| Abstract |
Ιn the field of modern moral philosophy, there are three dominant schools of thought, deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics. Ιn a somehow simplified manner, deontology can be defined as the school of thought that recognizes the moral validity of an action, when that action does not violate a moral rule. Ιn contrast to deontology, consequentialism names an action morally right, on the basis of its consequences. Having Kant for, deontology, and the utilitarian philosophers, for consequentialism, as their main advocates, these schools were the only choices in moral philosophy until the second half of the 20"' century. Since the 50's there has been a ever growing effort to create a third way, which bears the rather unfortunate name "virtue ethics", by writers who were not satisfied by the two already existing schools of thought. The supporters of virtue ethics claimed that their aim was the revival of Aristotelian morality, which was concerned with the overall character of man and not with individual actions.
Although the first generation of virtue ethicists aimed at presenting neo-Aristotelian moral theories, Aristotle was not the only philosophical basis of virtue ethics. Later thinkers, leaning towards moral sentimentalism wanted to connect virtue ethics with the 18"' century British tradition, that is the theory of moral sentiments proposed by Smith, Hutcheson and David Hume. Michael Slote is the most important thinker, when it comes to that. Another philosopher, who came in conflict with Aristotelian moral rationalism is Christine Swanton, using an interesting, although strange combination of Hume and Nietzsche in her The Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche and a more mainstream approach in Virtue Ethics: Α Pluralistίc View. Although the works of the aforementioned philosophers are of value, they will not be the focus of this study, since its aim is the consideration of the arguments of the first generation of virtue ethicists, whose main source of inspiration is Aristotle and whose arguments gave life to virtue theory as "the third way" in moral philosophy.
The main thinkers of the first generation are four. These four will be our focus. They are, namely, Elizabeth Anscombe, Rosalind Hursthouse, Philippa Foot and Alasdair Maclntyre. Anscombe was the first to "rebel" against, the until, then course of the analytic philosophy, by publishing an article in 1958, although it gained popularity much later. Rosalind Hursthouse is responsible for the modernization of Aristotle's ethics, so as it can be applied in daily life, especially in bioethics. Foot is the second of the four, after Hursthouse, in importance and her interest lies in metaethics, mainly. She also relies on Aristotle, although that is not always good, as it is made evident by her unwillingness to abandon teleology. Finally, Maclntyre is the most famous of the four,-since his body of work is not entirely about morality. Macintyre is a critic of the Enlightenrnent and, like Hursthouse, he presents a neo-Aristotelian theory as an altemative to the Kantians and the utilitarians.
Any critique of virtue theory would be meaningless, if we didn't proceed to take two actions. Firstly, we have to study and confirm that these theories are Aristotelian in nature, and not just a composition of modern theories with a pointless invocation of virtues. The failure to confirm something like that would prove that virtue ethics is merely a part of one of the two dominant schools of moral thought, the only difference being its focus on the virtues, which, by the way, are not ignored by the supporters of deontology and consequentialism. Secondly, we have to confirm that their critique of modern philosophers is truly based on the written work of those philosophers and it is not jυst a misinterpretation or a selective and out of context presentation of passages from their work.
If this study could be summarized in a sentence, then that would be: It is importance that the aforementioned thinkers draw attention to Aristotle, but they do it in a wrong way.
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Κριτική της αρεταϊκής θεωρίας στην βιοηθική
