The Practicality of Virtue Ethics

For those of you still interested in further reading (if any!), here is a paper arguing that virtue ethics may in fact be impossible and yet still both practical and desirable.

Tom asked me recently why I don't read contemporary philosophy; this is a good example of why. For thousands of years at least some have striven for the virtues, and those who have lived lives that we often still remember. 

Edward Abbey wrote a few critical things about philosophy, although he was deeply interested in the subject. Once he wrote, "I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife."

Yet I think the most devastating thing he wrote was this: "In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy."

The idea that the virtues are impossible, because some psychology researchers in rooms somewhere found that they were difficult, is no kind of argument. It's another indoor philosophy. Go tell the Spartans.