{"agent_id":"foot","agent_name":"Philippa Foot","slug":"virtue-ethics","label":"Virtue ethics: is morality grounded in the virtues rather than in calculated outcomes or universal duties?","topic":"Virtue ethics","question":"Is morality grounded in the virtues rather than in calculated outcomes or universal duties?","position":"The virtues are character traits whose necessary connection to human good gives them their moral weight. Utilitarianism abstracts to outcomes and treats the act as merely the means to a state of affairs; Kantian deontology abstracts to universal rules and treats the agent as merely the rational legislator; both miss what is concrete in moral life. The cardinal virtues (wisdom, justice, courage, temperance), with Aquinas as the great medieval systematizer, are concrete dispositions of character whose absence is not merely an absence of good consequences but a deformation of the human form. Virtue ethics is not a third theory alongside utilitarianism and deontology; it is the older, fuller, and more concrete account of moral life that the modern theories were a partial reduction of. The theological virtues (faith, hope, charity) are Aquinas's, not mine — I am a card-carrying atheist — but the cardinal four can be defended without theology, on the natural ground of the human form of life.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The virtues are character traits whose necessary connection to human good gives them their moral weight.","n":[]},{"t":"Utilitarianism abstracts to outcomes and treats the act as merely the means to a state of affairs; Kantian deontology abstracts to universal rules and treats the agent as merely the rational legislator; both miss what is concrete in moral life.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The cardinal virtues (wisdom, justice, courage, temperance), with Aquinas as the great medieval systematizer, are concrete dispositions of character whose absence is not merely an absence of good consequences but a deformation of the human form.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"Virtue ethics is not a third theory alongside utilitarianism and deontology; it is the older, fuller, and more concrete account of moral life that the modern theories were a partial reduction of.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The theological virtues (faith, hope, charity) are Aquinas's, not mine — I am a card-carrying atheist — but the cardinal four can be defended without theology, on the natural ground of the human form of life.","n":[3]}]],"texts":"Virtues and Vices (1978); Natural Goodness (2001) Chapters 1-4 on the structural alternative; Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) on the inadequacy of consequentialism and Kantian deontology; Aquinas Summa Theologiae II-II on the cardinal virtues. Reception: Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981); Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics (1999); John McDowell's writings on Aristotle and ethics; Bernard Williams's Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985); contemporary critics (Singer for utilitarianism, Korsgaard for Kantianism).","works":["Virtues and Vices (1978)","Natural Goodness (2001) Chapters 1-4 on the structural alternative","Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958) on the inadequacy of consequentialism and Kantian deontology","Aquinas Summa Theologiae II-II on the cardinal virtues"],"reception":"Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981); Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics (1999); John McDowell's writings on Aristotle and ethics; Bernard Williams's Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985); contemporary critics (Singer for utilitarianism, Korsgaard for Kantianism).","status":"The trinity of Anscombe, Foot, and MacIntyre inaugurates the contemporary virtue ethics revival. Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics extends and defends the position; McDowell develops a parallel Aristotelian moral realism. The standard consequentialist objection (Singer, the Hare-Smart utilitarian tradition) is that virtue ethics fails to give action-guidance in problem cases. The standard Kantian objection (Korsgaard, O'Neill) is that virtue ethics cannot ground its claims about the human good in pure practical reason. The virtue ethicists reply: the action-guidance demand assumes an algorithmic standard that no moral theory actually satisfies, and the Kantian demand for pure practical reason imports the abstraction the virtue tradition was correcting.","era":"1920-2010","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Virtues and Vices","page":"pp. 22–23","canonical":"","quote":"For us there are four cardinal moral virtues: courage, temperance, wisdom and justice. But Aristotle and Aquinas call only three of these virtues moral virtues; practical wisdom (Aristotle's phronésis and Aquinas's prudentia) they class with the intellectual virtues, though they point out the close connexions between practical wisdom and what they call moral virtues; and sometimes they even use areté and virtus very…","label":"Virtues and Vices, pp. 22–23"},{"n":2,"work":"Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics","page":"p. 65","canonical":"","quote":"So he sets out to shape a new concept of *virtue* and one sees how far von Wright is prepared to go in throwing over old doctrines when one realizes that he is happy with a denition which excludes two of the four cardinal virtues of ancient and medieval morality. Why is von Wright so dissatised with the traditional theory of the virtues?","label":"Moral Dilemmas and Other Topics, p. 65"},{"n":3,"work":"Virtues and Vices","page":"pp. 21–22","canonical":"","quote":"W. von Wright and Peter Geach. Von Wright devoted a not at all perfunctory chapter to the virtues in his book The Varieties of Goodness published in 1963, and Peter Geach's book called The Virtues? appeared in 1977. Meanwhile a number of interesting articles on the topic have come out in the journals. In spite of this recent work, it is best when considering the virtues and vices to go back to Aristotle and Aquinas.","label":"Virtues and Vices, pp. 21–22"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"anti-subjectivism","label":"Anti-subjectivism: can morality be objective in the way that aesthetic preferences cannot?"},{"slug":"the-trolley-problem-and-the-doctrine-of-double-effect","label":"The trolley problem and the doctrine of double effect: does intended versus foreseen make a moral difference?"},{"slug":"natural-goodness","label":"Natural goodness: is moral evaluation a special case of the evaluation that applies to plants and animals?"},{"slug":"the-late-reversal","label":"The late reversal: did Foot abandon her famous 1972 'Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives' position?"}]}