ABSTRACT
Virtue theories can plausibly be argued to have important advantages over normative ethical theories which prescribe strict impartiality in moral judgment or neglect people’s special roles and relationships. However, there are clear examples of both virtuous and vicious partiality in people’s moral judgments, and virtue theorists may struggle to adequately distinguish them, much as proponents of other normative ethical theories do. This chapter first adapts the “expanding moral circle” concept in order to illustrate the difficulty of adequately distinguishing virtuous from vicious partiality. Later sections aim to show how an adequate philosophical ethics will be able to both (a) attribute virtue (and hence praiseworthiness) to agents whose actions may directly serve only their special interests, roles, or special relationships; and (b) attribute vice (and hence censure) where agents’ attitudes and/or actions mirror known personal biases (for instance, an egoistic attitude) or social biases (for instance, an ethnocentric attitude). This dual ability leaves space for much virtuous partiality while also reflecting a “risk-aware” approach, recognizing the deleterious consequences of our human penchant for constructing and imbuing special moral significance to oftentimes factitious us/them dichotomies.
