A New Metaphysics for Virtue Ethics

This chapter proposes a new metaphysics for virtue ethics, hermeneutic ontology, that is opposed to the orthodox ‘natural goodness’ metaphysics of goodness owed to Foot, and developed in a virtue ethical direction by Hursthouse. This ‘new metaphysics’ is initially inspired by McDowell’s view that the stance of science is not the only mode of access to the real and in particular to ethical reality. But the notion of access is ambiguous between an ontological notion and an epistemological notion. The development of the ontological notion is the topic of this chapter and is owed to Heidegger. Central to this development is the idea that intentional access to the being of entities as, for example, ethical is through logos, a network of significance relations. Two key problems—the plurality of the logoi, and critique of the logos—are topics of later sections.