Intelligent Virtue (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780199228775)

Intelligent Virtue presents a distinctive new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. Annas argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of a kind which can illuminatingly be compared to the kind of reasoning we find in someone exercising a practical skill. Rather than asking at the start how virtues relate to rules, principles, maximizing, or a final end, we should look at the way in which the acquisition and exercise of virtue can be seen to be in many ways like the acquisition and exercise of more mundane activities, such as farming, building or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing, and as constituting (wholly, or in part) that happiness. We are offered a better understanding of the relation between virtue as an ideal and virtue in everyday life, and the relation between being virtuous and doing the right thing.

Author: Julia Annas
ISBN-10: 0199228779
ISBN-13: 9780199228775
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 05/26/2011
Pages: 200
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2012