotion,if one thinks of courage as merefearlessness or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeedseem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to theirpossessor’s acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon asit is stated, that these are dispositions that can be possessed bychildren, and although children thus endowed (bar the“courageous” disposition) would undoubtedly be very nicechildren, we would not say that they were morally virtuous oradmirable people. The ordinary usage, or the reliance on motivation byinclination, gives us what Aristotle calls “naturalvirtue”—a proto version of full virtue awaiting perfectionbyphronesis or practical wisdom.

Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks aboutphronesisthat are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related)modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuousmorally mature adult has that nice children, including niceadolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child havegood intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things upbecause he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what heintends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also,on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack ofknowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledgeis not culpable. So, for example, children and adolescents often harmthose they intend to benefit either because they do not know how toset about securing the benefit or because their understanding of whatis beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Suchignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable. Adults, onthe other hand, are culpable if they mess things up by beingthoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and byassuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking amore objective viewpoint. They are also culpable if theirunderstanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It ispart of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefitseffectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistakeof concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs toknow it in the belief that they are benefiting him.

Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act wellor “do the right thing”, we may say that practical wisdomis the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlikethe nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation. Thedetailed specification of what is involved in such knowledge orunderstanding has not yet appeared in the literature, but some aspectsof it are becoming well known. Even many deontologists now stress thepoint that their action-guiding rules cannot, reliably, be appliedwithout practical wisdom, because correct application requiressituational appreciation—the capacity to recognise, in anyparticular situation, those features of it that are morally salient.This brings out two aspects of practical wisdom.

One is that it characteristically comes only with experience of life.Amongst the morally relevant features of a situation may be the likelyconsequences, for the people involved, of a certain action, and thisis something that adolescents are notoriously clueless about preciselybecause they are inexperienced. It is part of practical wisdom to bewise about human beings and human life. (It should go without sayingthat the virtuous are mindful of the consequences of possible actions.How could they fail to be reckless, thoughtless and short-sighted ifthey were not?)

The second is the practically wise agent’s capacity to recognisesome features of a situation as more important than others, or indeed,in that situation, as the only relevant ones. The wise do not seethings in the same way as the nice adolescents who, with theirunder-developed virtues, still tend to see the personallydisadvantageous nature of a certain action as competing in importancewith its honesty or benevolence or justice.

These aspects coalesce in the description of the practically wise asthose who understand what is truly worthwhile, truly important, andthereby truly advantageous in life, who know, in short, how to livewell.

2. Forms of Virtue Ethics

While all forms of virtue ethics agree that virtue is central andpractical wisdom required, they differ in how they combine these andother concepts to illuminate what we should do in particular contextsand how we should live our lives as a whole. In what follows we sketchfour distinct forms taken by contemporary virtue ethics, namely, a)eudaimonist virtue ethics, b) agent-based and exemplarist virtueethics, c) target-centered virtue ethics, and d) Platonistic virtueethics.

2.1 Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics

The distinctive feature of eudaimonist versions of virtue ethics isthat they define virtues in terms of their relationship toeudaimonia. A virtue is a trait that contributes to or is aconstituent ofeudaimonia and we ought to develop virtues,the eudaimonist claims, precisely because they contribute toeudaimonia.

The concept ofeudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moralphilosophy, is standardly translated as “happiness” or“flourishing” and occasionally as“well-being.” Each translation has its disadvantages. Thetrouble with “flourishing” is that animals and even plantscan flourish buteudaimonia is possible only for rationalbeings. The trouble with “happiness” is that in ordinaryconversation it connotes something subjectively determined. It is forme, not for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy. If I think I amhappy then I am—it is not something I can be wrong about(barring advanced cases of self-deception). Contrast my being healthyor flourishing. Here we have no difficulty in recognizing that I mightthink I was healthy, either physically or psychologically, or thinkthat I was flourishing but be wrong. In this respect,“flourishing” is a better translation than“happiness”. It is all too easy to be mistaken aboutwhether one’s life iseudaimon (the adjective fromeudaimonia) not simply because it is easy to deceive oneself,but because it is easy to have a mistaken conception ofeudaimonia, or of what it is to live well as a human being,believing it to consist largely in physical pleasure or luxury forexample.

Eudaimonia is, avowedly, a moralized or value-laden conceptof happiness, something like “true” or “real”happiness or “the sort of happiness worth seeking orhaving.” It is thereby the sort of concept about which there canbe substantial disagreement between people with different views abouthuman life that cannot be resolved by appeal to some external standardon which, despite their different views, the parties to thedisagreement concur (Hursthouse 1999: 188–189).

Most versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordancewith virtue is necessary foreudaimonia. This supreme good isnot conceived of as an independently defined state (made up of, say, alist of non-moral goods that does not include virtuous activity) whichexercise of the virtues might be thought to promote. It is, withinvirtue ethics, already conceived of as something of which virtuousactivity is at least partially constitutive (Kraut 1989). Therebyvirtue ethicists claim that a human life devoted to physical pleasureor the acquisition of wealth is noteudaimon, but a wastedlife.

