What is Virtue? Exploring Moral Excellence and Character

Virtue ethics stands as a cornerstone of normative ethics, offering a unique lens through which to view morality. Unlike approaches that prioritize duties or consequences, virtue ethics emphasizes the significance of virtues, or moral character, in guiding ethical behavior. Consider a scenario where someone is in need of help. A utilitarian might argue for assistance based on maximizing overall well-being, while a deontologist might cite a moral rule like the Golden Rule. A virtue ethicist, however, would highlight virtues such as charity or benevolence as the driving force behind helping.

It’s important to note that virtue ethics doesn’t exist in isolation. Virtues, consequences, and rules are interconnected aspects of any comprehensive ethical theory. However, what distinguishes virtue ethics is the central role it assigns to virtue. While consequentialism and deontology might define virtues in terms of their outcomes or adherence to duty, virtue ethics resists reducing virtues to other, supposedly more fundamental concepts. Instead, virtues and their counterparts, vices, become the foundation upon which virtue ethical theories are built, shaping our understanding of other normative ideas.

This exploration begins by dissecting two fundamental concepts within virtue ethics: virtue itself and practical wisdom. We will then examine the diverse forms virtue ethics can take, address common criticisms, and explore potential future directions for this enduring ethical framework.

1. Foundations of Virtue Ethics

Tracing its roots back to Western philosophical giants like Plato and Aristotle, and Eastern thinkers such as Mencius and Confucius, virtue ethics dominated Western moral thought until the Enlightenment. Though briefly overshadowed in the 19th century, it experienced a resurgence in Anglo-American philosophy in the late 1950s. This revival was sparked by figures like G.E.M. Anscombe, whose influential work “Modern Moral Philosophy” critiqued the then-dominant forms of deontology and utilitarianism. These prevailing theories, Anscombe argued, neglected crucial aspects of moral life that had long been central to virtue ethics – character, motives, moral education, wisdom, relationships, emotions, and the fundamental questions of human existence and ethical living.

This re-emergence spurred significant developments across ethical theories. Consequentialists and deontologists began to incorporate virtue into their frameworks, leading to the rise of “virtue theory” as a broader field encompassing virtue within various ethical approaches, distinct from “virtue ethics” as a specific normative approach. For instance, Kant’s virtue theory gained renewed attention, focusing on his Doctrine of Virtue, and utilitarians developed consequentialist virtue theories. This period also saw virtue ethical interpretations of philosophers beyond Plato and Aristotle, such as Hume and Nietzsche, further diversifying the landscape of virtue ethics.

While contemporary virtue ethics isn’t bound to a strictly “neo-Aristotelian” or eudaimonist form, it often draws upon ancient Greek philosophy, particularly through three core concepts: arête (excellence or virtue), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom), and eudaimonia (happiness or flourishing). We will delve into arête and phronesis in this section, and explore eudaimonia in relation to eudaimonist virtue ethics later.

1.1 Unpacking Virtue

At its core, a virtue is an exceptional quality of character. It’s more than a mere habit; it’s a deeply ingrained disposition that shapes how a person perceives, feels, desires, decides, acts, and reacts. Possessing a virtue means embodying a specific kind of person with a complex moral mindset. A crucial aspect of this mindset is the genuine embrace of particular considerations as valid reasons for action.

Consider honesty. An honest person isn’t simply someone who avoids cheating or deals fairly out of self-interest, like fearing consequences or believing “honesty is the best policy.” True honesty stems from recognizing dishonesty itself as a compelling reason to avoid certain actions. Similarly, honesty isn’t about blurting out every truth indiscriminately. It involves understanding when truthfulness is appropriate and when discretion is necessary. The honest individual recognizes “that would be a lie” as a significant reason to refrain from certain statements, while also giving due weight to “that would be the truth” as a reason to speak.

An honest person’s choices and motivations regarding honesty and dishonesty reflect their broader values concerning truth, deception, and integrity. These values extend beyond just words and deeds, influencing their emotional responses and overall conduct. They choose to associate with honest individuals, cultivate honest friendships, and instill honesty in their children. Dishonesty evokes disapproval, dislike, and even disdain. They are not amused by deceitful behavior, and they feel disdain or pity, rather than admiration, for those who achieve success through dishonesty. They are gratified by honesty and distressed by dishonesty in loved ones.

