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Character and Moral Choice in the Cultivation of Virtue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2003

David Carr
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2003

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