ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that vice ethics has a number of significant advantages over maximizing virtue ethics as a theory of right action. It examines are there reasons of vice, are they distinctive and can they form the basis of a theory of right action. Virtues are kinds of moral excellence. A virtue is an excellence of character; a virtuous action is an excellence of action. Virtuous action exhibits a robust kind of moral excellence and an action is not virtuous unless it exhibits this excellence. The trait of self-pandering—thinking too well of oneself too readily, dissembling to oneself about one's venal motives, concocting self-rationalizing excuses for serious wrongdoing, and so on—is a serious vice. The chapter suggests that the sense of available action in formulations of vice ethics should exclude the psychological particularities of the agent. Vice ethics is weakly self-effacing in the way that theories of practical action are often weakly self-effacing.