Target-Centered Virtue Ethics

Smith, N.

doi:10.1007/978-3-658-24466-8_23

Cited by 13 publications

References 24 publications

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Love and its Place in Virtue

Swanton

2024

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The fundamental claim of the book is that love is central to virtue. Beginning with an account of love it argues that there are many criteria for love which feature in various ways in the different forms of love. Central is the distinction between relational love between individuals and lovingness (in its various forms) as a fundamental emotional orientation towards the world as a whole (a Grundstimmung). Central too is the distinction between love as an emotion and virtuous forms of love. How love features in virtue in general, including virtues which are not virtues of love, is the main theme. The book discusses “foundational” loves (universal love, self-love, and dwelling love), some of the impartial virtues of love, and the relation between love and justice, arguing that justice should be loving. The major ideas in the book have been inspired by a number of great philosophers, notably Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

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Love and its Place in Virtue

Swanton

2024

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Introduction

Swanton

2024

Love and Its Place in Virtue

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This book links together an account of love with virtue ethics. The overall moral theoretic framework presupposed is a form of virtue ethics; specifically target centred virtue ethics. It is a form of virtue ethics because the thick virtue concepts are deemed central to ethics and notions of rightness and excellence are understood in terms of virtuousness (whether of action, motive, or character). It is a form of target centred virtue ethics because what makes actions right, feelings appropriate, and traits of character virtues, is understood through the notion of the targets of the virtues. The targets of virtue are their aims, goals, or point and function in a life well lived. The modern development of virtue ethics as a moral theory has gone through several phases. I identify five, of which the most significant is the first, the wrenching away of ethics from what Williams called ‘morality that peculiar institution’ to the prioritizing of the thick concepts. In this work I contribute to the latest phase, a phase where one presupposes a type of virtue ethics (in my case the target centred virtue ethics already developed) and giving that view some normative content (an account of the place of love in virtue).

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Love

Swanton

2024

Love and Its Place in Virtue

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This chapter focuses on basic characteristics of relational love—love between a lover and a beloved. Relational love is our usual notion of love but there is another aspect of love, what I call ‘lovingness’ (Chapter 2). The analysis of love will have the following broad theoretical features: The notion of love has multiple criteria of application such that love can be understood not merely as susceptible to rival conceptions but to rival concepts. These criteria of application are combinatorially vague. Love is an essentially contested concept. Love is a prototype concept. The relative importance of the various criteria of love is exhibited by investigating the varying roles they play in the multifarious virtues where love in some form is salient. No one criterion of love is deemed to be more important than another in all contexts and all forms of love.

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Target-Centered Virtue Ethics

Cited by 13 publications

References 24 publications

Love and its Place in Virtue

Love and its Place in Virtue

Introduction

Love

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