What is the relevance of ancient discussions of character and the
good life to contemporary ethical and political reflection? Starting
approximately 25 years ago with the publication of Alasdair
MacIntyre’s After Virtue, an influential movement in philosophical
and religious ethics has developed that advocates making the study
of character, virtue, culture, and tradition central in ethics, and
arguably politics as well. While originally focused on “retrieving”
pre-modern notions of virtue from ancient Western philosophy, later
proponents of this movement have attended to similar concerns in
Christian and Confucian traditions, modern Western figures such as
Hume and Dewey, democratic writers such as Walt Whitman, and
contemporary versions of a feminist ethics of care. Part of what
makes virtue ethics fascinating is the way its champions range
across personal and historical narrative, philosophical argument,
cultural criticism, intra- and inter-religious polemic, and
political debate. This course will explore this varied landscape,
noting both high and low points. Main topics of debate will include:
divergent assessments of the moral resources of the modern West; the
relations of “human nature,” tradition, and ethics; whether or not
there might be a single, universal list of the most important
virtues and vices; advantages and disadvantages for ethics of
focusing on character and virtue rather than rights, duties, and
consequences; whether aristocratic and/or patriarchal accounts of
the good life can be made congruent with modern commitments to
democracy and the equal dignity of women and men.