|
Up until about thirty years ago, normative ethics was dominated by just two theories: deontology, which took its inspiration from the eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant, and utilitarianism, which derives, in its modern incarnation, from the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century philosophers Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill. In the hundreds of books and articles on normative ethics published during the sixties and seventies, it was common to find versions of one or both of these theories outlined, discussed, amended, applied, compared, and criticized-but no mention made of any third possibility which harked back to the ancient Greeks.
Gradually, a change was observable. In some books designed as undergraduate text in normative ethics, various articles critical of the prevailing orthodoxy were cited as calling for a recognition of the importance of the virtues, and a few paragraphs on 'what a virtue ethicist would say' inserted. At first, the mentions tended to short and dismissive. Virtue ethics was regarded not as the third approach in its own right, but as emphasizing a few interesting points-such as the motives and character of moral agents-that deontologists and utilitarians could usefully incorporate into their approaches. Then, as more articles were written in its defence, it acquired the status of 'the new kid on the block'-yet to establish its right to run with the big boys, but not to be dismissed out of hand. And now in the latest collections (as I write, in 1998), it has acquired full status, recognized as a rival to deontological and utilitarian approaches, as interestingly and challengingly different from either as they are from each other.
|