Virtue

The notion of virtue played a central role in ethical theorizing up until the Enlightenment. Major figures such as Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas, all place virtue at the centre of their moral theories. However, as a result of the influence of Kant and Utilitarian thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who focussed mainly on actions rather than character, theorising about virtue took something of a back seat until the latter part of the 20th century. Recent years have seen a regeneration of philosophical work on virtue as a result of result of dissatisfaction with Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism.

A virtue is a state of a person’s character. People may be wise, courageous, modest, kind, self-controlled, and just. These are all virtues, which they may or may not possess. Virtues are dispositions of character. A disposition is a tendency to have certain responses in particular situations: responses such as emotions, perceptions, and actions. People who have the virtue of (e.g.) courage, then, are those with the disposition to ‘stand fast’ under trial, where this includes a complex of attitudes and emotions, behaviour, and perceptions.

Historical Overview

Virtue (arête) is along with eudaimonia one of the two central concepts in ancient Greek ethics. Greek ethical thinking focuses on character states known as aretai (virtues), which are understood to be distinct properties of the soul. For example, someone with the virtue of justice is concerned with the fair treatment of other people; someone with the virtue of courage responds correctly in situations of trial (particularly in warfare) by overcoming his fear. And something similar is thought to be true of self-control or moderation, piety and wisdom. Each virtue ensured that its possessor acts in the correct ways pertaining to a situation that he or she might encounter over a life. Possessing the virtues ensures that one practices good (agathon) and fine (kalon) courses of action.

Socrates as he appears in Plato’s writings was (in the western intellectual tradition) the first to make systematic investigations into the virtues. (What we know of Socrates philosophy is almost entirely derived from Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Scholars typically divide Plato’s works into three periods: the early, middle, and late periods. They tend to agree also that Plato’s earliest works quite faithfully represent the teachings of Socrates and that Plato’ own views, which go beyond those of Socrates, appear for the first time in the middle works such as the Phaedo and the Republic.) Socrates’ thinking on the virtues seems to be distinguished by two main features. Firstly, Socrates seems to think that virtue is a kind of knowledge. In Plato’s dialogue, the Euthydemus (See also Meno (88a ff)), Socrates gets Cleinias to agree that wisdom is a kind of knowledge. He draws an analogy between wisdom and a carpenter’s knowledge of his trade or craft (technê), claiming that the successful carpenter must not only have proper tools but know how to use them. Here Socrates position seems to be that goods as health, wealth, and beauty, as well as the (moral) virtues of justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom (279a-c) are all subordinate to wisdom. Wisdom is a sort of knowledge about how best to use all the other goods. Without wisdom about when to apply these virtues (e.g. when to exercise self-control) each would be liable to misuse.

The second distinctive feature of Socrates’ thinking on the virtues is that he, in contrast with common Greek thought, seems to have maintained that there is strictly only one virtue. This is sometimes called his doctrine of the unity of the virtues. In Plato’s dialogue, the Protagoras, Protagoras defends the view that the virtues are distinct traits so that a person can possess one virtue without possessing the others. (329d-e). Protagoras’ view is that of the common Greek: some people are courageous without being wise, and some are wise without being courageous (and so on). Socrates argues against this, maintaining that apparently separate virtues of piety, self-control, wisdom, courage and justice are in some way one and the same thing – a particular type of knowledge. His view seems to be that distinctions between virtues are nothing other than distinctions between different spheres of application of the same state of knowledge. Given this unity of the virtues, it follows that a person cannot possess one virtue independently of the others: if he possesses one, he must possess them all. Both Plato, in the Republic, and Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics subscribe to variations of this idea. In Aristotle’s version only the practically wise person will be capable of fully fledge virtue.

Plato’s view of virtue may be understood as a development of Socrates’. In his greatest work, the Republic, Plato raises the question of why virtues are valuable to their possessors. He argues that virtues are states of the soul, and that the just person is someone whose soul is ordered and harmonious, with all its parts functioning properly to the person’s benefit. By contrast, Plato argues, the unjust person’s soul, without the virtues, is chaotic and at war with itself, so that even if he were able to satisfy most of his desires, his lack of inner harmony and unity thwart any chance he has of achieving eudaimonia.

