Chapter Fourteen - Aristotle, Aquinas, Anscombe, and the new virtue ethics

Summary

Contemporary analytic work on virtue covers a wide range of views, relying upon divergent historical sources, and has spawned several regions of lively disputation. The author concentrates on work that understands itself as responsive to Elizabeth Anscombe's call for a return to Aristotle, using both Aristotle and Aquinas, with no express explicit commitment to a body of revealed doctrine. The author uses Anscombe's writings as anchor points throughout. The author focuses on the centerpiece of Anscombe's challenge: the claim that mainstream Anglophone moral philosophy no longer understood moral prohibitions, and that this prevented philosophers from making progress in ethics. The author has canvassed various aspects of analytic virtue ethics produced in response to Anscombe's call - work that draws from both Aristotle and Aquinas. Anscombe took it that developing an account of moral prohibition was crucial for analytic ethics.