Virtue, Nature, and Providence

Abstract

Abstract I had better begin by declaring that there is one sense of ‘virtue ethics’ in which I am definitely not an advocate of that position: I would not argue that the concept of virtue should be credited with a foundational role in moral thought or theory, or that moral thinking couched in terms of rules, rights, preferences, practices, or any of our other current concepts should be seen as reducible to a single, virtue-centred form. This is by no means to identify myself with some other, putatively competing foundationalist view such as ‘deontology’ or ‘consequentialism’, but simply to locate what I have to say within ‘virtue ethics’ in the minimal sense of reflection on the virtues (as distinct from any other bunch of ethical notions). That project implies no hostility either to the ‘deontological’ view that actions prompted by respect for morality are good in themselves, or to the ‘teleological’ view that living well means engaging in an intelligent pursuit of happiness—each of which, after all, represents one part of the moral philosophy of that well-known ‘virtue theorist’, Aristotle.