Virtues in the Digital Age

Abstract As a framework for thinking about digital ethics, scholars have drawn upon virtue traditions from Aristotle and the Stoics to Thomist, Confucian, Buddhist, Humean, and Nietzschean conceptions of virtue and character. This chapter first outlines what virtue ethics brings to the study of the good life in the digital age and the many contexts in which it gets applied, from professional computing ethics to studies of the ethics of digital media, robotics, and artificial intelligence. It also responds to common critiques levied against virtue ethics. The core of the chapter, however, explores an acute challenge to virtue ethics presented by two diverging norms of global digital culture: the liberal ideal of ethical digital practices as enabling individual self-determination of character and its antagonist, a communitarian ideal in which ethical digital practices sustain a shared life of social harmony and unity. This chapter asks whether and how this divide can be overcome.