Aristotle’s account of the virtues, as presented in the Nicomachean ethics is by far the most influential of the ancient accounts of the virtues. The fact that many modern thinkers consider themselves to be ‘neo-Aristotelians’ is testimony to this fact. Aristotle see the virtues as flexible dispositions of character, acquired by moral education training, which are displayed in action as well as patterns of cognitive and emotional reaction. This basic account of virtue is accepted by most modern philosophers and will be considered in detail in the next section.

The medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas developed and extended Aristotle’s theory into a Christian context, introducing another category of virtues called ‘theological’ virtues. The three main theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, have God as their immediate object. According to Aquinas, non-Christian people can not display theological virtues, although they can manifest the other non-theological virtues such as courage. However, Aquinas seems to hold that all the non-theological virtues, for example, those recognized by the Greeks are subordinate and grounded in the virtue called charity, which is theological virtue. (For other influential contributions to the theory of virtue, see the articles on Hume, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.)

Interest in the concept of virtue and ancient ethical theory more generally has enjoyed a tremendous revival in the twentieth century. This is largely as a result of Elizabeth Anscombe’s article “Modern Moral Philosophy” which argues that duty based conceptions of morality are incoherent for they are based on the idea of a law but without a lawgiver. Her point is roughly that a system of morality conceived along the lines of the Ten Commandments, as a system of rules for action, depends on someone having actually made these rules. However, in the modern climate, which is unwilling to accept that morality depends on God in this way, a rule-based conception of morality is stripped of its metaphysical foundation. Anscombe recommends a return the virtue ethical theories of the ancients, particularly Aristotle, which ground morality in the interests and well being of human moral agents (eudaimonia), and can do so without appeal to any questionable metaphysic.

Virtue in Chinese philosophy

Virtue (translated as "te" 德) is also an important concept in Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism and Taoism. Chinese virtues include humanity, xiao usually translated as filial piety, and zhong meaning loyalty. One important normative value in much of Chinese thinking is that one's social status should be the result of the amount of virtue that one could demonstrate rather than by one's birth. In the Analects, Confucius stated that perfect virtue consists of the global practice of five things: gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

The nature of virtue

Contemporary understanding of the virtues shares much in common with Aristotle (see Nicomachean Ethics). Most modern thinkers adopt Aristotle’s view that virtues are flexible dispositions of character, which are displayed in specific types of actions, as well as cognitive and emotional reactions. This conception of virtue may be explained by considering its various components in turn.

Firstly, virtues are states of a person’s character. Judging someone to be (e.g.) courageous or wise is to make a judgment targeted at the character of a person rather than specific actions. We call actions right and wrong but when we say that another person is generous, we are making a claim about the moral worth of the person concerned. We are saying that he or she possesses a certain virtuous trait of character.

Secondly, a virtue is a dispositional state of a person’s of character. A disposition is a tendency to have certain responses in particular situations: responses such as emotions, perceptions, and actions. It is important to notice that the idea of a disposition is made out in terms of the situations in which certain characteristics would be displayed. To see this, consider the property of ‘fragility’. Fragility is a dispositional property: to say that a teacup is fragile is to say that it would be broken easily if it were dropped. Notice that this is described in terms of what would happen under certain conditions, which may not currently obtain. Similarly, to say of a person, e.g., the president, that he is a generous man, is to say more than he has behaved generously in the past. If he has the virtue of generosity, then he would behave generously in situations in which generosity is called for. When we ascribe a virtue to a person we assume that this attribute is so ingrained a part of him that he will respond in the same manner in a variety of different circumstances. Virtues are then deep dispositions of a flexible kind. In dealing with the virtues, one is, then, dealing with enduring patterns of response, which characterise a person when he or she is in situations of a given type.

Thirdly, the possession of a virtue entails a wide range of responses including actions, perceptions, attitudes and emotions. In this vein, Rosalind Hursthouse helpfully characterises virtues as multi-track dispositions. She says: “A virtue is not merely a tendency to do what is morally desirable or required. Rather, it is to have a complex mindset. This includes emotions, choices, desires, attitudes, interests, and sensibilities” (Hursthouse 2003). One important point to notice here is that is possible to do the right thing (always do the right thing) even without possessing the virtues. A person who fully possesses a virtue is effortlessly moved by the range of considerations pertinent to the situation in which he or she acts, and displays the emotions particular to the virtue in question. This is to recognise a distinction drawn by Aristotle between the virtuous person and the strong-willed person. Someone who is strong willed acts correctly but has to control his desires and emotions, which are not properly tuned to the display of the virtue in question. The main point is that full virtue requires a harmony between one’s actions and emotions and attitudes. Someone who does not possess this harmony may act correctly but will nonetheless fail to be (fully) virtuous.