Given the multifaceted nature of virtue as a disposition, it’s clear that attributing a virtue to someone based on a single action or a limited set of observations is unreliable, particularly without understanding their underlying motivations.

Virtue exists on a spectrum. Full or perfect virtue is a rare ideal. Most individuals who are considered virtuous, and certainly morally superior to those characterized by dishonesty or greed, still have areas where their virtuous disposition falters. Someone generally honest and kind, especially in challenging situations, might still exhibit snobbery or be unkind to those they perceive as different.

Furthermore, aligning emotions with rational moral understanding isn’t always effortless. One might intellectually recognize the necessity of admitting a mistake due to honesty, yet struggle internally to do so without conflict. Drawing from Aristotle, virtue ethicists distinguish between perfect virtue and “continence” or strength of will. The perfectly virtuous act rightly without internal struggle, while the continent must overcome conflicting desires or temptations.

While describing continence as “falling short” of perfect virtue might seem counterintuitive, as acting virtuously amidst difficulty appears admirable, the key lies in why it’s difficult. If the difficulty stems from external circumstances, such as poverty tempting someone to keep a found purse, then virtuous action is indeed particularly commendable. However, if the difficulty arises from internal character flaws, like a temptation to dishonesty or indifference to suffering, then it reflects imperfection, not enhanced virtue.

1.2 The Role of Practical Wisdom

Another aspect where individuals can fall short of full virtue is in phronesis, often translated as moral or practical wisdom.

Virtue is inherently linked to goodness: a virtuous person is morally good, admirable, and acts and feels appropriately. These are generally accepted truths. However, when considering specific virtues, we sometimes seem to contradict these truths. We might describe someone as “too generous” or “honest to a fault.” Compassion, it’s argued, could lead to wrongful actions, like lying to spare someone’s feelings. Even courage, in a criminal, can amplify their capacity for wickedness. Thus, virtues like generosity, honesty, compassion, and courage, despite being virtues, can seemingly lead to faults. A person possessing these virtues might not be morally good – or, if they are still deemed morally good, then moral goodness itself might lead to wrong actions! How do we reconcile this apparent paradox?

The resolution lies in recognizing the limitations of relying solely on common usage of virtue terms and the modern tendency to equate virtuous action with emotional impulse rather than rational choice. If we equate generosity with acting on generous impulses, compassion with acting on compassionate feelings, and courage with mere fearlessness, then these traits can indeed lead to wrongful actions. However, these are dispositions also found in children. While such children might be considered “nice,” they aren’t yet morally virtuous in the full sense. Common usage and reliance on inclination describe what Aristotle termed “natural virtue”—a preliminary form of virtue that needs refinement through phronesis, or practical wisdom.

Aristotle extensively discussed phronesis, and its precise meaning is debated by scholars. However, the contemporary understanding of practical wisdom can be grasped by considering the difference between a virtuous, morally mature adult and a “nice” child or adolescent. Both may have good intentions, but the child is more likely to err due to a lack of knowledge necessary to realize their intentions. A virtuous adult, while not infallible, is less prone to such errors, and when they do occur due to lack of knowledge, it’s typically not blameworthy. Children and adolescents often unintentionally harm those they intend to help, either due to inexperience or limited understanding of what is truly beneficial or harmful. Such ignorance is largely excusable in young children. Adults, however, are culpable for mistakes stemming from thoughtlessness, insensitivity, recklessness, impulsivity, shortsightedness, or assuming their personal preferences apply universally. They are also responsible for flawed understandings of benefit and harm. Practical wisdom encompasses knowing how to effectively secure real benefits, avoiding the mistake of withholding necessary but painful truths in the misguided belief of being helpful.

In essence, given that good intentions aim at “doing the right thing,” practical wisdom is the knowledge and understanding that enables a person, unlike well-meaning but naive individuals, to actually achieve this in diverse situations. While a definitive, exhaustive definition of practical wisdom remains elusive, certain aspects are becoming clearer. Even deontologists increasingly acknowledge that action-guiding rules require practical wisdom for proper application, as situational awareness is crucial for recognizing morally relevant features in specific contexts. This highlights two key dimensions of practical wisdom.

Firstly, practical wisdom is typically acquired through life experience. Morally relevant aspects of a situation often include likely consequences for those involved, something adolescents, due to their inexperience, often fail to grasp. Wisdom involves understanding human nature and the complexities of life. (Virtuous individuals are inherently mindful of consequences; recklessness and shortsightedness are incompatible with virtue).

