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Intelligent Virtue
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.
200 pages, ebook
First published April 28, 2011
About the author
Julia Annas
44 books47 followersJulia Annas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and author of several books for Oxford University Press, including An Introduction to Plato's Republic and The Morality of Happiness. She is also series editor for the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 13, 2018
This is one of the best overviews of virtue theory. Annas presents a Aristotelian account that is clearly sympathetic to Stoicism at points. One of the most interesting examples concerns the way that practical reasoning about virtues places one in a type of community with others who reason about the same virtues. This suggests the potential for a virtue-based cosmopolitanism that does not eschew an Aristotelian focus on particulars.
Her discussion of the skill analogy - the comparison of virtues to skills - and her account of practical reasoning, the unity of virtues, and their link with human flourishing is incredibly clear and insightful. If someone with little knowledge of virtue theory asked me for one book on the topic, I would probably recommend this book.
Her discussion of the skill analogy - the comparison of virtues to skills - and her account of practical reasoning, the unity of virtues, and their link with human flourishing is incredibly clear and insightful. If someone with little knowledge of virtue theory asked me for one book on the topic, I would probably recommend this book.
December 17, 2019
Virtue ethics brings the real heat baby. I don’t care what they say.
June 11, 2023
This was my introduction to the philosophical subject of virtue. It was conversational, thought-provoking, and left me wanting to read more on this subject. This author's account of virtue is heavily (primarily?) influenced by Aristotle.
May 26, 2025
Julia Annas had written most of a book about virtue ethics when, she says, “it became clear… that I was writing the wrong book.” So she scrapped it in order “to start further back and get clear about virtue.” The book that resulted from this second attempt is Intelligent Virtue.
Intelligent Virtue clears up a lot of the fog around questions like “which characteristics are virtues, and why?” and “what is eudaimonia and what role is it meant to play in virtue-oriented ethics theories?” It is a clear and well-organized account of the foundations of virtue ethics models.
What Is a Virtue?
According to Annas, a virtue is a feature or tendency or disposition of a person (not, that is, of an act or a non-person actor) that is:
• persisting, reliable, and characteristic
• active; developing in response to circumstances (not merely a passive disposition)
• deep; central to who that person is
Virtues prompt virtuous actions, and those actions help to fortify that virtue, in a mutually-supporting way.
A virtue doesn’t give you a “decision procedure” or instruction manual for deciding what to do. If you are skilled at a virtue, you will be able to perform that virtue well and to give an account for why you did it the way you did. But this is different from having memorized a rulebook ahead of time and applying its directives to the situation.
Virtues tend to “cluster” in groups that mutually-support each other. Annas gives the example of generosity, which requires a number of other virtues to do well. You can’t just give willy-nilly, but you need to give in the right way to the right people, which requires other virtues (such as empathy, tact, benevolence, modesty).
One virtue that underlies all the others is phronesis (practical wisdom). It supports the virtues in two ways: 1) each virtue requires phronesis in order to master it, and 2) if you have phronesis you will understand the importance of the virtues and how to develop them.
The aim of virtue is “to live well, to live a good life.”
Virtue and “Goodness”
All of the virtues support something we can call “goodness” — though Annas tries to remain agnostic as to what goodness consists of (she says that her account of the virtues is compatible with a variety of theories of goodness, from the hedonistic to the Platonic to the Christian). Virtue is a sort of “commitment to goodness” while vice is (outside of fictional villains) not so much a commitment to badness as a failure to commit to goodness. This reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s observation that the worst of evil is not done by wicked or evil people, but “by people who never made up their mind to be either bad or good.” In support of this, Annas considers the vice of the coward: Unlike the brave person looking back at her brave acts, the coward “cannot look back on his action in satisfaction, thinking that his cowardly act helped him in his overall aim to become a better coward.” (But what about a cruel person, I wonder. Are there no cruel people who come home from work thinking with satisfaction, “boy howdy, I thought I’d gotten about as cruel as I could get down at the prison, but I really turned things up a notch today!”)
Annas is skeptical that dispositions like “wittiness, tidiness, and affability” can be true virtues, since they seem to be things that are disconnected from goodness (you could be witty, tidy, or affable either as part of a commitment to goodness or without any such commitment); such things “can be exercised just as well viciously as virtuously.”
