If concepts like harm, fairness, or welfare must anchor virtue attributions, then virtue ethics becomes explanatorily parasitic on rival frameworks such as consequentialism or contractualism.
?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
No one has weighed in yet. Be the first to share reasons for or against this statement.
Sign in or register to share your perspective on this statement.
A moral theory presented as a genuine alternative to both consequentialism and Kantian ethics, one that coheres with distinctively non-utilitarian intuitions in certain key cases
explanatorily parasitic(describes the problematic relationship between virtue ethics and other frameworks)
When one theory depends on borrowing ideas from another theory to make sense, rather than standing on its own—like a parasite living off a host.
harm(Used to evaluate whether failures to act constitute harms under the harm principle)
Making someone significantly worse off than they would have been otherwise, assessed counterfactually relative to a baseline.
welfare(Critique of Stein's strict health-welfare correlation)
A subjective notion of well-being that is affected by multiple domains, not health alone.