Has Virtue Ethics Sold Out?

Abstract

This chapter discusses a contemporary criticism of virtue ethics as focusing too much on providing a criterion of right action. I claim that the criticism is off the mark on a variety of fronts, including a misinterpretation of Anscombe, a misguided view that what is offered is a criterion of right action as opposed to a framework, and that what is offered is a criterion of morally right action in a suspect sense of “moral.” I show how the important deontic notions can have a place in virtue ethics. The chapter explores also further problems with the notion of rightness in ethics: the essential contestedness of even core concepts of rightness and both combinatorial and degree vagueness in the relation between the thick concepts and rightness.