Practical Intelligence and the Virtues, by Daniel C. Russell.

Abstract

Practical Intelligence and the Virtues is the most thorough and detailed work on modern developments of virtue ethics to date. However its mission is not to chronicle those developments, but to defend an Aristotelian virtue ethical model of practical reason, particularly against some recent challenges. An important such challenge is that of Robert Johnson, who claims that the neo-Aristotelian conception of right action (right acts are those that would be performed by the virtuous acting characteristically), cannot account for right actions of the non-virtuous (actions that would not be performed by the virtuous). A main focus of the book is recent virtue ethical conceptions of right action put forward by contemporary virtue ethicists, Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton. Discussions of these conceptions of right action occupy part one of the book. Part two provides an excellent discussion of some neglected but important issues in virtue ethics. Here Russell considers the problems of the enumeration and individuation of the virtues, and the relation between these problems and the unity of the virtues, vagueness, and particularism. Part three considers the issue of the situationist challenge to belief in the existence of character, and thus to the viability of virtue ethics, but since this issue has received considerable attention I shall not deal with it here. Part four defends Hard Virtue Ethics against objections, notably the commitment to the unity of the virtues.