If all virtues aim toward “goodness” (however defined), you might wonder if maybe virtues derive from goodness and that we really should be looking at goodness as the foundational concept and… reinventing consequentialism instead. Annas says that the way virtues connect to goodness does not lend itself to consequentialism. “[W]hat makes a disposition a virtue is not the results it produces but, broadly speaking, the attitude of the person who has the virtue.” Or, in another formulation: “exercising virtue is a commitment on the part of the virtuous person to goodness because it is goodness: goodness is not just an outcome.”
“Virtues are dispositions which are not only admirable but which we find inspiring and take as ideals to aspire to, precisely because of the commitment to goodness which they embody.”
Goodness and Eudaimonia
Annas says that it is a mistake to think of eudaimonia, as it is used in ancient ethical theories like Aristotle’s, as a precise, well-defined thing. It’s more of a description of a thing. Annas says that our aims in life tend to “nest”. When we explain why we do something (brush our teeth) we do so by appealing to certain aims (to keep our teeth in good working order, to have pleasant breath, to avoid complications at the dentist), and we can then categorize those under broader aims (to be healthy, to be socially successful), and so on. Annas thinks eudaimonia is a label for the outermost nesting; for the place we can stop explaining because it serves as the ultimate rational explanation for our behavior. Why do I brush my teeth? Ultimately, for eudaimonia. We can try to better understand or specify eudaimonia, but we don’t need to start with a precise definition: we know it’s there, even if we don’t understand it all that well.
Eudaimonia is related to our telos; we aim for eudaimonia, and that determines our chosen telos. The human telos, then, is not preexisting, but is something we discover or determine through examining the aims we choose. By critiquing our aims and bringing them into alignment (and in alignment with our idea of what goodness consists of), we give ourselves an appropriate telos. “The final end, then, is the indeterminate notion of what I am aiming at in my life as a whole. And the role of ethical thinking is to get us to think more determinately about it, to do a better and more intelligently ordered job of what we are already doing anyway.”
Eudaimonia and Happiness
These days it’s common to fret about the word eudaimonia and how (or if) to translate it. Annas thinks the old-fashioned translation of “happiness” is fine, as long as we’re careful to avoid certain modern uses of the word. Happiness is not the same thing as “pleasure” and is not just the name of a certain sort of pleasant feeling. It’s not just a matter of having your desires satisfied or feeling satisfied with how things are going in your life right now. It’s neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective. It has more to do with “the overall end you aim to achieve by living your life well” and as such it is both individual (it’s about your life specifically) and aspirational (you aren’t happy in a static way, but you aim at happiness). “Happiness is at least in part activity”: it is a way-of-living.
How Do We Acquire Virtue?
A virtue can be best understood by looking at how it is acquired. This “involves both the need to learn and the drive to aspire.” The acquisition of a virtue is “not a once for all achievement” but involves “coming to understand what you are doing, doing it in a self-directed way, and trying to improve” so that your character develops and your understanding grows as you confront new challenges.
People do not first decide that a particular virtue is good, then decide to become virtuous in that way, and then develop a virtuous motivation. Rather virtuous motivation develops alongside our understanding of the virtue, as “educated developments of our [preexisting] unformed motivations.”
“Becoming virtuous requires habituation and experience.” We may begin to learn virtue by emulating or copying a role model, but learning true virtue demands that we aspire to understand the virtue. This involves not just learning that you do something, but learning why you do something; this allows you to apply the virtue in novel circumstances rather than just performing a standardized routine. As you learn this, you come to be able to articulate reasons for why you do what you do the way you do.
In this way a virtue is a lot like a skill. When you begin to acquire a difficult skill (piano playing, say) you have to concentrate and you have to drill yourself on particular techniques in a pre-specified way. But when you have acquired the skill, you don’t have to concentrate so much on the skill itself, but on how you are applying it in a particular situation. Instead of struggling to do it competently, you can focus on doing it most skillfully or most beautifully or to meet certain circumstances.
As we improve our skill at a virtue in new and different contexts, we flesh-out our understanding of the virtue. For example, if we are brave in a variety of situations (not just those requiring physical bravery in the face of a certain sort of threat) then we develop a broader understanding of what bravery consists of — what is common to all those responses that makes “bravery” a good description for them. This expanded understanding in turn helps us to recognize and respond to new situations in which bravery is called for.
