ENGLISH

Intelligent Virtue

By Julia Annas

Book information

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Year
2011
ISBN
0199228779, 9780199228775, 9780199228782
LCC
BJ1521 .A55 2011
Google Books ID
shvacQAACAAJ
Open Library ID
OL25211477M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
780 kB (799124 bytes)
Pages
200\200
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2012-02-04 16:00:00

Description

Intelligent Virtue presents a distinctive new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. Annas argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of a kind which can illuminatingly be compared to the kind of reasoning we find in someone exercising a practical skill. Rather than asking at the start how virtues relate to rules, principles, maximizing, or a final end, we should look at the way in which the acquisition and exercise of virtue can be seen to be in many ways like the acquisition and exercise of more mundane activities, such as farming, building or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing, and as constituting (wholly, or in part) that happiness. We are offered a better understanding of the relation between virtue as an ideal and virtue in everyday life, and the relation between being virtuous and doing the right thing.

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