But although all standard versions of virtue ethics insist on thatconceptual link betweenvirtue andeudaimonia,further links are matters of dispute and generate different versions.For Aristotle, virtue is necessary but not sufficient—what isalso needed are external goods which are a matter of luck. For Platoand the Stoics, virtue is both necessary and sufficient foreudaimonia (Annas 1993).

According to eudaimonist virtue ethics, the good life is theeudaimon life, and the virtues are what enable a human beingto beeudaimon because the virtues just are those charactertraits that benefit their possessor in that way, barring bad luck. Sothere is a link betweeneudaimonia and what confers virtuestatus on a character trait. (For a discussion of the differencesbetween eudaimonists see Baril 2014. For recent defenses ofeudaimonism see Annas 2011; LeBar 2013b; Badhwar 2014; and Bloomfield2014.)

2.2 Agent-Based and Exemplarist Virtue Ethics

Rather than deriving the normativity of virtue from the value ofeudaimonia, agent-based virtue ethicists argue that otherforms of normativity—including the value ofeudaimonia—are traced back to and ultimately explainedin terms of the motivational and dispositional qualities ofagents.

It is unclear how many other forms of normativity must be explained interms of the qualities of agents in order for a theory to count asagent-based. The two best-known agent-based theorists, Michael Sloteand Linda Zagzebski, trace a wide range of normative qualities back tothe qualities of agents. For example, Slote defines rightness andwrongness in terms of agents’ motivations: “[A]gent-basedvirtue ethics … understands rightness in terms of goodmotivations and wrongness in terms of the having of bad (orinsufficiently good) motives” (2001: 14). Similarly, he explainsthe goodness of an action, the value ofeudaimonia, thejustice of a law or social institution, and the normativity ofpractical rationality in terms of the motivational and dispositionalqualities of agents (2001: 99–100, 154, 2000). Zagzebskilikewise defines right and wrong actions by reference to the emotions,motives, and dispositions of virtuous and vicious agents. For example,“A wrong act = an act that thephronimoscharacteristically would not do, and he would feel guilty if he did =an act such that it is not the case that he might do it = an act thatexpresses a vice = an act that is against a requirement of virtue (thevirtuous self)” (Zagzebski 2004: 160). Her definitions ofduties, good and bad ends, and good and bad states of affairs aresimilarly grounded in the motivational and dispositional states ofexemplary agents (1998, 2004, 2010).

However, there could also be less ambitious agent-based approaches tovirtue ethics (see Slote 1997). At the very least, an agent-basedapproach must be committed to explaining what one should do byreference to the motivational and dispositional states of agents. Butthis is not yet a sufficient condition for counting as an agent-basedapproach, since the same condition will be met byeveryvirtue ethical account. For a theory to count as an agent-based formof virtue ethics it must also be the case that the normativeproperties of motivations and dispositions cannot be explained interms of the normative properties of something else (such aseudaimonia or states of affairs) which is taken to be morefundamental.

Beyond this basic commitment, there is room for agent-based theoriesto be developed in a number of different directions. The mostimportant distinguishing factor has to do with how motivations anddispositions are taken to matter for the purposes of explaining othernormative qualities. For Slote what matters arethis particularagent’s actual motives and dispositions. The goodness ofaction A, for example, is derived from the agent’s motives whenshe performs A. If those motives are good then the action is good, ifnot then not. On Zagzebski’s account, by contrast, a good orbad, right or wrong action is defined not by this agent’s actualmotives but rather by whether this is the sort of action a virtuouslymotivated agent would perform (Zagzebski 2004: 160). Appeal tothevirtuous agent’s hypothetical motives and dispositionsenables Zagzebski to distinguish between performing the right actionand doing so for the right reasons (a distinction that, as Brady(2004) observes, Slote has trouble drawing).

Another point on which agent-based forms of virtue ethics might differconcerns how one identifies virtuous motivations and dispositions.According to Zagzebski’s exemplarist account, “We do nothave criteria for goodness in advance of identifying the exemplars ofgoodness” (Zagzebski 2004: 41). As we observe the people aroundus, we find ourselves wanting to be like some of them (in at leastsome respects) and not wanting to be like others. The former provideus with positive exemplars and the latter with negative ones. Ourunderstanding of better and worse motivations and virtuous and viciousdispositions is grounded in these primitive responses to exemplars(2004: 53). This is not to say that every time we act we stop and askourselves what one of our exemplars would do in this situations. Ourmoral concepts become more refined over time as we encounter a widervariety of exemplars and begin to draw systematic connections betweenthem, noting what they have in common, how they differ, and which ofthese commonalities and differences matter, morally speaking.Recognizable motivational profiles emerge and come to be labeled asvirtues or vices, and these, in turn, shape our understanding of theobligations we have and the ends we should pursue. However, eventhough the systematising of moral thought can travel a long way fromour starting point, according to the exemplarist it never reaches astage where reference to exemplars is replaced by the recognition ofsomething more fundamental. At the end of the day, according to theexemplarist, our moral system still rests on our basic propensity totake a liking (or disliking) to exemplars. Nevertheless, one could bean agent-based theorist without advancing the exemplarist’saccount of the origins or reference conditions for judgments of goodand bad, virtuous and vicious.

