Virtue Ethics: The Good and the Bad About Virtue Ethics

The philosophy of virtue ethics holds that being a 'good person' or what one might call 'character' is the most important determinant of moral action. Virtue ethics is considered to be one of the major philosophical orientations in the field of normative ethics, along with consequentialism and deontology (Hursthouse 2010). Many consider it to be the oldest form of ethics, harkening back to Plato and Aristotle's attempts to define what constituted a good and moral person. Virtue ethics fell out of favor for many years, but there has been a revitalization of interest in the concept, in the wake of controversies over the flaws of consequentialism and deontology. To understand the strengths (and also some of the weaknesses) of virtue ethics, it is essential to understand the ethical systems to which the modern incarnation of virtue ethics was responding. The...
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