The exemplary and the right : contemporary virtue ethics, action guidance, and action assessment
148-164 p.
In this paper, I will account for the importance of the notion of exemplarity within the contemporary virtueÂÂethical debate, both in its classic formulation (e.g., Hursthouse 1999) and in the recent exemplarist moral theory advanced by Linda T. Zagzebski (2015; 2017). Despite their differences, which I will discuss extensively, both theories are centered on a characterization of an exemplary virtuous agent that serves as a standard for determining what, in a given situation, is right, wrong, dutiful and forbidden. The first two sections will be devoted to an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches. In the third, I will propose a different role of radical (i.e., exceptional) individuals, i.e., saints and heroes, within a virtueethical theory of right action. [Publisher's text].
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ISSN: 1972-5558
KEYWORDS
- virtue ethics, exemplarism, right act, moral saints, moral heroes