A virtuous person cares about being virtuous. This is one way virtue is less like a productive skill, in which the point is the product rather than the process of making the product. (Performative skills like dancing or acting are more similar to virtue in this way.) That the being-virtuous is what matters brings to mind Aristotle’s distinction between a virtuous person (who is not tempted to vice because they care for virtue) and a person who is merely continent (who resists temptations to vice although they have not internalized an overriding love for virtue). Both may do the same action in the same circumstance, but the first is virtuous while the second is merely exercising self-control.
Why Is Virtue Good for Us?
The enjoyment a virtuous person feels in exercising a virtue is analogous to the pleasant flow state of someone who is fluently practicing a skill, in which: 1) the activity is valued for itself, not just for its end-goal or product; and 2) there is a loss of self-consciousness during the activity. Other aspects of flow include being “unhindered” (this does not mean without external obstacles, which can make the activity challenging in an interesting way, but without internal obstacles like reluctance or contrasting temptations); and being harmoniously-integrated (you are of one mind in the essence of what you are doing).
This also resembles Aristotle’s description in the The Nicomachean Ethics of the pleasure that accompanies unimpeded activity.
Why Do People Fall Short?
If virtue is good for you and promotes happiness, why do people stop short of developing the virtues? Annas suggests that this is in part because we love company, and there’s more of it to be found in mediocrity than in being outstanding. When you separate from the pack in some particular virtue, say, honesty, you develop a sort of solidarity with other especially honest people, but you also lose some of the tolerance you used to have for people who exhibit commonplace dishonesty. The companionship you feel towards your more abstract and dispersed community-of-the-honest is not as viscerally comforting as the more immediate community you used to feel with the people you typically encounter on a day-to-day basis. Virtue can be lonely.
⸻
A Grotesque
This is the second time in recent years when I’ve read a book published before Donald Trump’s emergence as a politician in which he was used as a throwaway example of someone of obviously low character. Here’s the quote from Intelligent Virtue:
Intelligent Virtue clears up a lot of the fog around questions like “which characteristics are virtues, and why?” and “what is eudaimonia and what role is it meant to play in virtue-oriented ethics theories?” It is a clear and well-organized account of the foundations of virtue ethics models.
What Is a Virtue?
According to Annas, a virtue is a feature or tendency or disposition of a person (not, that is, of an act or a non-person actor) that is:
• persisting, reliable, and characteristic
• active; developing in response to circumstances (not merely a passive disposition)
• deep; central to who that person is
Virtues prompt virtuous actions, and those actions help to fortify that virtue, in a mutually-supporting way.
A virtue doesn’t give you a “decision procedure” or instruction manual for deciding what to do. If you are skilled at a virtue, you will be able to perform that virtue well and to give an account for why you did it the way you did. But this is different from having memorized a rulebook ahead of time and applying its directives to the situation.
Virtues tend to “cluster” in groups that mutually-support each other. Annas gives the example of generosity, which requires a number of other virtues to do well. You can’t just give willy-nilly, but you need to give in the right way to the right people, which requires other virtues (such as empathy, tact, benevolence, modesty).
One virtue that underlies all the others is phronesis (practical wisdom). It supports the virtues in two ways: 1) each virtue requires phronesis in order to master it, and 2) if you have phronesis you will understand the importance of the virtues and how to develop them.
The aim of virtue is “to live well, to live a good life.”
Virtue and “Goodness”
All of the virtues support something we can call “goodness” — though Annas tries to remain agnostic as to what goodness consists of (she says that her account of the virtues is compatible with a variety of theories of goodness, from the hedonistic to the Platonic to the Christian). Virtue is a sort of “commitment to goodness” while vice is (outside of fictional villains) not so much a commitment to badness as a failure to commit to goodness. This reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s observation that the worst of evil is not done by wicked or evil people, but “by people who never made up their mind to be either bad or good.” In support of this, Annas considers the vice of the coward: Unlike the brave person looking back at her brave acts, the coward “cannot look back on his action in satisfaction, thinking that his cowardly act helped him in his overall aim to become a better coward.” (But what about a cruel person, I wonder. Are there no cruel people who come home from work thinking with satisfaction, “boy howdy, I thought I’d gotten about as cruel as I could get down at the prison, but I really turned things up a notch today!”)
