From Morality to Virtue [Paperback]

Michael Slote (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195093925 | ISBN-13: 978-0195093926 | Publication Date: May 4, 1995

In this book, Slote offers the first full-scale foundational account of virtue ethics to have appeared since the recent revival of interest in the ethics of virtue. Slote advocates a particular form of such ethics for its intuitive and structural advantages over Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality, and he argues that the problems of other views can be avoided and a contemporary plausible version of virtue ethics achieved only by abandoning specifically moral concepts for general aretaic notions like admirability and virtue. Although this study is not bound by particular Aristotelian doctrines, it places an Aristotelian emphasis on both self-benefiting and other-benefiting virtues. Slote criticizes Kantian and common-sense morality for internal incoherencies and for downgrading the moral individual and her well-being in some previously unnoticed ways. By contrast, this book defends a distinctive, intuitive, and symmetric ethical principle according to which we should balance self-concern with concern for others, but it also concludes that there is, contrary to utilitarianism, no single basis for status as a virtue nor any simple relation between the virtues and human well-being.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book draws on...[Slote's] earlier ones, but it also advances many new and important arguments of its own. Indeed, it is rich enough to confirm Slote's status as one of the most important contemporary moral philosophers....As a whole, the book amounts to a defence of virtue ethics, but it is as important for its discussions of the other theories mentioned as it is for its development of virtue theory itself."--Mind

"From Morality to Virtue...does important work...in helping to bring into constructive engagement thinking about the virtues with that on moral theory, and conversely. Given the decided lack of interaction between these two traditions, this is much to be praised."--Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

"In presenting a systematic working out of what a virtue ethics would look like, Michael Slote has managed to meet a sceptical challenge to the whole enterprise. This is an important achievement since he has shown that in order to take the virtues seriously, one needn't treat them as peripheral to one's core moral theory; nor need one go the way of the anti-theorists. For this reason, From Morality to Virtue represents a step forward in virtue ethics."--Nous

"Slote's book provides a much-needed systematic study of the overall structure of virtue ethics and its relation to other theories and develops his own original version of virtue ethics as a foundational theory. It is sure to begin a far more vigorous and incisive debate about virtue ethics than we have had hitherto."--Julia Annas, University of Arizona

"Slote provides us with a view of ethics which enables us to ask better questions than we would otherwise be able to do both about the areas in which modern ethics is or could be hospitable to ancient concepts and about the areas in which it has broken its ties with its ancient predecessors more radically. He has written an excellent book."--Ancient Philosophy

About the Author

Michael Slote is at University of Maryland.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 4, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195093925
• ISBN-13: 978-0195093926
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,723,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reviving Virtue, January 27, 2001

By 

Glen Pettigrove (Riverside, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Morality to Virtue (Paperback)

From Morality to Virtue offers a careful, systematic argument for the attractiveness of Virtue Ethics. The first four chapters of the book critique Kantian, Utilitarian and Common-Sense theories of morality. Chapters five through ten discuss the advantages that virtue ethics has over other theories, covering topics such as Moral Luck, "Virtue Rules," Imperatives, "Virtue in Friends and Citizens," and self and other-regarding reasons. The last seven chapters focus on answering the challenges which Utilitarianism raises for virtue ethics. For anyone interested in ongoing debates in moral theory, this is a book which is instructive and thought-provoking. While Michael Slote does a nice job of laying out the theories and theorists with whom he interacts, I suspect that a reader who was not already somewhat familiar with modern moral theory would find the book daunting. It's style is generally dry and occasionally technical (this is not an objection to the book, merely an observation). If you have a passing interest in moral issues and are looking for an interesting book to read on a Sunday afternoon, this is probably not the right book for you. MacIntyre's After Virtue or Marcus Aurelius' Meditations would be a better choice. However, if you are looking for a serious treatment of virtue ethics by a very thoughtful analytic philosopher, a careful reading of this text will be well worth your time.