Toggling: How Shifts between Deontology and Virtue Ethics Undermine Public Moral Discourse about Gender and Race

Abstract This article argues that shifts between deontological and virtue-ethical moral reasoning hamper public moral conversations about misogyny and racism. Using examples ranging from sexual assault to police violence, I show that when someone is accused of committing a moral wrong, they often respond by shifting from deontological to virtue-ethical modes of analysis. This kind of “toggling” between the two enables a person to claim that they are “a good person” even when they have violated important moral rules. In this way, toggling shuts down or makes incoherent our efforts to call one another to moral account, especially (but by no means exclusively) when we are attempting to address issues of systemic oppression and discrimination, including misogyny and racism.