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3 - Manners of Action
from Part I - Dimensions of Moral Conduct
Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Book:

Of Moral Conduct

Published online:

08 June 2023

Print publication:

22 June 2023, pp 39-54
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Summary

Ethics has tended to concentrate on (1) what we should do, (2) virtues of character, or (3) the importance of motivation in appraising actions. All three are ethically important. But there is a dimension of moral responsibility that should have a place beside obligations to act, virtues of character, and appraisals of actions in relation to their motivation. It is the manner of actions. This can be right or wrong, an object of intention, and behavior for a reason. Interpersonal relations are not a behavioral grid with fixed points representing only act-types. This chapter explores manners of action. The result is a wider conception of acting rightly than the common understanding on which (despite the adverb) it is simply doing the right thing; a partial account of how acting rightly figures in the content of intention; and a sketch of the moral dimensions of the manners in which we act.