8 - Virtue ethics

Summary

[We might] look for “norms” in human virtues: just as man has so many teeth, which is certainly not the average number of teeth men have, but is the number of teeth for the species, so perhaps the species man, regarded not just biologically, but from the point of view of the activity of thought and choice in regard to the various departments of life – powers and faculties and use of things needed – “has” such and such virtues: and this “man” with the complete set of virtues is the “norm”, as “man” with, e.g., a complete set of teeth is a norm.

(G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, in Geach & Gormally 2005: 188)

Introducing normative ethics

The central question of ethics, with which I began this book, is “How should life be lived?”. That question raises further questions about truth and falsity, subjectivity and objectivity, the meaning of ethical claims, and what the world has to be like for them to be capable of being true. These questions form the agenda of meta-ethics, which I have been pursuing in the previous three chapters especially.

The last of these meta-ethical questions was “What are we talking about when we make moral assertions?”. Among the possible ways of answering this, as we saw, are the views that the content of moral discourse is shaped by our nature as a zoological species (biological naturalism); by what contributes to our happiness (welfarist naturalism); by what reason tells us to do, think, or be (rationalism); and by what moral perception tells us to do, think, or be (intuitionism).