A response to Harman: Virtue ethics and character traits

Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society

Volumn 100, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 215-221

  Athanassoulis, Nafsika ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3543064746     PISSN: 00667374     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0066-7372.2003.00012.x     Document Type: Review

References (11)

1. G. Harman, 'Moral Philosophy Meets Moral Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. XCIX, Part 3, 1999.
2. Harman is wrong to suppose that either moral philosophers or virtue ethicists are unaware of the conclusions of social psychology or the Milgram experiments in particular (e. g. see J. Kupperman, Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
3. Appendix A. or G. Cullity, 'Moral Character and the Iteration Problem', Utilitas, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1995).
4. The ideas of 'character' and 'character trait' seem to play a fundamental role for all versions of virtue ethics. Indeed the theory is sometimes contrasted with utilitarianism and deontology because it is character based, rather than outcome or duty based, e. g. see G. Watson, 'On the Primacy of Character', in D. Statman, Virtue Ethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997).
5. Harman, p. 316
6. This is mentioned by Harman himself, pp. 321-2.
7. That the result of the experiments is entirely a matter of obedience to authority has also been challenged on the grounds that single subjects are more likely to follow orders, whereas groups are more likely to rebel and conformity is on the side of the rebellion (see R. Brown, Social Psychology (New York: Free Press, 1986).
8. Harman, pp. 320-1.
9. Harman, p. 317.
10. Harman, p. 316.
11. I am grateful to Kim Thomson for a reaction to this paper.