ABSTRACT

Feminist virtue ethics is an approach to issues in moral philosophy that draws from both one of the oldest approaches, virtue ethics, and one of the more recent developments in ethical theorizing, feminist ethics. There are a variety of theories that can be classified as virtue ethics, but they all share an emphasis on virtues of character as an organizing concept for philosophical inquiry. Feminist virtue ethics can be understood as an approach to moral theorizing that examines issues of character critically in light of gender and power, and highlights character dimensions of gendered subordination and dominance. One prominent branch of feminist ethics with virtue theoretic dimensions is care ethics. Care ethics was for some time the dominant approach in feminist ethics and so feminist discussions of virtue. More recently, however, as feminist ethics has broadened, so feminist work on virtues has embraced other approaches, especially eudaimonism.