ABSTRACT
The dominant understanding of vice, virtue, and character needs to be revised in light of the recognition by feminist theorists, among others, that character is not simply a matter of what is inside the individual, for which the individual is wholly and solely responsible, but is also a matter of interpersonal, social, cultural, and political contexts. A key insight of liberatory philosophies is a double connection between character and social oppression. The operation of oppressive social systems requires oppressors characterised by what Lisa Tessman calls ‘the ordinary vices of domination’, such as cruelty, indifference, contempt, and arrogance, which make for ‘degraded’, ‘twisted’ forms of moral character. The term ‘corruption’ has enjoyed a long career as a means of articulating moral damage and other forms of degeneration experienced by people, whether as a result of external or social conditions, or internal factors such as failures of the will.