Secondly, practically wise individuals can discern which aspects of a situation are most important, or even uniquely relevant. Unlike those with underdeveloped virtues who might weigh personal disadvantage against honesty or benevolence, the wise prioritize appropriately.

These aspects converge in the description of the practically wise as those who understand what is truly valuable, important, and beneficial in life – those who, in essence, know how to live well.

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2. Diverse Forms of Virtue Ethics

While all forms of virtue ethics agree on the centrality of virtue and the necessity of practical wisdom, they diverge in how these concepts are integrated with others to illuminate moral action and the good life. Contemporary virtue ethics encompasses various approaches, including:

a) Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics
b) Agent-Based and Exemplarist Virtue Ethics
c) Target-Centered Virtue Ethics
d) Platonistic Virtue Ethics

2.1 Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics

Eudaimonist virtue ethics is distinguished by its definition of virtues in relation to eudaimonia. In this view, a virtue is a trait that contributes to or constitutes eudaimonia, and the rationale for cultivating virtues is precisely their role in achieving eudaimonia.

Eudaimonia, a central concept in ancient Greek ethics, is often translated as “happiness,” “flourishing,” or “well-being.” Each translation has limitations. “Flourishing” can apply to plants and animals, while eudaimonia is exclusive to rational beings. “Happiness” in common usage is often subjective; if someone feels happy, they are considered happy. Eudaimonia, however, is more objective, akin to health or flourishing, where one can be mistaken about their state. It’s easy to have a flawed understanding of eudaimonia, equating it with fleeting pleasures or material wealth, and thus be mistaken about whether one’s life is truly eudaimon.

Eudaimonia is a “moralized” or value-laden concept of happiness, akin to “true happiness” or “genuine well-being.” It’s a concept that can be subject to substantial disagreement, reflecting differing views on human life, and not easily resolved by appealing to a neutral external standard.

Most virtue ethics perspectives concur that virtuous living is essential for eudaimonia. This ultimate good isn’t seen as separate from virtue, something virtue merely promotes. Rather, virtuous activity is considered at least partially constitutive of eudaimonia. Eudaimonist virtue ethics posits that a life dedicated solely to pleasure or wealth is not eudaimon, but rather a wasted life.

While the conceptual link between virtue and eudaimonia is central, the precise nature of this link is debated, giving rise to different eudaimonist theories. Aristotle viewed virtue as necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia, arguing that external factors, luck, also play a role. Plato and the Stoics, conversely, considered virtue both necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia.

Eudaimonist virtue ethics asserts that the good life is the eudaimon life, and virtues are character traits that enable eudaimonia, benefiting the individual, barring misfortune. Thus, the connection to eudaimonia is what confers virtue status on a character trait.

2.2 Agent-Based and Exemplarist Virtue Ethics

Agent-based virtue ethics takes a different approach, grounding normativity in the qualities of moral agents, rather than eudaimonia. It argues that normativity, including the value of eudaimonia, is ultimately explained by the motivations and dispositions of agents.

The extent to which other forms of normativity must be agent-derived varies among agent-based theorists. Prominent figures like Michael Slote and Linda Zagzebski trace a broad range of normative qualities to agent qualities. Slote, for example, defines rightness and wrongness based on agent motivations: rightness is tied to good motivations, and wrongness to bad or insufficiently good motives. He extends this to action goodness, eudaimonia‘s value, just laws, and practical rationality’s normativity, all explained by agent motivations and dispositions. Zagzebski similarly defines right and wrong actions based on the emotions, motives, and dispositions of virtuous and vicious agents. A wrong action is what a virtuous person (phronimos) would not do and would feel guilt for doing; it expresses vice and violates virtue. Duties, good and bad ends, and states of affairs are also grounded in exemplary agents’ motivational states.

However, less comprehensive agent-based approaches are possible. At a minimum, an agent-based approach must explain what one should do by referencing agent motivations and dispositions. But this alone isn’t sufficient, as every virtue ethic account will meet this condition. To be truly agent-based, the normativity of motivations and dispositions must be explained without recourse to more fundamental normative properties like eudaimonia or states of affairs.

