Virtue Ethics
In
everyday life, morality seems less a matter of producing some good
consequences or of even complying with certain rules, and more a matter of
being a certain sort of person--a person with a character marked by
distinctively moral dispositions, such as kindness, sensitivity to the
needs of others, respectfulness, fairness, courage, seriousness of
purpose, and so on. It is not the goodness of our
goals or the rightness of our rules that makes us moral, but the goodness
of our dispositions. The
traditional name for such good dispositions is virtues, and thus
this approach--which stems from Aristotle and other ancient moral thinkers
is called virtue ethics. Here too, there is an important truth.
The people we think of as moral do not seem to tote up consequences
or to subject their actions to abstract moral rules. Rather they react
morally, that is, with sensitivity to others’ needs, with a desire to be
fair and generous, with a courage that is less the result of reflection
than the consequence of a character that would not think of shrinking from
doing what’s right.
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