Virtuous and right action: A relaxed view

Abstract

In this chapter I consider two questions about action evaluation: (1) Is it the central task of normative ethics to concern itself with action evaluation?, and (2) When it does concern itself with action evaluation, should its focus be on developing an account of right and wrong action, as opposed to, say, good and bad (or virtuous and vicious) action? I argue that for virtue ethicists, the task of providing an account of right action is not of central importance, and that the strength of virtue ethics lies in the fact that it allows us to evaluate actions in terms of a rich aretaic vocabulary. In the second half of the chapter I propose a “relaxed” virtue-ethical account of right action, which denies that rightness is a particular quality shared by all actions appropriately referred to as “right,” and acknowledges that the meaning of “right action” differs from one context to another.