Virtue, Character and Situation

Virtue, Character and Situation

Philosophers have recently argued that traditional discussions of virtue and character presuppose an account of behaviour that experimental psychology has shown to be false. Behaviour does not issue from global traits such as prudence, temperance, courage, or fairness, they claim, but from local traits such as sailing-in-rough-weather-with-friends-courage and office-party-temperance. The data e...

Leader character, ethos, and virtue: Individual and collective considerations

Available online 19 August 2011 We advance the discussion that each leader has a moral component that can be defined as character that is distinct from values, personality, and other similar constructs. We seek to clarify what underpins forms of character-based leadership and exemplary leader behaviors. We build out our previous discussion (Hannah & Avolio, this issue) that the locus of charact...

Against Moral Character Evaluations: the Undetectability of Virtue and Vice

I defend the epistemic thesis that evaluations of people in terms of their moral character as good, bad, or intermediate are almost always epistemically unjustified. (1) Because most people are fragmented (they would behave deplorably in many and admirably in many other situations), one’s prior probability that any given person is fragmented should be high. (2) Because one’s information about s...

Talking Virtue: professionalism and virtue ethics

The twentieth century phenomenon of professionalism had a major impact on the economy of nation states and has been recognised as a key element of post-industrial societies. As an anointed class, professionals reserved the right to prescribe their own roles and responsibilities. Critics of professional interests, however, have described professionals’ own definition of their roles and responsib...

Phronesis And Virtue of Character: The Making of Morally Right Goals in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics