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      THE SPECTER OF RELATIVISM: A CRITIQUE OF ROSALIND HURSTHOUSE'S ON VIRTUE ETHICS

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      GHADYANI-THESIS-2017.pdf (1.011Mb)
      Date
      2016-11-04
      Author
      Ghadyani, Ahmad 1980-
      ORCID
      0000-0002-7309-316X
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
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      Abstract
      Virtue ethics has been a major ethical theory from Antiquity to the present. Despite its persistence on the philosophical scene, in recent years (especially after the publication of After Virtue in 1981) it has been severely criticized for being open to the charge of relativism. In this thesis, I focus on Rosalind Hursthouse’s reconstruction of Aristotle’s enterprise. In the first chapter I examine her aspiration to explain right action solely in terms of the virtuousness of moral agents. Unless Hursthouse concedes, at least to some extent to the moral relativist, I conclude that it is not possible to articulate the rightness of action on a virtue-based account. Hursthouse also rejects the very existence of second order rules and principles which guide moral agents when moral virtues and their corresponding v-rules have an adverse claim upon us. I will demonstrate that Hursthouse’s rejection of the codifiability thesis, again, forces her to concede even more to moral relativism. The inability to fill the gap between the virtuousness of a moral agent and the rightness of her action is not the only aspect of Hursthouse’s version of virtue ethics that is open to relativism. She also fails to provide a viable procedure for validating moral virtues. In the second chapter, I concentrate on Hursthouse’s reconstruction of Aristotelian ethical naturalism which is one of the most significant attempts to ground moral virtues independently of any moral rules and principles. I demonstrate that the naturalistic validation of moral virtues is susceptible to the cultural context in which virtues are supposed to be validated. In the framework of ethical naturalism, we are social animals. When normative virtues are presumed to be based on our being, it is inevitable that our sociality, and thus our cultural background, permeates the naturalistic moral virtues.
      Degree
      Master of Arts (M.A.)
      Department
      Philosophy
      Program
      Philosophy
      Supervisor
      Regnier, Daniel
      Committee
      O'Hagan, Emer; Liptay, John; Béland , Daniel; Moore, Dwayne
      Copyright Date
      June 2017
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/7565
      Subject
      Hursthouse
      Relativism
      On Virtue Ethics
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      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
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