:: 텍스트(3/25)

Why has modern moral philosophy revived the ancient approach of virtue ethics? On the face of it, it does seem odd that, armed with two theories derived from philosophers of the ‘modern world’, any moral philosopher, let alone a whole movement of them, should have felt it necessary to go all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. Given how long ago they wrote, given how different our world is from that of their Athens, given, moreover, Aristotle’s (at least) deplorable views on both slavery and women, is it not absurd to turn to them for inspiration on ethics? ‘On the face of it’ perhaps, yes, but in practice and in detail, no.


For a start, it must be emphasized that those who espouse virtue ethics nowadays do not regard themselves as committed to any of the lamentable, parochial details of Aristotle’s moral philosophy, any more than many deontologists inspired by Kant think they are committed to his views on, for example, animals[1]  . What each has done is provide Western moral philosophy with a distinctive approach, an approach that, its proponents think, can fruitfully be adapted to yield what we now recognize as moral truth.

--

[1] Kant himself denied that we had any duties to any animals, on the grounds that they were not persons but things. However, Tom Regan, one of the two most famous defenders of ‘animal liberation’, is a deontologist and moreover one who employs Kantian ideas: see his The case for Animal Rights (1983)