Main differences between Aristotle’s conception of virtue and modern conceptions

These, then, are some main features of virtue which modern thinkers tend to take from Aristotle. But in what ways do modern accounts diverge from Aristotle?

The scope of virtue

The word Greek word arête is usually translated into English as ‘virtue’. One problem with this translation is that we are inclined to understand virtue in a moral sense, which is not always what the ancients had in mind. For a Greek, arête pertains to all sorts of qualities we would not regard as relevant to ethics, such as, for example, physical beauty. So it is important to bear in mind that the sense of ‘virtue’ operative in ancient ethics is not exclusively moral and includes more than states such as (e.g.) wisdom, courage and compassion. The sense of virtue which arête connotes would include saying something like ‘speed is virtue in a horse’, or ‘height is a virtue in a basketball player’. Doing anything well requires virtue, and each characteristic activity (such as carpentry, flute playing, etc) has its own set or virtues. The alternative translation ‘excellence’ might be helpful in conveying this general meaning of the term. The moral virtues are simply a subset of the general sense in which a human being is capable of functioning well or excellently. So Aristotle’s conception of virtue tends to be a lot broader than a modern understanding.

Teleological underpinning

This idea of excellences and of particular tasks and functions to which each organism is best suited, is particularly important for Aristotle. His basic thought is that well- being (eudaimonia) will only be attained if a creature develops its capacities properly. The virtues reflect the proper development of human beings. Aristotle holds that rationality is peculiar to human beings so that the function (ergon) of a human being will involve the exercise of his rational capacities to the highest degree. (However, he also recognises that human beings are not entirely rational but also possess irrational appetites and partly rational emotions.) This move in Aristotle, namely, arguing that human beings have a particular function (ergon) is central to his project: Aristotle holds virtues to be perfections of a human organism. States are therefore grounded as virtues essentially as a result of natural biological facts about human agents, about the sort of creatures which we are. Aristotle’s ethics is a version of what has come to be called ‘perfectionism’ (see the article on teleological ethics).

Historical variation

Aristotle’s presentation of the virtues does not seem to take account of the fact that what counts as a virtue is influenced by historical factors. A particularly conspicuous example of this is that Aristotle regards a character trait called megalopsuchia, ‘greatness of soul’, as a virtue, whereas we would likely not do so. Megalopsuchia is a ‘virtue’ which pertains to being able to conduct oneself well in social circumstances. So Aristotle counts something as a virtue which most moderns would not. Conversely, Aristotle does not include kindness amongst his list of the virtues and so leave out one of the central Christian virtues. This links up with the point already noted, viz., that Thomas Aquinas held that faith hope and love are peculiarly Christian virtues. So it seems that there is historical variation in what states are counted as virtues. Modern virtue theory attempts to take account of this fact.

The unity of the virtues

As already discussed, Socrates held that all virtues are strictly one state of knowledge, and that differences in virtues simply pick out different contexts in which a person may have to apply this knowledge. This is the doctrine of the unity of the virtues. It follows from this that people either have all the virtues or don’t have any of them. Aristotle diverges from Socrates in that he recognises different virtues, but he does endorse the Socratic idea that one cannot have one virtue without having them all. This is because of the emphasis he places on the intellectual virtue of phronesis or “practical wisdom”. Aristotle maintains that one cannot properly possess any of the virtues unless one has developed practical wisdom. Conversely, if one has practical wisdom, then one has all the virtues.

Although Aristotle’s account of phronesis continues to be very influential in modern thinking about virtues, most contemporary thinkers will not recognise the strong sort of dependency between (e.g.) courage and practical wisdom. (For more on phronesis, see Broadie (1991).

Virtue Ethics

Many philosophers today follow the ancient ethical thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, in situating virtue at the centre of their ethical theories. As a result, Virtue ethics has come to be recognized as an alternative to utilitarianism and Kantian ethics in the sphere of normative theory. In this section, the main differences between virtue ethics and utilitarianism/Kantian ethics will be discussed.