2.3 Target-Centered Virtue Ethics

The touchstone for eudaimonist virtue ethicists is a flourishing humanlife. For agent-based virtue ethicists it is an exemplaryagent’s motivations. The target-centered view developed byChristine Swanton (2003), by contrast, begins with our existingconceptions of the virtues. We already have a passable idea of whichtraits are virtues and what they involve. Of course, this untutoredunderstanding can be clarified and improved, and it is one of thetasks of the virtue ethicist to help us do precisely that. But ratherthan stripping things back to something as basic as the motivations wewant to imitate or building it up to something as elaborate as anentire flourishing life, the target-centered view begins where mostethics students find themselves, namely, with the idea thatgenerosity, courage, self-discipline, compassion, and the like get atick of approval. It then examines what these traits involve.

A complete account of virtue will map out 1) itsfield, 2)itsmode of responsiveness, 3) itsbasis of moralacknowledgment, and 4) itstarget. Different virtues areconcerned with differentfields. Courage, for example, isconcerned with what might harm us, whereas generosity is concernedwith the sharing of time, talent, and property. Thebasis ofacknowledgment of a virtue is the feature within the virtue’sfield to which it responds. To continue with our previous examples,generosity is attentive to the benefits that others might enjoythrough one’s agency, and courage responds to threats to value,status, or the bonds that exist between oneself and particular others,and the fear such threats might generate. A virtue’smode has to do with how it responds to the bases ofacknowledgment within its field. Generositypromotes a good,namely, another’s benefit, whereas couragedefends avalue, bond, or status. Finally, a virtue’starget isthat at which it is aimed. Courage aims to control fear and handledanger, while generosity aims to share time, talents, or possessionswith others in ways that benefit them.

Avirtue, on a target-centered account, “is adisposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its field orfields in an excellent or good enough way” (Swanton 2003: 19). Avirtuous act is an act that hits the target of a virtue,which is to say that it succeeds in responding to items in its fieldin the specified way (233). Providing a target-centered definition ofaright action requires us to move beyond the analysis of asingle virtue and the actions that follow from it. This is because asingle action context may involve a number of different, overlappingfields. Determination might lead me to persist in trying to complete adifficult task even if doing so requires a singleness of purpose. Butlove for my family might make a different use of my time andattention. In order to define right action a target-centered view mustexplain how we handle different virtues’ conflicting claims onour resources. There are at least three different ways to address thischallenge. Aperfectionist target-centered account wouldstipulate, “An act is right if and only if it is overallvirtuous, and that entails that it is the, or a, best action possiblein the circumstances” (239–240). A morepermissive target-centered account would not identify‘right’ with ‘best’, but would allow an actionto count as right provided “it is good enough even if not the(or a) best action” (240). Aminimalist target-centeredaccount would not even require an action to be good in order to beright. On such a view, “An act is right if and only if it is notoverall vicious” (240). (For further discussion oftarget-centered virtue ethics see Van Zyl 2014; and Smith 2016).

2.4 Platonistic Virtue Ethics

The fourth form a virtue ethic might adopt takes its inspiration fromPlato. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues devotes a great deal oftime to asking his fellow Athenians to explain the nature of virtueslike justice, courage, piety, and wisdom. So it is clear that Platocounts as a virtue theorist. But it is a matter of some debate whetherhe should be read as a virtue ethicist (White 2015). What is not opento debate is whether Plato has had an important influence on thecontemporary revival of interest in virtue ethics. A number of thosewho have contributed to the revival have done so as Plato scholars(e.g., Prior 1991; Kamtekar 1998; Annas 1999; and Reshotko 2006).However, often they have ended up championing a eudaimonist version ofvirtue ethics (see Prior 2001 and Annas 2011), rather than a versionthat would warrant a separate classification. Nevertheless, there aretwo variants that call for distinct treatment.

Timothy Chappell takes the defining feature of Platonistic virtueethics to be that “Good agency in the truest and fullest sensepresupposes the contemplation of the Form of the Good” (2014).Chappell follows Iris Murdoch in arguing that “In the moral lifethe enemy is the fat relentless ego” (Murdoch 1971: 51).Constantly attending to our needs, our desires, our passions, and ourthoughts skews our perspective on what the world is actually like andblinds us to the goods around us. Contemplating the goodness ofsomething we encounter—which is to say, carefully attending toit “for its own sake, in order to understand it” (Chappell2014: 300)—breaks this natural tendency by drawing our attentionaway from ourselves. Contemplating such goodness with regularity makesroom for new habits of thought that focus more readily and morehonestly on things other than the self. It alters the quality of ourconsciousness. And “anything which alters consciousness in thedirection of unselfishness, objectivity, and realism is to beconnected with virtue” (Murdoch 1971: 82). The virtues getdefined, then, in terms of qualities that help one “pierce theveil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it reallyis” (91). And good agency is defined by the possession andexercise of such virtues. Within Chappell’s and Murdoch’sframework, then, not all normative properties get defined in terms ofvirtue. Goodness, in particular, is not so defined. But the kind ofgoodness which is possible for creatures like us is defined by virtue,and any answer to the question of what one should do or how one shouldlive will appeal to the virtues.

