Virtue ethics

By Crisp, Roger

Virtue ethics has its origin in the ancient world, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It has been revived following an article by G.E.M. Anscombe critical ...

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics has its origin in the ancient world, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It has been revived following an article by G. E. M. ...

Moral luck

By Statman, Daniel

The term ‘moral luck’ was introduced by Bernard Williams in 1976 to convey the idea that moral status is, to a large extent, a matter of luck. For ...

Virtues and vices

By Hurka, Thomas

The concepts of virtue and vice identify a distinctive set of goods and evils, ones that are aspects of human excellence unlike, say, the values of feeling pleasure ...

Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919–2001)

G.E.M. Anscombe (1919–2001) is recognized as one of the most brilliant philosophers of the twentieth century. She is also well known as the translator and editor of Wittgenstein’s ...

Impartiality

By Cottingham, John

On the one hand, most of us feel that we are permitted, even required, to give special consideration to the interests of ourselves and our loved ones; on ...

Virtue epistemology

By Zagzebski, Linda

‘Virtue epistemology’ is the name of a class of theories that analyse fundamental epistemic concepts such as justification or knowledge in terms of properties of persons rather than ...

Moral psychology

By Slote, Michael

Moral psychology as a discipline is centrally concerned with psychological issues that arise in connection with the moral evaluation of actions. It deals with the psychological presuppositions of ...

Ethics and psychology

By Doris, John M.; Stich, Stephen P.

Psychological research promises substantive contributions to philosophical ethics. Arguments purporting to show that empirical considerations are of sharply limited relevance to ethical reflection, such as those commonly associated ...

Moral particularism

By Crisp, Roger

Moral particularism is a broad set of views which play down the role of general moral principles in moral philosophy and practice. Particularists stress the role of examples ...

Kantian ethics

By O'Neill, Onora

Kantian ethics originates in the ethical writings of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), which remain the most influential attempt to vindicate universal ethical principles that respect the dignity and equality ...

Virtue epistemology

‘Virtue epistemology’ is the name of a class of theories that focus epistemic evaluation on good epistemic properties of persons rather than on properties of beliefs. The former ...

Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919–2001)

By Thompson, Michael

Elizabeth Anscombe has contributed to all principal areas of philosophy, most influentially to ethics and the philosophy of mind. She is the founder of contemporary action theory, and ...

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929–)

Alasdair MacIntyre has contributed to the diverse fields of social, moral and political philosophy. He is one of the leading proponents of a virtue ethical approach in moral ...

Confucian philosophy, Chinese

By Cua, A.S.

Chinese Confucian philosophy is primarily a set of ethical ideas oriented toward practice. Characteristically, it stresses the traditional boundaries of ethical responsibility and dao, or the ideal ...

Vulnerability and finitude

By O'Neill, Onora

Power has always been a central category of political thought and theory; its counterparts, powerlessness or vulnerability, and more generally finitude, have seemingly been much less discussed. Yet ...

Universalism in ethics

By O'Neill, Onora

The claim that ethical standards or principles are universal is an ancient commonplace of many ethical traditions and of contemporary political life, particularly in appeals to universal human ...

Kantian ethics

Kantian ethics originates in the ethical writings of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), which remain the most influential attempt to vindicate universal ethical principles that respect the dignity and equality ...

Mencius (4th century BC)

By Van Norden, Bryan W.

Mencius (Mengzi) was a Chinese Confucian philosopher, best known for his claim that human nature is good. He is probably the single most influential philosopher in the Chinese ...

Right and good

By Larmore, Charles

‘Right’ and ‘good’ are the two basic terms of moral evaluation. In general, something is ‘right’ if it is morally obligatory, whereas it is morally ‘good’ if it ...

Cheng

By Ivanhoe, Philip J.

In early Confucian writings, cheng describes the quality of authentically realizing or ‘completing’ a given thing’s true nature. It appears together with xin (trustworthiness), a character ...

Technology and ethics

By Miller, Glen; Mitcham, Carl

Research on ethics and technology investigates how technologies (human-made physical entities, often called tools or artifacts) directly or indirectly affect voluntary human behaviour. The scope of these studies ...

Integrity

By Davis, Ann

The possession (or lack) of integrity is something that all morally serious people care about and think important. In both personal relationships and public life, to describe someone ...

Applied ethics

By Almond, Brenda

Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It therefore includes medical ethics, environmental ethics, and evaluation of ...

Murdoch, Iris (1919–99)

By Norgaard, Thomas

Iris Murdoch was an Oxford moral philosopher and a prolific novelist. Her philosophy was marked by a strong sense of the moral significance of our inner lives: the ...