The subject matter of normative ethics is this: how ought one to live? Two subsidiary questions may be distinguished with this question. (1) What ought I to do? (What actions should I perform? Which actions are right and which ones wrong?) (2) What sort of person should I be? (Which traits of characters ought I to develop? Which traits of character are virtues, and which ones vices?) Since the time of the Enlightenment, most moral theorizing has focused on the first question. For instance, according to Classical Utilitarianism, one ought to do actions that promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Similarly, for Kant, one ought to act only on maxims that can consistently be willed as universal laws. By contrast, the primary focus of virtue ethics is not discrete actions but rather: What sort of person should I be, try to be, or want to be? The focus of this aspect of normative ethics is the agent’s character. Instead of asking questions about which actions are right and wrong, virtue ethics primarily looks at questions such as: (1) What is a virtuous person like? (2)What is a vicious person like? (3) What makes traits of character virtuous or vicious?

How exactly do these questions of virtue ethics differ from the question of what one ought to do? Firstly, they have a different focus. Normative theories of right action focus on discrete actions. They are mainly interested in formulating decision procedures for making practical choices. In contrast, virtue ethics downplays rules, consequences and particular acts. It places the focus on the kind of person who is acting. What is primary in virtue ethics is the notion of a good moral character.

Why virtue ethics?

Why have some contemporary thinkers held that virtue ethics provides a promising and in many cases superior ethical theory to the traditional utilitarian and Kantian accounts? The first main criticism which virtue ethicists tend to make of Kantianism and utilitarianism, is that they neglect the importance of moral motivation, or provide a distorted conception of moral motivation. Traditional theories of right action neglect or provide a distorted picture of the moral character of the actor. This charge is expressed by Kupperman as follows:

“It is easy to get the picture of an essentially faceless ethical agent who is equipped to make moral choices that lack connection with either the agent’s past or future” (Kupperman, cited in Pence 1990, p. 252).

To understand the idea expressed here, consider that for the classical utilitarian, what really matters is that one does an action bringing increasing aggregate happiness. The Principle of Utility is a criterion of rightness. One’s motive in acting has absolutely nothing to do with the rightness of an action. “It is theoretically possible that a person could, robot-like, always act so as to maximise utility” (Pence 1990). According to the virtue ethicist, in ignoring the importance of the agent who acts, the nature of the agent who is doing the act, classical utilitarianism gives an incomplete account of moral life.

In contrast with utilitarianism which divorces an agent’s motivation from right action, Kant does give motivation a central place in his theory of morality. In his view, the morally virtuous person is someone who is disposed to act from the motive of duty (see categorical imperative; Kant). But is this idea, of someone who always does the right thing, from the desire to do the right thing, an adequate and desirable picture of the moral agent? In this regard, Michael Stocker presents the following example:

But, now, suppose you are in a hospital … when Smith comes in once again. You are convinced more than over that he is a fine fellow and a real friend… But he says that he always tries to do what he thinks is his duty… And he is telling the literal truth: that it is not essentially because of you that he came… but because he thought it was his duty… [Stocker 1976]

Stocker says about Smith’s behaviour: “Surely there is something lacking here– and lacking in moral merit or value” (cited in Rachels 2003, p. 185). None of us wants to be treated by a friend the way Smith’s friend is treated by Smith. Now although Stocker is right that there is something ‘lacking’ in Smith’s behaviour, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with a moral deficiency. Smith’s deficiency resides in the broader sphere of personal merit, of knowing how to be, and being a good friend. But now consider other occasions where one ought naturally to be moved by sympathy, fellow-feeling, or affection for a particular person. Consider the following example:

Roger is trundling down road perusing the newspaper when an old lady walking across the street close by, trips, drops her packages, and falls to the ground. When Roger walks by, he helps her, but the only motive he has is the belief that morality requires the action of him. He thinks: “I suppose it is my duty to help this old lady”…

The virtue ethicist will take this sort of argument as encapsulating the following argument against Kantian ethics. (1) If an ethical theory holds that someone who is so dependent on the motive of duty could still qualify as perfectly moral person, then this ethical theory is seriously flawed or incomplete. (2) Kantian Ethics maintains this. A person could be entirely lacking in every human feeling, always be motivated by duty, and be regarded as a morally laudable person. (3) Therefore, Kantian ethics is seriously flawed or incomplete. There are many occasions when someone should be moved to kindness, sympathy, or compassion. If someone is not moved to compassion or sympathy when encountered with great suffering, the person does not seem to be a fully worthy moral agent.

