Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View

325 Pages·2005·1.82 MB·English

by  Christine Swanton

VIRTUE ETHICS
This page intentionally left blank
Virtue Ethics
A Pluralistic View
CHRISTINE SWANTON
3
1
Great Clarendon Street,Oxford  
Oxford University Press is a department ofthe University ofOxford
It furthers the University’s objective ofexcellence in research,scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
with offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal
Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Published in the United States
byOxford University Press Inc.,New York
© Christine Swanton 2003
The moral rights ofthe author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2003
First published in paperback 2005
All rights reserved.No part ofthis publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing ofOxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law,or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organisation.Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope ofthe above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press,at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data
Swanton,Christine,1947–
Virtue ethics :a pluralistic view / Christine Swanton.
p. cm.
1.Virtue. 2.Ethics. I.Title.
BJ1531 .S93 2003 179´.9—dc21 2002070156
ISBN 0–19–925388–9
ISBN 0-19–927847–4 9780199278473 (pbk.)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd., King's Lynn, Norfolk
To All My Family
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My academic debts are many.My greatest,by far,is to my friend and col-
league Rosalind Hursthouse, with whom I have over a long period of
time discussed virtue ethics and Aristotle.I benefited greatly from her
comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.For the development of
my views on what Nietzsche (and continental philosophy in general) can
offer virtue ethics, I am indebted to Michael Slote, Robert Solomon,
Kathy Higgins,and Julian Young.I owe to Marcia Baron a better under-
standing of Kant than I would otherwise possess and my thanks to her
for critical comment. To members of the Hume Society, especially
Rachel Cohon, Jacqueline Taylor, and Geoffrey Sayre McCord, I owe
thanks for a better understanding of Hume’s ethics.For discussion,my
gratitude also to Neera Badhwar, Jonathan Dancy, Walter Sinnott-
Armstrong,Linda Zagzebski,Maria Merritt,Julia Driver,and,especially,
to Viviane Robinson for our collaboration and discussion of the applica-
tion of theory to practice.For discussion of Christian ethics,I thank my
son,Julian,and John Bishop.
I am grateful to the following for permission to reprint material previ-
ously published elsewhere.
A section of Chapter 1 is reprinted from ‘Virtue Ethics’,International
Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Science,16218–24,© Elsevier Science
2001.Reprinted with permission from Elsevier Science.
Chapter 2 is reprinted with minor modifications from ‘Virtue Ethics,
Value-Centredness,and Consequentialism’,Utilitas13 (2001),212–235,
© Edinburgh University Press 2001. By permission of the editor of
Utilitasand the publishers.
Chapter 6, section iv is based on ‘The Supposed Tension between
“Strength”and “Gentleness”Conceptions of the Virtues’,Australasian
Journal of Philosophy,75 (1997),497–510.Reproduced by permission of
Oxford University Press.
Chapter 11 is reprinted with minor modifications from ‘A Virtue
Ethical Account of Right Action’, Ethics 112 (2001), 32–52, © The
University of Chicago.All rights reserved.
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
PART I. VIRTUE
1. The Anatomy of Virtue 19
(i) The Nature of Virtue 19
(ii) The Situationist Critique 30
2. Normative Dimensions of Virtue 34
(i) Bases of Moral Acknowledgement 34
(ii) Modes of Moral Acknowledgement and the
Hegemony of Promotion 48
3. Virtue and the Good Life 56
(i) Introduction 56
(ii) Virtue and Agent-Flourishing 60
(iii) Virtue and the ‘Demands of the World’ 68
4. What Makes a Character Trait a Virtue 77
(i) The Nature of Eudaimonism 77
(ii) Some Counterexamples 80
(iii) Happiness, Meaningfulness, and ‘Being True to Oneself’ 84
(iv) Moralizing Happiness 87
(v) What Makes a Trait of Character a Virtue?
A Pluralistic View 90
PART II. PROFILES OF THE VIRTUES
5. Love and Respect 99
(i) The Integrating Role of Love and Respect 99
(ii) Love as Coming Close and Respect as Keeping Distance 104
(iii) Receptivity and Appreciation 110
(iv) Universal Love 115