Open AccessVirtue Ethics and Particularism
Author(s) -
Constantine Sandis
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
supplement to the proceedings of the aristotelian society/supplementary volume - aristotelian society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1467-8349
pISSN - 0309-7013
DOI - 10.1093/arisup/akab013
Subject(s) - virtue , action (physics) , epistemology , virtue ethics , character (mathematics) , focus (optics) , philosophy , sociology , environmental ethics , mathematics , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics , optics
Moral particularism is often conceived as the view that there are no moral principles. However, its most fêted accounts focus almost exclusively on rules regarding actions and their features. Such action-centred particularism is, I argue, compatible with generalism at the level of character traits. The resulting view is a form of particularist virtue ethics. This endorses directives of the form ‘Be X’ but rejects any implication that the relevant X-ness must therefore always count in favour of an action.