Virtue Ethics is concerned with the development of good character traits, such as loyalty, compassion and kindness. By focussing on traits of character that morally good people possess, Virtue Ethics aims to provide a more accurate account of the moral person. The Virtue theorist maintains that a morally good person is someone who is moved by the appropriate inclinations at the appropriate times, e.g. kindness when it is needed, courage when it is needed, and so on.

Two conceptions of virtue ethics

Moderate virtue ethics

One way of understanding the relevance of virtue ethics is in terms of the deficiencies in other normative theories. The virtue theorist may be interpreted as arguing that Utilitarian and Kantian theories neglect or distort the notion of morally admirable motivation. They give an inadequate account of the morally good (or virtuous) person. This raises a question as to whether virtue ethics should be understood as supplementing the other normative theories of right action, or whether it competes directly with them. I shall call a virtue theory which aims at a supplementary role, moderate virtue ethics, and that which bills itself as a competitor to (e.g.) Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, as radical virtue ethics. (This distinction is drawn from Rachels (2003)).

On the moderate conception, the importance of virtue theory is to provide an account of moral motivation, of moral character, that will complement other normative theories of right action. Moderate virtue ethics does not try to tell us what to do. It plays a complementary role. Principles of right action are still understood as justified by Kantian or Utilitarian theories. For example, a prohibition on slavery may be justified by Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative. Act always so that you treat persons … as ends-in-themselves and not as means only. The moderate view of virtue ethics does not to justify moral principles. Rather, the moderate virtue ethicist may be understood as saying that a person with the virtue of (e.g.) sensitivity is more likely to recognise when someone is being treated only as a means and not as an end. The theory of right and theory of virtue are complementary.

Radical virtue ethics

Some virtue theorists have maintained that virtue ethics is able to provide principled guidance about what we should do. This is to say the virtue ethics can also function as a theory of right action. If this were so, then Virtue Ethics would then be a complete moral theory. It could help us ascertain what we ought to do, and describe the valuable states of character which we want to develop. A virtue theory of this type will be termed radical virtue ethics.

Radical virtue ethicists argue that right actions may be defined in terms of virtuous states of character. For example, an action is morally right if and only if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances. The idea here would be that it is right do x because that would be honest. Or it is right to do x because that would be courageous. So according to the radical virtue theorist, principles of right action may be generated and explained in terms of virtuous states of character.

Objections to radical virtue ethics

One objection commonly made against radical virtue Ethics is that it is not able to properly explain why a state is a virtue without invoking moral rules. James Rachels (2003, p. 189) asks us to “…consider an occasion where a person is tempted to lie, perhaps because lying offers some advantage in a situation”. According to radical virtue ethics, this person ought not to lie because doing so would be dishonest. But, Rachels asks, “what does it mean to be dishonest?” (Rachels 2003, p. 189) “Isn’t an honest person just someone who follows rules such as “Do not lie?” (Rachels). Rachels point here seems to be that there is no way of making sense of a virtue of honesty without appealing of moral principles. If this were so, then moral principles are more fundamental than virtuous states of character, and cannot be explained in terms of them.

Virtue and vice

The opposite of a virtue is a vice. One way of organizing the vices is as the corruption of the virtues. Thus the cardinal vices would be folly, venality, cowardice and lust. The Christian theological vices would be blasphemy, despair, and hatred.

However, as Aristotle noted, the virtues can have several opposites. Virtues can be considered the mean between two extremes. For instance, both cowardice and rashness are opposites of courage; contrary to prudence are both over-caution and insufficient caution. A more "modern" virtue, tolerance, can be considered the mean between the two extremes of narrow-mindedness on the one hand and soft-headedness on the other. Vices can therefore be identified as the opposites of virtues, but with the caveat that each virtue could have many different opposites, all distinct from each other.

Capital Vices and Virtues

The seven capital vices or "seven deadly sins" suggest a classification of vices and were enumerated by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The Catechism of the Catholic Church mentions them as "capital sins which Christian experience has distinguished, following St. John Cassian and St. Gregory the Great."[1] "Capital" here means that these sins stand at the head (Latin caput) of the other sins which proceed from them, e.g., theft proceeding from avarice and adultery from lust.

