A Developmental Approach to Virtue and Virtue Ethics

Abstract

Virtue ethicists typically begin by investigating what virtue is, and only then attempt to understand how to acquire it. This common approach seems reasonable, as understanding the end is thought to precede understanding the means to achieve it. However, I argue that this is mistaken. Drawing on Julia Annas’s discussion of virtue as a developmental concept, I propose the Developmental Approach to Virtue and defend its key underlying principle—the epistemic priority of virtue development. This principle holds that a learner of virtue must undergo significant transformation through virtue cultivation in order to grasp what virtue is. This is because being virtuous involves phenomenological dimensions that can be grasped only through first-person experience, rather than merely by studying virtue in theory. I apply this approach to interpreting the ethical works of Aristotle and Mengzi, as well as to analyze the challenge in answering the perennial philosophical question, “Why be moral?”