Agent-Based Virtue Ethics

Bibliographic Data

ID8063279
AuthorsMichael Slote (corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume20
Issue1
Pages83-101
Publication date1995-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMidwest Studies in Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0363-6550 • E-ISSN: 1475-4975
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1475-4975.1995.tb00306.x
OpenAlexW2064818330
LanguageEN
Citations received29

Agent-based virtue ethics has a long history, but is in a minority position in present-day virtue ethics. It holds that right and wrong action can be fully understood in terms of agential character traits and/or motives. Agent-basing can occur in a Nietzschean version or a moral sentimentalist version, but the latter is more promising because Nietzsche ignores the basic human tendency toward sympathy with others. An agent-based virtue ethics in the sentimentalist mode takes empathy as its central analytic tool and seeks to show that empathy can provide the basis for understanding respect for others, social justice, reasons for action, and even deontology. It is superior to utilitarianism because it can account for our considered moral judgments much more adequately than utilitarianism can. It is superior to Aristotelianism because even recent Aristotelians haven’t been able to theorize the important notion of respect for others. It is superior to Kantianism because it can handle problematic political-legal cases in a more intuitive way than the latter can. Moreover, a modernized sentimentalism can provide for full moral objectivity using the idea of reference fixing

Analytic philosophy · Consequentialism · Contemporary philosophy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Virtue · Virtue ethics · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Philosophy

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