Annas is skeptical that dispositions like “wittiness, tidiness, and affability” can be true virtues, since they seem to be things that are disconnected from goodness (you could be witty, tidy, or affable either as part of a commitment to goodness or without any such commitment); such things “can be exercised just as well viciously as virtuously.”
If all virtues aim toward “goodness” (however defined), you might wonder if maybe virtues derive from goodness and that we really should be looking at goodness as the foundational concept and… reinventing consequentialism instead. Annas says that the way virtues connect to goodness does not lend itself to consequentialism. “[W]hat makes a disposition a virtue is not the results it produces but, broadly speaking, the attitude of the person who has the virtue.” Or, in another formulation: “exercising virtue is a commitment on the part of the virtuous person to goodness because it is goodness: goodness is not just an outcome.”
“Virtues are dispositions which are not only admirable but which we find inspiring and take as ideals to aspire to, precisely because of the commitment to goodness which they embody.”
Goodness and Eudaimonia
Annas says that it is a mistake to think of eudaimonia, as it is used in ancient ethical theories like Aristotle’s, as a precise, well-defined thing. It’s more of a description of a thing. Annas says that our aims in life tend to “nest”. When we explain why we do something (brush our teeth) we do so by appealing to certain aims (to keep our teeth in good working order, to have pleasant breath, to avoid complications at the dentist), and we can then categorize those under broader aims (to be healthy, to be socially successful), and so on. Annas thinks eudaimonia is a label for the outermost nesting; for the place we can stop explaining because it serves as the ultimate rational explanation for our behavior. Why do I brush my teeth? Ultimately, for eudaimonia. We can try to better understand or specify eudaimonia, but we don’t need to start with a precise definition: we know it’s there, even if we don’t understand it all that well.
Eudaimonia is related to our telos; we aim for eudaimonia, and that determines our chosen telos. The human telos, then, is not preexisting, but is something we discover or determine through examining the aims we choose. By critiquing our aims and bringing them into alignment (and in alignment with our idea of what goodness consists of), we give ourselves an appropriate telos. “The final end, then, is the indeterminate notion of what I am aiming at in my life as a whole. And the role of ethical thinking is to get us to think more determinately about it, to do a better and more intelligently ordered job of what we are already doing anyway.”
Eudaimonia and Happiness
These days it’s common to fret about the word eudaimonia and how (or if) to translate it. Annas thinks the old-fashioned translation of “happiness” is fine, as long as we’re careful to avoid certain modern uses of the word. Happiness is not the same thing as “pleasure” and is not just the name of a certain sort of pleasant feeling. It’s not just a matter of having your desires satisfied or feeling satisfied with how things are going in your life right now. It’s neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective. It has more to do with “the overall end you aim to achieve by living your life well” and as such it is both individual (it’s about your life specifically) and aspirational (you aren’t happy in a static way, but you aim at happiness). “Happiness is at least in part activity”: it is a way-of-living.
How Do We Acquire Virtue?
A virtue can be best understood by looking at how it is acquired. This “involves both the need to learn and the drive to aspire.” The acquisition of a virtue is “not a once for all achievement” but involves “coming to understand what you are doing, doing it in a self-directed way, and trying to improve” so that your character develops and your understanding grows as you confront new challenges.
People do not first decide that a particular virtue is good, then decide to become virtuous in that way, and then develop a virtuous motivation. Rather virtuous motivation develops alongside our understanding of the virtue, as “educated developments of our [preexisting] unformed motivations.”
“Becoming virtuous requires habituation and experience.” We may begin to learn virtue by emulating or copying a role model, but learning true virtue demands that we aspire to understand the virtue. This involves not just learning that you do something, but learning why you do something; this allows you to apply the virtue in novel circumstances rather than just performing a standardized routine. As you learn this, you come to be able to articulate reasons for why you do what you do the way you do.
In this way a virtue is a lot like a skill. When you begin to acquire a difficult skill (piano playing, say) you have to concentrate and you have to drill yourself on particular techniques in a pre-specified way. But when you have acquired the skill, you don’t have to concentrate so much on the skill itself, but on how you are applying it in a particular situation. Instead of struggling to do it competently, you can focus on doing it most skillfully or most beautifully or to meet certain circumstances.
