Virtue ethics
Last updated: Tuesday, 02 July 2024
Virtues are character traits that enable a person to reliably act, think, and feel in ways that promote human flourishing. Examples include courage, honesty, compassion, temperance, justice. Virtue ethics focuses on the moral character of the agent, rather than specific actions.
Opens up ways of approaching applied ethics by asking what a courageous, honest, or compassionate person would do in a given situation. This contrasts with applying universal rules or calculating aggregate utility.
- [?] Are virtues compatible with moral luck and situationist challenges to character? How stable are character traits?
- [&] See also: phronesis
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