Another Platonistic variant of virtue ethics is exemplified by RobertMerrihew Adams. Unlike Murdoch and Chappell, his starting point is nota set of claims about our consciousness of goodness. Rather, he beginswith an account of the metaphysics of goodness. Like Murdoch andothers influenced by Platonism, Adams’s account of goodness isbuilt around a conception of a supremely perfect good. And likeAugustine, Adams takes that perfect good to be God. God is both theexemplification and the source of all goodness. Other things are good,he suggests, to the extent that they resemble God (Adams 1999).

The resemblance requirement identifies a necessary condition for beinggood, but it does not yet give us a sufficient condition. This isbecause there are ways in which finite creatures might resemble Godthat would not be suitable to the type of creature they are. Forexample, if God were all-knowing, then the belief, “I amall-knowing,” would be a suitable belief for God to have. InGod, such a belief—because true—would be part ofGod’s perfection. However, as neither you nor I are all-knowing,the belief, “I am all-knowing,” in one of us would not begood. To rule out such cases we need to introduce another factor. Thatfactor is the fitting response to goodness, which Adams suggests islove. Adams uses love to weed out problematic resemblances:“being excellent in the way that a finite thing can be consistsin resembling God in a way that could serve God as a reason for lovingthe thing” (Adams 1999: 36).

Virtues come into the account as one of the ways in which some things(namely, persons) could resemble God. “[M]ost of the excellencesthat are most important to us, and of whose value we are mostconfident, are excellences of persons or of qualities or actions orworks or lives or stories of persons” (1999: 42). This is one ofthe reasons Adams offers for conceiving of the ideal of perfection asa personal God, rather than an impersonal form of the Good. Many ofthe excellences of persons of which we are most confident are virtuessuch as love, wisdom, justice, patience, and generosity. And withinmany theistic traditions, including Adams’s own Christiantradition, such virtues are commonly attributed to divine agents.

A Platonistic account like the one Adams puts forward inFiniteand Infinite Goods clearly does not derive all other normativeproperties from the virtues (for a discussion of the relationshipbetween this view and the one he puts forward inA Theory ofVirtue (2006) see Pettigrove 2014). Goodness provides thenormative foundation. Virtues are not built on that foundation;rather, as one of the varieties of goodness of whose value we are mostconfident, virtues form part of the foundation. Obligations, bycontrast, come into the account at a different level. Moralobligations, Adams argues, are determined by the expectations anddemands that “arise in a relationship or system of relationshipsthat is good or valuable” (1999: 244). Other things being equal,the more virtuous the parties to the relationship, the more bindingthe obligation. Thus, within Adams’s account, the good (whichincludes virtue) is prior to the right. However, once goodrelationships have given rise to obligations, those obligations takeon a life of their own. Their bindingness is not traced directly toconsiderations of goodness. Rather, they are determined by theexpectations of the parties and the demands of the relationship.

3. Objections to virtue ethics

A number of objections have been raised against virtue ethics, some ofwhich bear more directly on one form of virtue ethics than on others.In this section we consider eight objections, namely, the a)application, b) adequacy, c) relativism, d) conflict, e)self-effacement, f) justification, g) egoism, and h) situationistproblems.

a) In the early days of virtue ethics’ revival, the approach wasassociated with an “anti-codifiability” thesis aboutethics, directed against the prevailing pretensions of normativetheory. At the time, utilitarians and deontologists commonly (thoughnot universally) held that the task of ethical theory was to come upwith a code consisting of universal rules or principles (possibly onlyone, as in the case of act-utilitarianism) which would have twosignificant features: i) the rule(s) would amount to a decisionprocedure for determining what the right action was in any particularcase; ii) the rule(s) would be stated in such terms that anynon-virtuous person could understand and apply it (them)correctly.

Virtue ethicists maintained, contrary to these two claims, that it wasquite unrealistic to imagine that there could be such a code (see, inparticular, McDowell 1979). The results of attempts to produce andemploy such a code, in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, whenmedical and then bioethics boomed and bloomed, tended to support thevirtue ethicists’ claim. More and more utilitarians anddeontologists found themselves agreed on their general rules but onopposite sides of the controversial moral issues in contemporarydiscussion. It came to be recognised that moral sensitivity,perception, imagination, and judgement informed byexperience—phronesis in short—is needed to applyrules or principles correctly. Hence many (though by no means all)utilitarians and deontologists have explicitly abandoned (ii) and muchless emphasis is placed on (i).

