Feminist Approaches to Virtue Ethics

Abstract

Feminist ethics addresses the subordination in society of women and women’s interests to men and men’s interests and the devaluation or exclusion in moral philosophy of women’s perspectives. Feminist approaches to virtue ethics draw on and also criticize assumptions, concepts, methods, values, and theories of traditional virtue ethics, thus expanding the resources of feminist ethics for addressing problems in society and philosophy and making virtue ethics more responsive to the lived realities of most human beings. These approaches apply feminist concepts, concerns, methods, and values to issues of virtue ethics; highlight character issues of subordination and domination; identify virtues needed for resisting injustice and living fully human lives; examine vices that reinforce injustice; and develop new analyses and evaluations of traditional virtues and vices. In so doing, they enrich feminist ethics and broaden, reorient, and improve virtue ethics.