Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence

Bibliographic Data

ID8090103
AuthorsDavid Carr (0000-0003-0671-0719, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume84
Issue1
Pages31-46
Publication date2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8191 • E-ISSN: 1469-817X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0031819109000023
OpenAlexW2122948163
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited18

Aristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One recent attempt to sustain this distinction – considered in this paper – maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions – in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason – this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict

Action (physics · Ambivalence · Constructive · Epistemology · Feeling · Moral agency · Moral psychology · Passions · Sociology · Virtue · Virtue ethics · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Philosophy · Social Psychology