Nevertheless, the complaint that virtue ethics does not producecodifiable principles is still a commonly voiced criticism of theapproach, expressed as the objection that it is, in principle, unableto provide action-guidance.

Initially, the objection was based on a misunderstanding. Blinkered byslogans that described virtue ethics as “concerned with Beingrather than Doing,” as addressing “What sort ofperson should I be?” but not “What should I do?” asbeing “agent-centered rather than act-centered,” itscritics maintained that it was unable to provideaction-guidance. Hence, rather than being a normative rival toutilitarian and deontological ethics, it could claim to be no morethan a valuable supplement to them. The rather odd idea was that allvirtue ethics could offer was, “Identify a moral exemplar and dowhat he would do,” as though the university student tryingto decide whether to study music (her preference) or engineering (herparents’ preference) was supposed to ask herself, “Whatwould Socrates study if he were in my circumstances?”

But the objection failed to take note of Anscombe’s hint that agreat deal of specific action guidance could be found in rulesemploying the virtue and vice terms (“v-rules”) such as“Do what is honest/charitable; do not do what isdishonest/uncharitable” (Hursthouse 1999). (It is a noteworthyfeature of our virtue and vice vocabulary that, although our list ofgenerally recognised virtue terms is comparatively short, our list ofvice terms is remarkably, and usefully, long, far exceeding anythingthat anyone who thinks in terms of standard deontological rules hasever come up with. Much invaluable action guidance comes from avoidingcourses of action that would be irresponsible, feckless, lazy,inconsiderate, uncooperative, harsh, intolerant, selfish, mercenary,indiscreet, tactless, arrogant, unsympathetic, cold, incautious,unenterprising, pusillanimous, feeble, presumptuous, rude,hypocritical, self-indulgent, materialistic, grasping, short-sighted,vindictive, calculating, ungrateful, grudging, brutal, profligate,disloyal, and on and on.)

(b) A closely related objection has to do with whether virtue ethicscan provide an adequate account of right action. This worry can taketwo forms. (i) One might think a virtue ethical account of rightaction is extensionally inadequate. It is possible to perform a rightaction without being virtuous and a virtuous person can occasionallyperform the wrong action without that calling her virtue intoquestion. If virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for rightaction, one might wonder whether the relationship betweenrightness/wrongness and virtue/vice is close enough for the former tobe identified in terms of the latter. (ii) Alternatively, even if onethought it possible to produce a virtue ethical account that pickedout all (and only) right actions, one might still think that at leastin some cases virtue is not what explains rightness (Adams2006:6–8).

Some virtue ethicists respond to the adequacy objection by rejectingthe assumption that virtue ethics ought to be in the business ofproviding an account of right action in the first place. Following inthe footsteps of Anscombe (1958) and MacIntyre (1985), Talbot Brewer(2009) argues that to work with the categories of rightness andwrongness is already to get off on the wrong foot. Contemporaryconceptions of right and wrong action, built as they are around anotion of moral duty that presupposes a framework of divine (or moral)law or around a conception of obligation that is defined in contrastto self-interest, carry baggage the virtue ethicist is better offwithout. Virtue ethics can address the questions of how one shouldlive, what kind of person one should become, and even what one shoulddo without that committing it to providing an account of ‘rightaction’. One might choose, instead, to work with aretaicconcepts (defined in terms of virtues and vices) and axiologicalconcepts (defined in terms of good and bad, better and worse) andleave out deontic notions (like right/wrong action, duty, andobligation) altogether.

Other virtue ethicists wish to retain the concept of right action butnote that in the current philosophical discussion a number of distinctqualities march under that banner. In some contexts, ‘rightaction’ identifies the best action an agent might perform in thecircumstances. In others, it designates an action that is commendable(even if not the best possible). In still others, it picks out actionsthat are not blameworthy (even if not commendable). A virtue ethicistmight choose to define one of these—for example, the bestaction—in terms of virtues and vices, but appeal to othernormative concepts—such as legitimate expectations—whendefining other conceptions of right action.

As we observed in section 2, a virtue ethical account need not attemptto reduceall other normative concepts to virtues and vices.What is required is simply (i) that virtue isnot reduced tosome other normative concept that is taken to be more fundamental and(ii) that some other normative conceptsare explained interms of virtue and vice. This takes the sting out of the adequacyobjection, which is most compelling against versions of virtue ethicsthat attempt to define all of the senses of ‘right action’in terms of virtues. Appealing to virtuesand vices makes itmuch easier to achieve extensional adequacy. Making room for normativeconcepts that are not taken to be reducible to virtue and viceconcepts makes it even easier to generate a theory that is bothextensionally and explanatorily adequate. Whether one needs otherconcepts and, if so, how many, is still a matter of debate amongvirtue ethicists, as is the question of whether virtue ethics evenought to be offering an account of right action. Either way virtueethicists have resources available to them to address the adequacyobjection.

