Disunity of Virtue

This paper argues against the unity of the virtues, while trying to salvage some of its attractive aspects. I focus on the strongest argument for the unity thesis, which begins from the premise that true virtue cannot lead its possessor morally astray. I suggest that this premise presupposes the pos...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of ethics Vol. 13; no. 2/3; pp. 195 - 212
Main Author Sreenivasan, Gopal
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer 01.09.2009
Springer Netherlands
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Compassion
Education
Ethics
Human error
Intelligence
Justice
Morality
Personality traits
Philosophy
Political Philosophy
Post hoc
Situationism
Virtue
Virtue ethics
Situationism
Rights
Virtue ethics
Unity of virtue
Aristotle
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Summary:This paper argues against the unity of the virtues, while trying to salvage some of its attractive aspects. I focus on the strongest argument for the unity thesis, which begins from the premise that true virtue cannot lead its possessor morally astray. I suggest that this premise presupposes the possibility of completely insulating an agent's set of virtues from any liability to moral error. I then distinguish three conditions that separately foreclose this possibility, concentrating on the proposition that there is more to morality than virtue alone—that is, not all moral considerations are ones to which some virtue is characteristically sensitive. If the virtues are not unified, the situationist critique of virtue ethics also turns out to be more difficult to establish than some have supposed.
ISSN:1382-4554
1572-8609
DOI:10.1007/s10892-009-9048-0