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I used to be much more combative and eager to argue that virtue ethics was not only a rival to the other two approaches but the best, and was able to solve or avoid problems that the other two were committed to finding intractable. While virtue ethics was not generally recognized and was being dismissed, I think that was the right tactic, and one powerfully pursued in Slote’s From Morality to Virtue. But the reaction to virtue ethics’ emergence that I mentioned above has been so sudden and so fruitful that, only six years after that book’s publication, I find it reasonable to hope that the combative stance is no longer necessary. Hence, though I contrast virtue ethics with simple versions of deontology and utilitarianism in the early chapters, I do so only to aid initial comprehension rather than to deny the possibility of sophisticated developments, and references to them fade away as the book professes.
Up until now my use of ‘we’ has mostly been limited to ‘myself and other virtue ethicists or moral philosophers’. From now on, unless context clearly indicates otherwise, I shall be using it to mean about my readership. It is not possible to write a book in moral philosophy without taking a fair amount of common ground for granted, and I am assuming that anyone who is interested enough in the area to read such a book shares my own ethical outlook to a fair extent. We may have lots of detailed disagreements but, I assume, we all think that ethics matters, and that (broadly speaking and allowing for all the detailed disagreements) we are against murder, dishonesty, cruelty, and so on and in favour of benevolence, honesty, justice, and so on. Hence, I assume, we would fill out those ‘and so on’ in the same way.
Neo-Aristotelianism
The particular version of virtue ethics I detail and discuss in this book is of a more general kind known as 'neo-Aristotelian'. The general kind is 'neo' for at least the reason I noted above, that its proponents allow themselves to regard Aristotle as just plain wrong on slaves and women, and also because we do not restrict ourselves to Aristotle's list of virtues. (Charity or benevolence, for example, is not an Aristotelian virtue, but all virtue ethicists assume it is on the list now.) It is 'Aristotelian' in so far as it aims to stick pretty close to his ethical writings wherever else it can. Hence what I present here is only one version of virtue ethics amongst many possible ones.
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