Insofar as the different versions of virtue ethics all retain anemphasis on the virtues, they are open to the familiar problem of (c)the charge of cultural relativity. Is it not the case that differentcultures embody different virtues, (MacIntyre 1985) and hence that thev-rules will pick out actions as right or wrong only relative to aparticular culture? Different replies have been made to this charge.One—thetu quoque, or “partners in crime”response—exhibits a quite familiar pattern in virtueethicists’ defensive strategy (Solomon 1988). They admit that,for them, cultural relativismis a challenge, but point outthat it is just as much a problem for the other two approaches. The(putative) cultural variation in character traits regarded as virtuesis no greater—indeed markedly less—than the culturalvariation in rules of conduct, and different cultures have differentideas about what constitutes happiness or welfare. That culturalrelativity should be a problem common to all three approaches ishardly surprising. It is related, after all, to the“justification problem” (see below) the quite general metaethical problem of justifying one’s moralbeliefs to those who disagree, whether they be moral sceptics,pluralists or from another culture.

A bolder strategy involves claiming that virtue ethics has lessdifficulty with cultural relativity than the other two approaches.Much cultural disagreement arises, it may be claimed, from localunderstandings of the virtues, but the virtues themselves are notrelative to culture (Nussbaum 1993).

Another objection to which thetu quoque response ispartially appropriate is (d) “the conflict problem.” Whatdoes virtue ethics have to say about dilemmas—cases in which,apparently, the requirements of different virtues conflict becausethey point in opposed directions? Charity prompts me to kill theperson who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it. Honestypoints to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion toremaining silent or even lying. What shall I do? Of course, the samesorts of dilemmas are generated by conflicts between deontologicalrules. Deontology and virtue ethics share the conflict problem (andare happy to take it on board rather than follow some of theutilitarians in their consequentialist resolutions of such dilemmas)and in fact their strategies for responding to it are parallel. Bothaim to resolve a number of dilemmas by arguing that the conflict ismerely apparent; a discriminating understanding of the virtues orrules in question, possessed only by those with practical wisdom, willperceive that, in this particular case, the virtues do not makeopposing demands or that one rule outranks another, or has a certainexception clause built into it. Whether this is all there is to itdepends on whether there are any irresolvable dilemmas. If there are,proponents of either normative approach may point out reasonably thatit could only be a mistake to offer a resolution of what is,exhypothesi, irresolvable.

Another problem arguably shared by all three approaches is (e), thatof being self-effacing. An ethical theory is self-effacing if,roughly, whatever it claims justifies a particular action, or makes itright, had better not be the agent’s motive for doing it.Michael Stocker (1976) originally introduced it as a problem fordeontology and consequentialism. He pointed out that the agent who,rightly, visits a friend in hospital will rather lessen the impact ofhis visit on her if he tells her either that he is doing it because itis his duty or because he thought it would maximize the generalhappiness. But as Simon Keller observes, she won’t be any betterpleased if he tells her that he is visiting her because it is what avirtuous agent would do, so virtue ethics would appear to have theproblem too (Keller 2007). However, virtue ethics’ defendershave argued that not all forms of virtue ethics are subject to thisobjection (Pettigrove 2011) and those that are are not seriouslyundermined by the problem (Martinez 2011).

Another problem for virtue ethics, which is shared by bothutilitarianism and deontology, is (f)“the justification problem.” Abstractly conceived, this is the problem of how we justify or groundour ethical beliefs, an issue that is hotly debated at the level ofmetaethics. In its particular versions, for deontology there is thequestion of how to justify its claims that certain moral rules are thecorrect ones, and for utilitarianism of how to justify its claim thatall that really matters morally are consequences for happiness orwell-being. For virtue ethics, the problem concerns the question ofwhich character traits are the virtues.

In the metaethical debate, there is widespread disagreement about thepossibility of providing an external foundation forethics—“external” in the sense of being external toethical beliefs—and the same disagreement is found amongstdeontologists and utilitarians. Some believe that their normativeethics can be placed on a secure basis, resistant to any form ofscepticism, such as what anyone rationally desires, or would accept oragree on, regardless of their ethical outlook; others that itcannot.

Virtue ethicists have eschewed any attempt to ground virtue ethics inan external foundation while continuing to maintain that their claimscan be validated. Some follow a form of Rawls’s coherentistapproach (Slote 2001; Swanton 2003); neo-Aristotelians a form ofethical naturalism.

A misunderstanding ofeudaimonia as an unmoralized conceptleads some critics to suppose that the neo-Aristotelians areattempting to ground their claims in a scientific account of humannature and what counts, for a human being, as flourishing. Othersassume that, if this is not what they are doing, they cannot bevalidating their claims that, for example, justice, charity, courage,and generosity are virtues. Either they are illegitimately helpingthemselves to Aristotle’s discredited natural teleology(Williams 1985) or producing mere rationalizations of their ownpersonal or culturally inculcated values. But McDowell, Foot,MacIntyre and Hursthouse have all outlined versions of a third waybetween these two extremes.Eudaimonia in virtue ethics, isindeed a moralized concept, but it is not only that. Claims about whatconstitutes flourishing for human beings no more float free ofscientific facts about what human beings are like than ethologicalclaims about what constitutes flourishing for elephants. In bothcases, the truth of the claims dependsin part on what kindof animal they are and what capacities, desires and interests thehumans or elephants have.

