Abstract
In this chapter I consider two questions about action evaluation: (1) Is it the central task of normative ethics to concern itself with action evaluation?, and (2) When it does concern itself with action evaluation, should its focus be on developing an account of right and wrong action, as opposed to, say, good and bad (or virtuous and vicious) action? I argue that for virtue ethicists, the task of providing an account of right action is not of central importance, and that the strength of virtue ethics lies in the fact that it allows us to evaluate actions in terms of a rich aretaic vocabulary. In the second half of the chapter I propose a “relaxed” virtue-ethical account of right action, which denies that rightness is a particular quality shared by all actions appropriately referred to as “right,” and acknowledges that the meaning of “right action” differs from one context to another.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Utilitarianism, which claims that “its core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their effects” (Nathanson 2014). Similarly, and despite Kant’s emphasis on virtue and “the good will,” Kantian ethics is often introduced as a form of deontology, and hence as primarily concerned with defining right action in terms of duty or adherence to the moral law (see Jankowiak 2014).
- 2.
- 3.
This might seem a bit more cumbersome, but perhaps not entirely out of touch with how we do speak in everyday situations. When we hear someone praised for acting generously in making a large donation to charity, we might respond: “His action was certainly generous, but his motives were entirely selfish.” We could also say, “He did the right thing for the wrong reason,” and mean roughly the same thing by this, but for now I’m trying to see how far we can go with aretaic language.
- 4.
Richard Taylor is one of the very few exceptions.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
See Van Zyl 2007.
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van Zyl, L. (2020). Virtuous and Right Action: A Relaxed View. In: Halbig, C., Timmermann, F.U. (eds) Handbuch Tugend und Tugendethik. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-24467-5_7-1
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