Character and Moral Choice in the Cultivation of Virtue

Abstract

It is central to virtue ethics both that morally sound action follows from virtuous character, and that virtuous character is itself the product of habitual right judgement and choice: that, in short, we choose our moral characters. However, any such view may appear to encounter difficulty in those cases of moral conflict where an agent cannot simultaneously act (say) both honestly and sympathetically, and in which the choices of agents seem to favour the construction of different moral characters. This paper argues, against possible counter-arguments, for a view of virtue ethics which embraces the diversity of moral character.