Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):299-315 (2008)
Abstract |
Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are circumstances in which a right action is possible but in which no virtuous person would be found. This objection moves from the premise that a given person ought to do an action that no virtuous person would do, to the conclusion that the action is a right action. I demon-strate that virtue ethicists distinguish “ought” from “right” and reject the assumption that “ought” implies “right.” I then show how their rejection of that assumption blocks this “right but not virtuous” objection. I conclude by showing how the thesis that “ought” does not imply “right” can clarify a further dispute in virtue ethics regarding whether “ought” implies “can.”
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Keywords | Analytic Philosophy Contemporary Philosophy General Interest |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | 0038-4283 |
DOI | 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2008.tb00080.x |
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Citations of this work BETA
Virtue Ethics and the Search for an Account of Right Action.Frans Svensson - 2010 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (3):255-271.
A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics.Daniel Doviak - 2011 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (3):259-272.
Contemporary Virtue Ethics and Action-Guiding Objections.F. Scott McElreath - 2018 - South African Journal of Philosophy 37 (1):69-79.
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