Agent-based theories can diverge significantly. A key distinction lies in how motivations and dispositions are considered. Slote focuses on the actual motives and dispositions of the specific agent. An action’s goodness is determined by the agent’s motives when performing it. Zagzebski, in contrast, defines action quality based on whether a virtuously motivated agent would perform it, not based on the agent’s actual motives. This emphasis on hypothetical virtuous agent motives allows Zagzebski to differentiate between performing the right action and doing it for the right reasons, a distinction Slote’s approach struggles with.

Agent-based virtue ethics also varies in how virtuous motivations and dispositions are identified. Zagzebski’s exemplarist approach posits that we lack pre-existing criteria for goodness. Instead, we identify exemplars of goodness by observing people and instinctively wanting to emulate some while rejecting others. These exemplars, positive and negative, form the basis for understanding better and worse motivations, virtues and vices. Our moral concepts evolve as we encounter more exemplars, identifying commonalities and differences, and morally relevant aspects. Recognizable motivational patterns emerge, labeled as virtues or vices, shaping our understanding of obligations and desirable ends. Even with this sophisticated moral system, exemplarists argue that it remains rooted in our fundamental responses to exemplars, not in something more fundamental. However, agent-based theory doesn’t necessitate exemplarist origins for judgments of good, bad, virtuous, or vicious.

2.3 Target-Centered Virtue Ethics

Target-centered virtue ethics, developed by Christine Swanton, takes a different starting point. Rather than eudaimonia or exemplary agents, it begins with our existing understanding of virtues. We already have a working concept of what virtues are. While this understanding can be refined, the target-centered view starts with the common recognition of traits like generosity, courage, and compassion as virtues. It then analyzes what these traits entail.

A comprehensive account of virtue maps out:

Field: The domain of concern for the virtue.
Mode of Responsiveness: How the virtue responds.
Basis of Moral Acknowledgment: The feature within the field that the virtue responds to.
Target: The aim of the virtue.

For example, courage concerns what can harm us, while generosity concerns sharing resources. Generosity responds to others’ potential benefit from our actions, while courage responds to threats to values or relationships and the fear they generate. Generosity promotes another’s benefit, while courage defends values. Courage aims to manage fear and danger, while generosity aims to share resources in beneficial ways.

In target-centered virtue ethics, a virtue is “a disposition to respond to items within its field in an excellent or good enough way.” A virtuous act effectively achieves the virtue’s target, responding appropriately to its field. Defining right action requires considering multiple virtues, as situations often involve overlapping fields. Determination might drive task completion, while love of family might suggest prioritizing family time. A target-centered view needs to reconcile conflicting virtue demands.

Three approaches to defining right action emerge:

Perfectionist: Right action is the overall most virtuous action possible in the circumstances.
Permissive: Right action is “good enough,” even if not the best possible action.
Minimalist: Right action is simply not overall vicious.

2.4 Platonistic Virtue Ethics

Platonistic virtue ethics draws inspiration from Plato. Plato’s dialogues, where Socrates probes the nature of virtues like justice and wisdom, clearly position him as a virtue theorist. However, whether Plato is a virtue ethicist is debated. Regardless, Plato’s influence on the virtue ethics revival is undeniable. Many contributors to this revival are Plato scholars. Often, these scholars advocate eudaimonist virtue ethics, rather than distinctively Platonistic versions. However, two variants merit separate consideration.

Timothy Chappell identifies the defining feature of Platonistic virtue ethics as the belief that “Good agency in the truest and fullest sense presupposes the contemplation of the Form of the Good.” Following Iris Murdoch, Chappell argues that “In the moral life the enemy is the fat relentless ego.” Our self-centered focus on needs and desires distorts our perception of reality and blinds us to external goods. Contemplating goodness, attending to things “for their own sake, to understand them,” disrupts this self-absorption. Regular contemplation cultivates unselfish, objective, and realistic thought patterns, altering consciousness. Qualities that foster unselfishness and objectivity are linked to virtue. Virtues are defined as qualities that help pierce “the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.” Good agency stems from possessing and exercising these virtues. In this framework, not all normative properties are defined by virtue, but the kind of goodness humans can achieve is defined by virtue, and answers to “what to do” or “how to live” rely on virtues.

