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Aristotle (c. mid 4th century) Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
W.D.
Ross, revised by J.
Urmson, ed. and revised by J.
Barnes in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. (Generally accepted as the most considered statement of his position. For secondary works, see Broadie (1991) and Sherman (1989) below.) |
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Baier, A.C. (1991) A Progress of Sentiments: reflections on Hume’s Treatise, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (A thoughtful consideration of Hume’s moral philosophy, useful on the relations between virtue and sentiment.) |
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Broadie, S. (1991) Ethics with Aristotle, New York: Oxford University Press. (A notably subtle and philosophically helpful commentary.) |
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Crisp, R. and Slote, M. (1997) Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A helpful collection of papers.) |
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Flanagan, O. (1991) Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Relates the moral psychology of various ethical positions to empirical material.) |
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French, P.A., Uehling, T.E. and Wettstein, H.K. (1988) Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (A useful collection of papers on contemporary virtue theory.) |
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Hume, D. (1751) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed.
L.A.
Selby-Bigge, revised by P.H.
Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 3rd edn, 1975. (A more compact, though also less searching, account than book III of A Treatise on Human Nature (1739–40). Appendix IV discusses the idea of ‘moral’ virtue.) |
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MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (An influential, negative, assessment of modern moral ideas in contrast to Aristotelian and medieval virtue theory.) |
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Mandeville, B. (1714) The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed.
F.B.
Kaye, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1988. (The work was first intended as a political satire, but has been seen as offering a serious case for private vices turned into public benefits.) |
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Nietzsche, F. (1886) Jenseits von Gut und Böse, trans.
R.J.
Hollingdale, Beyond Good and Evil, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990. (Considers, among many other things, the ‘faith in opposing values’.) |
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Nietzsche, F. (1887) Zur Genealogie der Moral, trans.
C.
Diethe, On the Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. (A powerfully influential study, phenomenological rather than historical, of moral values – including, importantly, the passion for truthfulness which motivates the work itself.) |
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Plato (c.395–387) Gorgias, trans.
D.J.
Zeyl, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987. (His most dramatic and radical enquiry into scepticism about the virtues.) |
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Plato (c.380–367) Republic, trans.
G.M.A.
Grube, revised by C.D.C.
Reeve, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992. (His fullest account, political as well as ethical, of the nature and value of the virtues.) |
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Sherman, N. (1989) The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (A useful philosophical and interpretative discussion.) |
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Westberg, D. (1994) Right Practical Reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (A discussion of practical reason and virtue in Aquinas.) |