The best available science today (including evolutionary theory andpsychology) supports rather than undermines the ancient Greekassumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves andunlike polar bears. No rationalizing explanation in terms of anythinglike a social contract is needed to explain why we choose to livetogether, subjugating our egoistic desires in order to secure theadvantages of co-operation. Like other social animals, our naturalimpulses are not solely directed towards our own pleasures andpreservation, but include altruistic and cooperative ones.

This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claimthat the virtues are at least partially constitutive of humanflourishing and also undercut the objection that virtue ethics is, insome sense, egoistic.

(g) The egoism objection has a number of sources. One is a simpleconfusion. Once it is understood that the fully virtuous agentcharacteristically does what she should without inner conflict, it istriumphantly asserted that “she is only doing what shewants to do and hence is being selfish.” So when thegenerous person gives gladly, as the generous are wont to do, it turnsout she is not generous and unselfish after all, or at least not asgenerous as the one who greedily wants to hang on to everything shehas but forces herself to give because she thinks she should! Arelated version ascribes bizarre reasons to the virtuous agent,unjustifiably assuming that she acts as she doesbecause shebelieves that acting thus on this occasion will help her to achieveeudaimonia. But “the virtuous agent” is just“the agent with the virtues” and it is part of ourordinary understanding of the virtue terms that each carries with itits own typical range of reasons for acting. The virtuous agent actsas she does because she believes that someone’s suffering willbe averted, or someone benefited, or the truth established, or a debtrepaid, or … thereby.

It is the exercise of the virtues during one’s life that is heldto be at least partially constitutive ofeudaimonia, and thisis consistent with recognising that bad luck may land the virtuousagent in circumstances that require her to give up her life. Given thesorts of considerations that courageous, honest, loyal, charitablepeople wholeheartedly recognise as reasons for action, they may findthemselves compelled to face danger for a worthwhile end, to speak outin someone’s defence, or refuse to reveal the names of theircomrades, even when they know that this will inevitably lead to theirexecution, to share their last crust and face starvation. On the viewthat the exercise of the virtues is necessary but not sufficient foreudaimonia, such cases are described as those in which thevirtuous agent sees that, as things have unfortunately turned out,eudaimonia is not possible for them (Foot 2001, 95). On theStoical view that it is both necessary and sufficient, aeudaimon life is a life that has been successfully lived(where “success” of course is not to be understood in amaterialistic way) and such people die knowing not only that they havemade a success of their lives but that they have also brought theirlives to a markedly successful completion. Either way, such heroicacts can hardly be regarded as egoistic.

A lingering suggestion of egoism may be found in the misconceiveddistinction between so-called “self-regarding” and“other-regarding” virtues. Those who have been insulatedfrom the ancient tradition tend to regard justice and benevolence asreal virtues, which benefit others but not their possessor, andprudence, fortitude and providence (the virtue whose opposite is“improvidence” or being a spendthrift) as not real virtuesat all because they benefit only their possessor. This is a mistake ontwo counts. Firstly, justice and benevolence do, in general, benefittheir possessors, since without themeudaimonia is notpossible. Secondly, given that we live together, as social animals,the “self-regarding” virtues do benefit others—thosewho lack them are a great drain on, and sometimes grief to, those whoare close to them (as parents with improvident or imprudent adultoffspring know only too well).

The most recent objection (h) to virtue ethics claims that work in“situationist” social psychology shows that there are nosuch things as character traits and thereby no such things as virtuesfor virtue ethics to be about (Doris 1998; Harman 1999). In reply,some virtue ethicists have argued that the social psychologists’studies are irrelevant to the multi-track disposition (see above) thata virtue is supposed to be (Sreenivasan 2002; Kamtekar 2004). Mindfulof just how multi-track it is, they agree that it would be reckless inthe extreme to ascribe a demanding virtue such as charity to people ofwhom they know no more than that they have exhibited conventionaldecency; this would indeed be “a fundamental attributionerror.” Others have worked to develop alternative, empiricallygrounded conceptions of character traits (Snow 2010; Miller 2013 and2014; however see Upton 2016 for objections to Miller). There havebeen other responses as well (summarized helpfully in Prinz 2009 andMiller 2014). Notable among these is a response by Adams (2006,echoing Merritt 2000) who steers a middle road between “nocharacter traits at all” and the exacting standard of theAristotelian conception of virtue which, because of its emphasis onphronesis, requires a high level of character integration. On hisconception, character traits may be “frail andfragmentary” but still virtues, and not uncommon. But giving upthe idea that practical wisdom is the heart of all the virtues, asAdams has to do, is a substantial sacrifice, as Russell (2009) andKamtekar (2010) argue.

