ABSTRACT
Virtuous design practice takes place in a reality where there is competition, performance, success, rules, regulating institutions, and the making of value systems. Design deliberation, decisions, and assessments within the frame of these realities entail virtue as well as an understanding of the deeper significance of what constitutes an ethical design practice beyond conforming to codes, regulations, and technicalities. Designers and design firms are determined by inventiveness, self-awareness, a sense of responsibility and self-discipline. Designers have the possibility to rely on ideas that ensue from reason and acceptance of freedom to comprehend and engage design ethics, or they can opt for nonrational approaches such as nihilism, determinism, and constructivism. Virtue ethics and moral law espouse to provide the foundation from which design ethics can take place. In a particular design practice situation, designers are unable to ethically sort out the more significant from the less significant issues if they do not possess the knowledge of essential ethical norms and rules.