These vices are pride, envy, avarice, anger, lust, gluttony, and sloth. The opposite of these vices are the following virtues: meekness, humility, generosity, tolerance, chastity, moderation, and zeal (meaning enthusiastic devotion to a good cause or an ideal). These virtues are not exactly equivalent to the Seven Cardinal or Theological Virtues mentioned above. Instead these capital vices and virtues can be considered the "building blocks" that rule human behaviour. Both are acquired and reinforced by practice and the exercise of one induces or facilitates the others.

Ranked in order of severity as per Dante's Divine Comedy (in the Purgatorio), the seven deadly vices are:

1. Pride or Vanity — an excessive love of self (holding self out of proper position toward God or fellows; Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor"). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride is referred to as superbia.
2. Avarice (covetousness, Greed) — a desire to possess more than one has need or use for (or, according to Dante, "excessive love of money and power"). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, avarice is referred to as avaritia.
3. Lust — excessive sexual desire. Dante's criterion was "lust detracts from true love". In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, lust is referred to as luxuria.
4. Wrath or Anger — feelings of hatred, revenge or even denial, as well as punitive desires outside of justice (Dante's description was "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite"). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrath is referred to as ira.
5. Gluttony — overindulgence in food, drink or intoxicants, or misplaced desire of food as a pleasure for its sensuality ("excessive love of pleasure" was Dante's rendering). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, gluttony is referred to as gula.
6. Envy or jealousy; resentment of others for their possessions (Dante: "Love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs"). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, envy is referred to as invidia.
7. Sloth or Laziness; idleness and wastefulness of time allotted. Laziness is condemned because others have to work harder and useful work can not get done. (also accidie, acedia)

Several of these vices interlink, and various attempts at causal hierarchy have been made. For example, pride (love of self out of proportion) is implied in gluttony (the over-consumption or waste of food), as well as sloth, envy, and most of the others. Each sin is a particular way of failing to love God with all one's resources and to love fellows as much as self. The Scholastic theologians developed schema of attribute and substance of will to explain these sins.

The 4th century Egyptian monk Evagrius Ponticus defined the sins as deadly "passions," and in Eastern Orthodoxy, still these impulses are characterized as being "Deadly Passions" rather than sins. Instead, the sins are considered to invite or entertain these passions. In the official Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992 by Pope John Paul II, these seven vices are considered moral transgression for Christians and the virtues should complement the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes as the basis for any true Morality.

References

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• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa contra Gentiles (A Treatise against the Unbelievers)
• --------, Summa Theologiae (A Treatise on Theology), Parts I [1265-8], I-II [1271-2], II-II [c.1271], III [1272-3]
• Aristotle (c. mid 4th century B.C.E.) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W.D. Ross, revised by J. Urmson, ed. and revised by J. Barnes in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Broadie, S. (1991) Ethics with Aristotle, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote (eds.), 1997, Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Foot, Philippa (1978), Virtues and Vices, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Foot, Philippa (2001), Natural Goodness, Oxford, Clarendon Press
• Hume, D. (1751) "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals," in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 3rd edn, 1975.
• Hursthouse, Rosalind, 1999, On Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• McDowell, John, 1979, "Virtue and Reason", Monist 62: 331-50
• McDowell, John, 1980, "The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics", reprinted in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, 359-76
• McDowell, John,1995, "Two Sorts of Naturalism", in Virtues and Reasons, R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence and W.Quinn (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 149-79
• Nietzsche, F. (1887) Zur Genealogie der Moral, trans. C. Diethe, On the Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• Plato (c.395-387 B.C.E.) Gorgias, trans. D.J. Zeyl, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.
• Plato (c.380-367 B.C.E.) Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C. Reeve, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.(His fullest account, political as well as ethical, of the nature and value of the virtues.)
• Rachels, J. (2003) The Elements of Moral Philosophy, McGraw-Hill.
• Stocker, Michael, 1976, "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories", Journal of Philosophy 14:453-66
• Trianosky, Gregory Velazco y., 1990, "What is Virtue ethics All About?", American Philosophical Quarterly, 27: 335-44, reprinted in Statman, 1997a
• Williams, B. (1972) Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, New York: Harper & Row.

External links

• Cardinal, Contrary, Heavenly and other Virtues
• The Four Virtues
• The Virtues Project
• Virtues Project International
• VirtueScience.com
• Virtue Magazine
• Catholic Encyclopedia "Cardinal Virtues"
• Summa Theologica "Second Part of the Second Part"

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