Robert Merrihew Adams presents another Platonistic variant. Unlike Murdoch and Chappell’s focus on consciousness, Adams starts with the metaphysics of goodness. Like other Platonists, Adams centers goodness on a supremely perfect good, which he, like Augustine, identifies as God. God is both the embodiment and source of all goodness. Other things are good to the extent they resemble God.

Resemblance is a necessary but not sufficient condition for goodness. Finite beings can resemble God in ways unsuitable to their nature. For example, while omniscience is perfect in God, the belief “I am all-knowing” is not good in humans. Adams introduces “fitting response to goodness,” which he identifies as love, to refine the resemblance requirement. Excellence for finite beings involves resembling God in ways that would justify God’s love.

Virtues are one way humans resemble God. “Most excellences important to us are excellences of persons or qualities of persons.” This is why Adams prefers a personal God as the ideal of perfection over an impersonal Form of the Good. Virtues like love, wisdom, justice, patience, and generosity, commonly attributed to divine agents in theistic traditions like Adams’s Christian tradition, are key excellences of persons.

Adams’s Platonistic account in Finite and Infinite Goods doesn’t derive all normative properties from virtues. Goodness is the normative foundation. Virtues are part of this foundation, not built upon it. Obligations arise at a different level, determined by expectations within good or valuable relationships. More virtuous parties in a relationship create stronger obligations. Thus, in Adams’s view, good (including virtue) precedes right. However, once obligations emerge from good relationships, they become independent, their bindingness determined by relationship dynamics, not directly by goodness.

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3. Common Objections to Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics, despite its resurgence and diverse forms, faces several objections. Some criticisms target specific versions more than others. Here, we explore eight common objections:

a) Application Problem
b) Adequacy Problem
c) Relativism Problem
d) Conflict Problem
e) Self-Effacement Problem
f) Justification Problem
g) Egoism Problem
h) Situationist Problem

a) The Application Problem: Early in virtue ethics’ revival, it was associated with an “anti-codifiability” stance against normative theory’s prevailing ambitions. Utilitarians and deontologists often sought to create ethical codes with universal rules for determining right action in any situation, understandable and applicable even by non-virtuous individuals.

Virtue ethicists challenged this, arguing that such codes are unrealistic. Experience in fields like bioethics seemed to support this, with agreement on general rules failing to resolve complex moral dilemmas. Moral sensitivity, perception, imagination, and experienced judgment (phronesis) were recognized as essential for rule application. Many utilitarians and deontologists subsequently deemphasized the idea of universally applicable codes.

However, the criticism that virtue ethics lacks codifiable principles and thus fails to provide action-guidance persists.

Initially, this objection stemmed from misinterpreting virtue ethics as focusing solely on “being” rather than “doing,” addressing “what sort of person to be” but not “what to do,” and being “agent-centered, not act-centered.” Critics wrongly concluded virtue ethics could only supplement, not rival, other normative approaches, offering simplistic, unhelpful guidance like “imitate a moral exemplar.”

This critique overlooked the potential for action guidance within virtue ethics through “v-rules,” rules employing virtue and vice terms, such as “Be honest/charitable; avoid dishonesty/uncharitableness.” (The vocabulary of vices is remarkably extensive and provides rich action guidance by highlighting what to avoid: irresponsibility, laziness, selfishness, arrogance, hypocrisy, and countless other negative traits).

b) The Adequacy Problem: A related objection questions whether virtue ethics can adequately account for right action. This concern has two facets:

i) Extensional Inadequacy: One might argue that virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for right action. Right actions can be performed without virtue, and virtuous individuals can occasionally act wrongly without undermining their virtuous character. If the connection between right/wrong and virtue/vice isn’t strong enough, can the former be defined by the latter?

ii) Explanatory Inadequacy: Even if virtue ethics could identify all right actions, virtue might not always explain rightness in certain cases.

Some virtue ethicists address this by rejecting the need to define right action. Following Anscombe and MacIntyre, they argue that focusing on “rightness” and “wrongness,” rooted in notions of moral duty and divine law or obligation versus self-interest, is misguided. Virtue ethics can address living well and acting rightly using aretaic (virtue/vice) and axiological (good/bad) concepts, without needing deontic notions (right/wrong action, duty, obligation).

Others retain “right action” but acknowledge its multiple interpretations: best action, commendable action, not-blameworthy action. Virtue ethics can define one of these (e.g., best action) in terms of virtues and vices, while using other normative concepts (like legitimate expectations) for other senses of “right action.”

