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Title: On Virtue Ethics by Rosalind Hursthouse ISBN: 0-19-924799-4 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: When deontology's getting you down...
Comment: I read this book in a philosophy course at Dartmouth, and wrote a 20-page paper on it. For those not familiar, virtue ethics has recently come into fashion as an alternative to both deontological (rule-based) and consequentialist (results-based) ethics.
Hursthouse is a big fan of Aristotle (although she does "update" a few of his sexist remarks), and often hearkens back to his discussion of "the virtues," and the idea that there is no set of rules that can ever properly encompass every situation -- rather, the ideal virtuous agent is someone who is actually _skilled_ at ethics, and simply knows the virtuous thing to do.
An example that might help get across the idea of virtue ethics -- take a classic ethical case such as Ayn Rand's example of a man whose wife is very sick and who spends extraordinary amounts of money to save her life. It turns out, however, that he could have spent the same amount of money and saved the lives of ten women he didn't know. The utilitarian says that the lives of ten are more important than the life of one. The virtue ethicist says that the fact that we place the interests of loved ones above the interests of strangers is good -- a vital part of humanity we would not want to sacrifice to some mathematical moral calculation. And who would want to live in a world where we forsake our spouses to save strangers?
The book also contains a very interesting chapter on naturalism in ethics. Overall, a very worthwhile read, especially if your entire background in ethics consists of Kant, Bentham, Mill, etc.
A note -- this is not the most abstruse philosophy text I've ever read, but I wouldn't suggest approaching it without some sort of academic philosophy background.
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Title: Virtue Ethics (Oxford Reading in Philosophy) by Roger Crisp, Michael Slote ISBN: 0198751885 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: From Morality to Virtue by Michael Slote ISBN: 0195093925 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Natural Goodness by Philippa Foot ISBN: 0198235089 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Virtues and Reasons by Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, Warren Quinn ISBN: 0198237936 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: How Should One Live?: Essays on the Virtues by Roger Crisp ISBN: 0198752342 Publisher: Clarendon Pr Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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