Position

Virtue Ethics

An action is right when it is what a practically wise, virtuous person would characteristically do in pursuit of human flourishing.

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Classification

Position level
specific
Domains
Ethics

Overview

Virtue ethics changes the question. Rather than asking which rule an action falls under or which outcome it produces, it asks what a person of settled good character would do, and treats rightness as derivative from that: the right act is the one a practically wise person would characteristically perform, in these circumstances, in pursuit of a flourishing human life.

The move is meant to recover something the other two theories leave out — that morality concerns the whole shape of a life, and the perception and judgment it takes to live one well, not only the appraisal of discrete acts. The persistent objection is that it withholds guidance exactly where guidance is wanted: told to do what the virtuous person would do, someone facing a genuinely hard case still has to work out what that is.

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Held by traditions

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References