Ethical Systems (2016)

Chapter 8 sketches four ethical systems of contemporary interest. Two of them lend themselves to universalizing claims, one urging right conduct and the other counselling good behaviour. Together they support liberal modernity without due consideration of the functional arrangements undergirding modernity’s modernist moment. Postmodern ethics is implicitly situational and half-heartedly systematic. Lately subject to much discussion is virtue ethics—an ancient ethical tradition identified most of all with Aristotle. At the centre of virtue ethics are the four cardinal virtues (wisdom or prudence, courage, justice, seemliness), all demanding self-control. The status concerns identified in the preceding chapter link social conditions to self-control and virtuous conduct to standing in society. When virtues become duties, the result is an ethical system better suited to the challenges that an overextended modernity faces in the decades ahead.