2008 Handbooks

Moral theories are intended to guide everyday moral practice and to help us to 'live well'. Yet some contemporary philosophers have argued that close adherence to specific moral theories, and in particular those that require impartiality or 'agent-neutrality', necessarily comes at a significant moral cost: namely, the preclusion of certain other elements typically deemed central to the good life. These goods are 'agent-relative' and include the maintaining of intimate personal relationships and one's own projects and commitments. Such a critique of the 'agent-neutrality' of influential ethical theories poses serious questions concerning the character of the 'lived' moral life and the role and application of ethical theory in our lives.

We begin with a consideration of important challenges to consequentialism on the grounds that it is self-defeating, leads to 'moral schizophrenia', and cannot accommodate important moral 'goods' such as integrity and close personal relationships. We then consider virtue ethics and evaluate its capacity to avoid the problems encountered by impartial or 'agent-neutral' ethical theories, focusing on its characterisation of human flourishing, the identification of virtues and virtuous agents, and the cultivation and unity of virtue. We examine and evaluate critical responses to virtue theory, including the charge that is not action-guiding and therefore does not represent a genuine normative alternative to consequentialist or deontological theories of ethics.