Even though the “situationist challenge” has lefttraditional virtue ethicists unmoved, it has generated a healthyengagement with empirical psychological literature, which has alsobeen fuelled by the growing literature on Foot’sNaturalGoodness and, quite independently, an upsurge of interest incharacter education (see below).

4. Future Directions

Over the past thirty-five years most of those contributing to therevival of virtue ethics have worked within a neo-Aristotelian,eudaimonist framework. However, as noted in section 2, other forms ofvirtue ethics have begun to emerge. Theorists have begun to turn tophilosophers like Hutcheson, Hume, Nietzsche, Martineau, and Heideggerfor resources they might use to develop alternatives (see Russell2006; Swanton 2013 and 2015; Taylor 2015; and Harcourt 2015). Othershave turned their attention eastward, exploring Confucian, Buddhist,and Hindu traditions (Yu 2007; Slingerland 2011; Finnigan and Tanaka2011; McRae 2012; Angle and Slote 2013; Davis 2014; Flanagan 2015;Perrett and Pettigrove 2015; and Sim 2015). These explorations promiseto open up new avenues for the development of virtue ethics.

Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last thirty-fiveyears, it is still very much in the minority, particularly in the areaof applied ethics. Many editors of big textbook collections on“moral problems” or “applied ethics” now tryto include articles representative of each of the three normativeapproaches but are often unable to find a virtue ethics articleaddressing a particular issue. This is sometimes, no doubt, because“the” issue has been set up as adeontologicial/utilitarian debate, but it is often simply because novirtue ethicist has yet written on the topic. However, the last decadehas seen an increase in the amount of attention applied virtue ethicshas received (Walker and Ivanhoe 2007; Hartman 2013; Austin 2014; VanHooft 2014; and Annas 2015). This area can certainly be expected togrow in the future, and it looks as though applying virtue ethics inthe field of environmental ethics may prove particularly fruitful(Sandler 2007; Hursthouse 2007, 2011; Zwolinski and Schmidtz 2013;Cafaro 2015).

Whether virtue ethics can be expected to grow into “virtuepolitics”—i.e. to extend from moral philosophy intopolitical philosophy—is not so clear. Gisela Striker (2006) hasargued that Aristotle’s ethics cannot be understood adequatelywithout attending to its place in his politics. That suggests that atleast those virtue ethicists who take their inspiration from Aristotleshould have resources to offer for the development of virtue politics.But, while Plato and Aristotle can be great inspirations as far asvirtue ethics is concerned, neither, on the face of it, are attractivesources of insight where politics is concerned. However, recent worksuggests that Aristotelian ideas can, after all, generate asatisfyingly liberal political philosophy (Nussbaum 2006; LeBar2013a). Moreover, as noted above, virtue ethics does not have to beneo-Aristotelian. It may be that the virtue ethics of Hutcheson andHume can be naturally extended into a modern political philosophy(Hursthouse 1990–91; Slote 1993).

Following Plato and Aristotle, modern virtue ethics has alwaysemphasised the importance of moral education, not as the inculcationof rules but as the training of character. There is now a growingmovement towards virtues education, amongst both academics (Carr 1999;Athanassoulis 2014; Curren 2015) and teachers in the classroom. Oneexciting thing about research in this area is its engagement withother academic disciplines, including psychology, educational theory,and theology (see Cline 2015; and Snow 2015).

Finally, one of the more productive developments of virtue ethics hascome through the study of particular virtues and vices. There are nowa number of careful studies of the cardinal virtues and capital vices(Pieper 1966; Taylor 2006; Curzer 2012; Timpe and Boyd 2014). Othershave explored less widely discussed virtues or vices, such ascivility, decency, truthfulness, ambition, and meekness (Calhoun 2000;Kekes 2002; Williams 2002; and Pettigrove 2007 and 2012). One of thequestions these studies raise is “How many virtues arethere?” A second is, “How are these virtues related to oneanother?” Some virtue ethicists have been happy to work on theassumption that there is no principled reason for limiting the numberof virtues and plenty of reason for positing a plurality of them(Swanton 2003; Battaly 2015). Others have been concerned that such anopen-handed approach to the virtues will make it difficult for virtueethicists to come up with an adequate account of right action or dealwith the conflict problem discussed above. Dan Russell has proposedcardinality and a version of the unity thesis as a solution to what hecalls “the enumeration problem” (the problem of too manyvirtues). The apparent proliferation of virtues can be significantlyreduced if we group virtues together with some being cardinal andothers subordinate extensions of those cardinal virtues. Possibleconflicts between the remaining virtues can then be managed if theyare tied together in some way as part of a unified whole (Russell2009). This highlights two important avenues for future research, oneof which explores individual virtues and the other of which analyseshow they might be related to one another.

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Acknowledgments

Parts of the introductory material above repeat what was said in theIntroduction and first chapter ofOn Virtue Ethics(Hursthouse 1999).