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Virtue and Character

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

A. D. M. Walker
A. D. M. Walker
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

Moral theories which, like those of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas, give a central place to the virtues, tend to assume that as traits of character the virtues are mutually compatible so that it is possible for one and the same person to possess them all. This assumption—let us call it the compatibility thesis—does not deny the existence of painful moral dilemmas: it allows that the virtues may conflict in particular situations when considerations associated with different virtues favour incompatible courses of action, but holds that these conflicts occur only at the level of individual actions. Thus while it may not always be possible to do both what would be just and what would be kind or to act both loyally and honestly, it is possible to be both a kind and a just person and to have both the virtue of loyalty and the virtue of honesty.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 249 , July 1989 , pp. 349 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

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References

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24 For suggestive remarks in this connection, indicating a degree of independence between ‘principles of wrongdoing’ and ‘standards of vice’, see Trianowsky, Gregory W., ‘Supererogation, Wrongdoing and Vice: On the Autonomy of the Ethics of Virtue’, Journal of Philosophy 83, No. 1 (01 1986), especially 35–40Google Scholar, though I should not want to elaborate the distinction in the way Trianowsky does. See also Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), 141–142.Google Scholar

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26 I should like to thank Angela Walker and T. S. Champlin for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Renford Bambrough for editorial advice.