As we improve our skill at a virtue in new and different contexts, we flesh-out our understanding of the virtue. For example, if we are brave in a variety of situations (not just those requiring physical bravery in the face of a certain sort of threat) then we develop a broader understanding of what bravery consists of — what is common to all those responses that makes “bravery” a good description for them. This expanded understanding in turn helps us to recognize and respond to new situations in which bravery is called for.
A virtuous person cares about being virtuous. This is one way virtue is less like a productive skill, in which the point is the product rather than the process of making the product. (Performative skills like dancing or acting are more similar to virtue in this way.) That the being-virtuous is what matters brings to mind Aristotle’s distinction between a virtuous person (who is not tempted to vice because they care for virtue) and a person who is merely continent (who resists temptations to vice although they have not internalized an overriding love for virtue). Both may do the same action in the same circumstance, but the first is virtuous while the second is merely exercising self-control.
Why Is Virtue Good for Us?
The enjoyment a virtuous person feels in exercising a virtue is analogous to the pleasant flow state of someone who is fluently practicing a skill, in which: 1) the activity is valued for itself, not just for its end-goal or product; and 2) there is a loss of self-consciousness during the activity. Other aspects of flow include being “unhindered” (this does not mean without external obstacles, which can make the activity challenging in an interesting way, but without internal obstacles like reluctance or contrasting temptations); and being harmoniously-integrated (you are of one mind in the essence of what you are doing).
This also resembles Aristotle’s description in the The Nicomachean Ethics of the pleasure that accompanies unimpeded activity.
Why Do People Fall Short?
If virtue is good for you and promotes happiness, why do people stop short of developing the virtues? Annas suggests that this is in part because we love company, and there’s more of it to be found in mediocrity than in being outstanding. When you separate from the pack in some particular virtue, say, honesty, you develop a sort of solidarity with other especially honest people, but you also lose some of the tolerance you used to have for people who exhibit commonplace dishonesty. The companionship you feel towards your more abstract and dispersed community-of-the-honest is not as viscerally comforting as the more immediate community you used to feel with the people you typically encounter on a day-to-day basis. Virtue can be lonely.
⸻
A Grotesque
This is the second time in recent years when I’ve read a book published before Donald Trump’s emergence as a politician in which he was used as a throwaway example of someone of obviously low character. Here’s the quote from Intelligent Virtue:
We encourage children in schools, by means of posters, lessons, and books, to admire and aspire to be like some people and not others, and these are people whose characters are admirable and inspiring because of their commitment to goodness, regardless of whether in worldly terms they succeeded or failed, or were useful and/or agreeable to themselves or to other people. This is why it would be grotesque to have posters in elementary schools depicting Donald Trump as a hero for the young, rather than people like King, Gandhi, and Mandela.
February 27, 2022
Just put down this awesome book ! What a wonderful exposition of virtue , developing virtuous disposition and achieving happiness in that process. One of those books that could deliver a foundational, positive shift in leadership behaviour. Much needed for the leaders of today given how much they risk the lives and earnings of people dependent on them through decisions driven by hubris and vain ego!
July 25, 2018
Enlightening. I’d recommend to all.
March 2, 2018
Happiness in a eudaimonist account is what I come to when I start asking about my life, how it is going and how I can achieve better. Happiness is my happiness, the way I live my life; only I can achieve my happiness, because only I can live my life, and happiness won't result from some plan imposed on me from outside my own reflections.
Annas provides are very readable and helpful account of virtue ethics, largely relying on an analogy with practical skills like learning a language or instrument. This analogy is illuminating and easy to grasp. She builds her largely Aristotelian account from the ground up, but her account is largely a matter of application with very little in the way of metaethical theory. While there is something that is always both alluring and slippery about virtue ethics that Intelligent Virtue didn't exactly clear up, I think Annas's book is still a great point of entry for anyone curious about virtue ethics.
Annas provides are very readable and helpful account of virtue ethics, largely relying on an analogy with practical skills like learning a language or instrument. This analogy is illuminating and easy to grasp. She builds her largely Aristotelian account from the ground up, but her account is largely a matter of application with very little in the way of metaethical theory. While there is something that is always both alluring and slippery about virtue ethics that Intelligent Virtue didn't exactly clear up, I think Annas's book is still a great point of entry for anyone curious about virtue ethics.
