Virtue Ethics and Right Action: A Critique

A theory of virtue, according to one natural characterization, is fundamentally concerned with the development of a good character; broadly, it addresses the question how a person ought to be. A theory of right action, according to another natural characterization, is fundamentally concerned with the provision of moral guidance; broadly, it addresses the question what a person ought (morally) to do. These characterizations are not uncontroversial, but together they highlight the tension inherent in the idea of a distinctively virtue ethical account of right action. Whereas virtue ethics takes as theoretically basic an agent’s internal states of character or motive, any plausible account of how a person should act must take into account features of the external world, notably including the act’s foreseeable consequences. Understood along these lines, the two projects appear to have quite different aims. Accordingly, it would be surprising if right action could be understood entirely in terms of virtue-or, indeed, virtue entirely in terms of acting rightly.