ABSTRACT
To engage in a therapeutic process requires a theory of virtue. Without an account of virtue, we cannot distinguish between problematic and auspicious modes of living, we cannot plot a course of curative action. The recognition of virtue lies at the core of any attempt to restructure our life through deliberate action—it locates the therapeutic objective. When we argue for the value of psychoanalysis, when we maintain that engaging in analysis can reduce suffering and amplify our sense of meaning, we implicitly evoke virtue’s name. To merely critique past accounts of virtue, then, is inadequate. If we stress the flaws in the transcendent and natural accounts of virtue, without constructing an alternative, we leave analysis without justification. This chapter, then, seeks to provide an account of what is meant by “constructed virtue.”
