A Return to Virtue Ethics

The Turn Against Virtue Ethics

The Turn Against Virtue Ethics Socrates asked how should one live, and Aristotle replied that we should try to be virtuous people, with magnificent generosity, and bold but not heedless courage. This family of answers held until the Enlightenment, more or less, but as a general rule most people avoid virtue ethics today. Most practically, either of the two dominant moral approaches - deontology and consequentialism - will yield a fairly precise output to whatever input you feed in to it, in a way that virtue ethics does not. Aristotle stutters when faced with the trolley problem, Kant and Sing

related reading

• Deontology and virtue ethics as "effective theories" of consequentialist ethics — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Virtue Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyiep.utm.edu
• Loosening the grip of utilitarianismacotra.substack.com
• Alignment & Succession: Morality Lives in the Human Individualnosetgauge.com
• Why should ethical anti-realists do ethics? - Joe Carlsmithjoecarlsmith.com
• Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu
• Effective altruism in the garden of ends — EA Forumforum.effectivealtruism.org
• Twelve Virtues of Rationality — LessWronglesswrong.com
• How to be right about ethics when it mattersmorallawwithin.substack.com
• After Orthogonality: Virtue-Ethical Agency and AI Alignmentthegradient.pub
• After Virtue - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org