moral psychology is an important part of ethics. some of the recent interpreters of nietzsche’s philosophy have tried to elaborate a nietzschean naturalistic moral psychology based on his remarks and pose it against other positions in moral psychology, especially the kantian one with its fundamental claim that third-person accounts of moral psychology have no bearing on a morality which purport...

In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe argued that the moral vocabulary does not correspond to any concept in Aristotelian ethics, it derives from a confused response ethics of divine command, and is literally meaningless. This essay contends was wrong. Morality corresponds Aristotle’s general sense “justice,” which complete virtue relation others. But Anscombe’s question remains: what for an a...

Because people often act out of character, some have suggested that character traits do not exist or that they have a negligible impact on our actions. It is situational factors, they argue, that are the primary determinants of our actions, for even minute and irrelevant details of situations have a significant effect on our behavior. Proponents of this view (situationists) suggest that numerou...

In understanding fully persons' moral predicaments, a core component of forming perceptual judgments, nurses may need to shift the epistemology of their practice from instrumental reasoning, or means-ends thinking, integrating a virtue-based practical reasoning. A bearing witness that achieves understanding of clients' moral qualities is attained through the articulation of nurses' self-identit...

Despite tendencies to compete for a prime place in moral theory, neither virtue ethics nor the four principles approach should claim to be superior to, or logically prior to, the other. Together they provide a more adequate account of the moral life than either can offer on its own. The virtues of principlism are clarity, simplicity and (to some extent) universality. These are well illustrated ...

Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common with Western forms of universalist consequentialism. Śāntideva, in particular, endorses a strong version of agent-neutrality, claims that compassionate agents should violate Buddhist moral commitments when doing so would produce good results, praises radical altruism, uses a critique of the self to sup...

The ethical problem of privacy lies at the core of computer ethics and cyber ethics discussions. The extensive use of personal data in digital networks poses a serious threat to the user’s right of privacy not only at the level of a user’s data integrity and security but also at the level of a user’s identity and freedom. In normative ethical theory the need for an informational self-determinis...

In this paper, I reconstruct Alasdair MacIntyre’s aretaic, practical philosophy, drawing out its implications for professional ethics in general and the practice of teaching in particular. After reviewing the moral theory as a whole, I examine MacIntyre’s notion of internal goods. Defined within the context of practices, such goods give us reason to reject the very idea of applied ethics. Being...

traditionally associated with Aristotle. It is written by an academic philosopher and a psychiatrist. ‘Virtue ethics’ holds that right conduct is founded on traits of character rather than adherence to rules, although these may also have their place. Such traits can be developed by training and practice (habituation). Having been eclipsed for some time by the rival approaches of consequentialis...