Virtue Ethics in contemporary times: a brief introduction

Abstract

This brief text articulates some of the main aspects that characterize the contemporary resumption of the so-called virtue ethics, a theoretical model whose historical origins are credited mainly to Aristotle. The text highlights Anscombe's decisive role, especially her Modern Moral Philosophy, as a milestone in the transition that criticizes the dominant theories of modernity (especially Kantian deontology and utilitarianism) and paves the way for a resumption of reflection along Aristotelian lines, emphasizing the central role that the idea of character has occupied since the Anscombe's seminal article. Linked to this central aspect, I highlight, as distinctive features of this theoretical model, i) the centrality given to moral psychology, ii) the inclusion, within the scope of the ethical debate, of “personal” aspects of the agent (his emotions, his life projects, his individual capacities, in detriment of the abstract and impersonal rules and principles that monopolized the modern debate), and iii) the search for a naturalistic foundation, which I conceive, at the end of the reflection, as the most fruitful proposal of this contemporary resumption of Aristotelian model.