As emphasized earlier, virtue ethics need not reduce all normative concepts to virtues and vices. It only requires that virtue isn’t reduced to something more fundamental and that some normative concepts are explained through virtue and vice. This weakens the adequacy objection, particularly against theories attempting to define all senses of “right action” solely through virtues. Utilizing both virtues and vices enhances extensional adequacy. Incorporating irreducible normative concepts further strengthens explanatory adequacy. The necessity and number of such additional concepts, and whether virtue ethics should even define “right action,” remain debated within virtue ethics. However, virtue ethicists possess resources to counter the adequacy objection.

c) The Relativism Problem: The emphasis on virtues in virtue ethics makes it vulnerable to the charge of cultural relativism. Different cultures embody different virtues, suggesting that v-rules may only define right and wrong relative to specific cultures.

Responses to this charge include:

Tu Quoque (Partners in Crime): Virtue ethicists acknowledge cultural relativism as a challenge but argue it’s equally problematic for deontology and consequentialism. Cultural variation in virtues is no greater, and arguably less, than variations in rules of conduct or conceptions of happiness. Cultural relativism, therefore, is a shared problem linked to the broader “justification problem”—the metaethical challenge of justifying moral beliefs across different viewpoints and cultures.
Virtues are Not Relative: A bolder approach argues that while cultural understandings of virtues may vary, the virtues themselves are not culturally relative.

d) The Conflict Problem: “The conflict problem” asks how virtue ethics addresses dilemmas where virtues seem to conflict, offering opposing guidance. For example, charity might suggest euthanasia in a case of extreme suffering, while justice forbids it. Honesty might dictate telling a painful truth, while kindness and compassion suggest silence or even a lie.

Similar dilemmas arise from conflicting deontological rules. Deontology and virtue ethics share this problem and employ parallel strategies for resolution. Both aim to resolve apparent conflicts by arguing that a deeper understanding of the virtues or rules, attainable through practical wisdom, reveals that in specific cases, virtues don’t truly clash, or that one virtue overrides another, or that rules have implicit exceptions. Whether this fully resolves all dilemmas depends on whether truly irresolvable dilemmas exist. If so, proponents of both virtue ethics and deontology might argue that attempting to “resolve” the irresolvable is inherently flawed.

e) The Self-Effacement Problem: This problem, potentially shared by all three normative approaches, arises when an ethical theory’s justification for an action shouldn’t be the agent’s motive for performing it. Michael Stocker originally posed this against deontology and consequentialism, noting that visiting a sick friend motivated by duty or maximizing happiness diminishes the visit’s warmth. Simon Keller argues virtue ethics faces a similar issue: visiting a friend because it’s what a virtuous person would do is also problematic.

However, defenders of virtue ethics argue that not all forms are susceptible to this, and even those that are aren’t fatally undermined.

f) The Justification Problem: “The justification problem” is shared by virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. It’s the fundamental metaethical question of how we justify our ethical beliefs. Deontology must justify its moral rules; utilitarianism its focus on happiness; and virtue ethics, the claim that certain character traits are virtues.

Metaethical debate is divided on whether an “external” foundation for ethics (independent of ethical beliefs) is possible. This division exists within deontology and utilitarianism as well. Some believe their normative ethics can be grounded in universal rational desires or agreements, while others don’t.

Virtue ethicists generally avoid seeking external foundations, yet maintain their claims can be validated. Some adopt a coherentist approach (like Rawls), while neo-Aristotelians lean towards ethical naturalism.

Misunderstanding eudaimonia as a non-moralized concept leads some critics to assume neo-Aristotelians ground virtue ethics in a scientific account of human flourishing, or, failing that, simply rationalize personal or cultural values. However, McDowell, Foot, MacIntyre, and Hursthouse propose a middle ground. Eudaimonia is moralized but also grounded in facts about human nature. Claims about human flourishing are informed by science, similar to how ethological claims about animal flourishing are informed by animal biology. The validity of virtue claims depends partly on understanding human nature, capacities, desires, and interests.

Modern science, including evolutionary theory and psychology, supports the ancient Greek view of humans as social animals. Social contract theory isn’t needed to explain cooperation; altruism and cooperation are inherent human impulses.

