The Good Writer: Virtue Ethics and the Teaching of Writing

Abstract

The author proposes a concept of ethics for the writing course, one derived from a moral theory that is both old and new and one that engages us when we teach such practices as making claims, providing evidence, and choosing metaphors in corollary discussions of honesty, accountability, generosity, intellectual courage, and other qualities. These and similar qualities are what Aristotle called “virtues,” and they are the subject of that branch of moral philosophy known as “virtue ethics” today. While the word virtue may sound strange to us today, Duffy argues that the tradition of the virtues has much to offer teachers and students and can clarify what it means, in an ethical sense, to be a “good writer” in a skeptical, postmodern moment.