Virtue Rediscovered: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Moral Landscape

✍ Scribed by Nathan Wood

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 175
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Virtue ethics occupies the strange position of being one of the oldest and most prominently discussed ethical theories throughout history, and yet many contemporary moral philosophers do not recognize it as a genuine alternative to currently prominent normative theories, such as utilitarianism or Kantian ethics. In Virtue Rediscovered: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Moral Landscape, Nathan Wood argues that this discrepancy requires us to rethink how we understand the function and purpose of normative ethical theories, especially insofar as such theories are expected to be action guiding. All ethical theories guide action, but they do so in two different ways. One way is through stipulating criteria for what we ought to do, but another way is setting a core concern that represents an account of what lies at the heart of morality and determines the moral salience of features in the world. This framework not only clarifies the nature of deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, but also recasts the debate among them.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Virtue Rediscovered
Virtue Rediscovered: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Moral Landscape
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Note
Introduction
Notes
Chapter 1
The Varieties of Virtue Ethics
Virtue Ethics as Agent Centered
The Centrality of Virtue
Notes
Chapter 2
Restructuring the Debate
Distinguishing Acts from Agents
The Historical Ascendency of Act-centered Ethics
Ethical Theories as Genus Theories
Genus Theories and the Internal/External Divide
Notes
Chapter 3
Resurrecting Deontology
DEONTOLOGY OR NON-CONSEQUENTIALISM?
Reviving Deontology
Side-constraints: Deontological or Consequentialist?
Agent-relativity and Deontology
Kant and Ross as Deontologists
Side-constraints Revisited
Notes
Chapter 4
Clarifying Consequentialism
THE NATURE OF CONSEQUENTIALISM
Objective vs. Subjective Consequentialism
Motive-utilitarianism
Motives or Consequences
Notes
Chapter 5
Virtue Ethics in a New Light
The Third Alternative
The Uneasy Relationship between Consequentialism and Virtue Ethics
Notes
Chapter 6
Virtue Ethics as a Whole
THE TWO CONDITIONS OF VIRTUE ETHICS
The External Condition of Virtue Ethics
Acting Well and the Dual-aspect Theory
Stoicism and the Dual-aspect Theory of Virtue Ethics
Notes
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author