The Value of the Virtues

Brian McElwee

Utilitas, 2015, vol. 27, issue 1, 61-81

Abstract: I argue that debates about virtue are best settled by clearly distinguishing two questions: (a)What sort of character trait is there reason to cultivate?(b)What sort of character trait is there reason (morally) to admire? With this distinction in mind, I focus on recent accounts of what consequentialists ought to say about virtue, arguing that: (1)The instrumentalist view of virtue accepted by many prominent consequentialists should not be accepted as the default view for consequentialists to hold.(2)The main rival view, the appropriate response account, not only avoids the major objection facing the instrumental view, but gives the correct diagnosis of where it goes wrong.(3)Two objections that seem to face the appropriate response account can in fact be convincingly met in ways which leave it looking stronger.(4)The appropriate response account is also to be preferred to a disjunctive view or a mixed view.

Date: 2015
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