This understanding strengthens the claim that virtues are partly constitutive of human flourishing and weakens the objection that virtue ethics is inherently egoistic.

g) The Egoism Problem: The egoism objection arises from several sources:

Misunderstanding of Virtuous Motivation: Assuming that because virtuous individuals act without inner conflict, they are merely doing what they “want” and are therefore selfish. This wrongly equates acting virtuously with selfish motivation and overlooks the inherent goodness in acting virtuously without struggle. It also falsely suggests that the virtuous act because they believe it promotes their eudaimonia, rather than acting from genuine concern for others or for what is right.
Misconstrued Distinction Between Self- and Other-Regarding Virtues: Viewing justice and benevolence as “real” virtues benefiting others, while dismissing prudence and fortitude as “self-regarding” and not truly virtuous. This overlooks that virtues like justice and benevolence do contribute to the virtuous person’s eudaimonia, and that “self-regarding” virtues benefit others in a social context.

Eudaimonia is achieved through a life of virtuous activity, but this doesn’t preclude virtuous individuals making ultimate sacrifices. Courageous, honest, and charitable individuals, guided by their virtues, may willingly face danger, speak truth, or sacrifice their lives for worthy causes. In such cases, eudaimonia may become unattainable due to circumstance, but the virtuous life lived remains a success. Such heroic acts are far from egoistic.

h) The Situationist Problem: This recent objection, based on “situationist” social psychology, argues that character traits, and therefore virtues, don’t actually exist. Situationist studies suggest behavior is primarily determined by situational factors, not character.

Responses from virtue ethicists include:

Irrelevance of Situationist Studies: Arguing situationist studies are irrelevant to the complex, multi-track dispositions that virtues are. Attributing demanding virtues like charity based on superficial observations is indeed a “fundamental attribution error.”
Empirically Grounded Character Traits: Developing alternative, empirically informed conceptions of character traits.
“Frail and Fragmentary” Virtues: Proposing a middle ground between denying character traits entirely and the demanding Aristotelian ideal of fully integrated virtue. Character traits can be imperfect and fragmented, yet still count as virtues. However, this might require sacrificing practical wisdom as the core of all virtues, a substantial compromise.

Despite not shaking traditional virtue ethics, the “situationist challenge” has spurred valuable engagement with empirical psychology and fueled interest in character education.

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4. Future Trajectories for Virtue Ethics

While neo-Aristotelian eudaimonist frameworks have dominated virtue ethics for the past decades, alternative forms are emerging. Scholars are exploring thinkers like Hume, Nietzsche, and Martineau for alternative resources. Eastern philosophical traditions, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, are also being investigated for their contributions to virtue ethics. These explorations promise to broaden and diversify virtue ethics.

Despite its growth, virtue ethics remains less prevalent than deontology and consequentialism, particularly in applied ethics. Textbooks on “moral problems” or “applied ethics” often struggle to include virtue ethics perspectives on specific issues, sometimes because the issues are framed in deontological/utilitarian terms, but often simply because virtue ethicists haven’t yet addressed those topics. However, applied virtue ethics is gaining traction, especially in fields like environmental ethics, which appears particularly fertile ground for its application.

The potential for “virtue politics”—extending virtue ethics into political philosophy—is less clear. Aristotle’s ethics is arguably inseparable from his politics, suggesting Aristotelian virtue ethicists have resources for developing virtue politics. While Plato and Aristotle might seem less relevant to modern politics, recent work indicates Aristotelian ideas can inform a liberal political philosophy. Furthermore, non-Aristotelian virtue ethics, like that of Hume and Hutcheson, may more readily translate into modern political thought.

Moral education, focused on character development rather than rule inculcation, has always been central to virtue ethics. A growing movement for virtues education is emerging in both academia and classrooms, engaging with psychology, educational theory, and theology.

Finally, the study of specific virtues and vices is a productive area of development. Studies on cardinal virtues and capital vices, and less-explored virtues like civility and truthfulness, are expanding our understanding. Key questions include: “How many virtues are there?” and “How are virtues related?” Some embrace a plurality of virtues, while others seek to organize them, perhaps through cardinal virtues with subordinate extensions, to address issues like right action and conflict resolution. Future research will likely continue to explore individual virtues and their interrelationships.

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Acknowledgments

Parts of the introductory material above repeat what was said in the Introduction and first chapter of On Virtue Ethics (Hursthouse 1999).