Virtue Ethics and Repugnant Conclusions
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2005
Abstract
Both utilitarian and deontological moral theories locate the source of our moral beliefs in the wrong sorts of considerations. One way this failure manifests itself, we argue, is in the ways these theories analyze the proper human relationship toward the non-human environment. Another, more notorious, manifestation of this failure is found in Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion. Our goal is to explore the connection between these two failures, and to suggest that they are failures of act-centered moral theories in general. As such, they cannot be fixed by simply developing a better version of such a theory. Virtue-based theories, we suggest, provide a more promising alternative.
Digital USD Citation
Zwolinski, Matt, "Virtue Ethics and Repugnant Conclusions" (2005). Philosophy: Faculty Scholarship. 14.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/philosophy_facpub/14
Notes
Available at University of San Diego Copley Library
Call number GF21 .E58 2005