The exemplary and the right. Contemporary virtue ethics, action guidance, and action assessment

Abstract

In this paper, I will account for the importance of the notion of exemplarity within the contemporary virtue-­ethical debate, both in its classic formulation (e.g., Hursthouse 1999) and in the recent exemplarist moral theory advanced by Linda T. Zagzebski (2015;; 2017). Despite their differences, which I will discuss extensively, both theories are centered on a characterization of an exemplary virtuous agent that serves as a standard for determining what, in a given situation, is right, wrong, dutiful and forbidden. The first two sections will be devoted to an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches. In the third, I will propose a different role of radical (i.e., exceptional) individuals, i.e., saints and heroes, within a virtue-ethical theory of right action.