August 8, 2014
Masterful. If I had to choose one book on virtue ethics to recommend to someone unfamiliar with it, this would be a top contender.
August 16, 2023
Without committing to any dogmatic camp in virtue ethics, for example, of the Aristotelian and Stoic kind, Professor Annas brings ancient insights to contemporary attention in a way rigorous and thoughtful. Her theme is the defense of virtue as a practical skill much like developing mastery of an instrument or a sport, and she is thorough and charitable when attending to criticisms of this. The result is an intuitive and widely inclusive view of the subject, expressed with economy (in under 180 pages) and care.
The work is quite expensive when purchased new, considering it's brevity. However, I was able to find it in Half Price Books at a reasonable cost. Overall, it is an excellent read and an important one for modern moral philosophy.
The work is quite expensive when purchased new, considering it's brevity. However, I was able to find it in Half Price Books at a reasonable cost. Overall, it is an excellent read and an important one for modern moral philosophy.
September 19, 2019
A clear analysis of contemporary virtue theory. But the book lacks any art or style. Having read Iris Murdoch just before, Annas' treatment really suffers by comparison. I go ahead and give it three stars though because the thoughts are clearly and convincingly stated.
April 4, 2024
Great book! Virtue ethics has long been an interest of mine, and this is a very clear and concise account of virtue. The chapters on happiness are less solid than the rest of the book, but overall it is a worthwhile read
Read
May 20, 2025A very straightforward text, making good use of the skill analogy (to the point of implying that virtue itself is a skill to be developed). Offers a broad shape for what the growth in virtue and eudaimonia might look like, and how to develop it.
March 18, 2019
Clear, concise, compelling. I predict that this will turn out to be influential for me in a big way.
partially-read
October 4, 2021Read chapters 2 "Virtue, Character, and Disposition" and 8 "Living Happily" for Philosophical Ethics.
November 30, 2021
A detailed book on virtues. The book argued logically and exhibited great analogies that truly helped to grasp some abstract concept and philosophical theories.
March 3, 2023
I’m left understanding virtue less after reading this book than before. There are a lot of words expanded here, and not a lot of clarity gained. It’s bordering on sophistry.
October 26, 2024
A key text justifying virtue ethics as an ethical theory. Develops the virtue as skill analogy, and also responds to several common objections. Recommended!
January 18, 2016
Annas presents a bottom-up account of virtue and happiness, drawing heavily on an analogy with skill (so heavily that it may well be an identification). Rather than starting with an abstract definition of foundational terms and teasing out implications from there, Annas takes as her starting point our normal experiences with virtue and moral reflection and explores the features these concepts have. The goal is not to promote a specific ethical theory; indeed, many aspects of the discussion are left deliberately very general (e.g. when discussing the idea that virtue involves a goal orientation toward goodness, Annas conspicuously avoids detailing what form that goodness actually takes). Instead, we get a general framework within which to discuss a whole class of eudaimonistic virtue ethical systems, one in which (paraphrasing Annas) concepts of virtue and happiness are central but not foundational and many different components can be changed or removed without threatening the overall structure.
I loved this book because of its approach, even if there was a significant amount of content I was skeptical of. Given its aim as a starting point for a new kind of discussion of virtue in philosophy, I think Annas absolutely succeeded with this one. I suspect that if more intellectual work were done in this fashion, we would be able to build much more productive, practical, and intercommunicable systems of thought.
One word of warning: This is not a robust fully-supported argument in favor of the ideas Annas puts forth, it is merely an account of a possibly-useful way to frame these kinds of issues. There are many reasonable objections that aren't fully responded to (those responses that are there are usually leveraged to highlight some interesting aspect of the account) and there are claims that, while plausible, are not as backed up as they might be expected to be. I think expectations and reactions have to be adjusted accordingly to get the most from the book.
I loved this book because of its approach, even if there was a significant amount of content I was skeptical of. Given its aim as a starting point for a new kind of discussion of virtue in philosophy, I think Annas absolutely succeeded with this one. I suspect that if more intellectual work were done in this fashion, we would be able to build much more productive, practical, and intercommunicable systems of thought.
One word of warning: This is not a robust fully-supported argument in favor of the ideas Annas puts forth, it is merely an account of a possibly-useful way to frame these kinds of issues. There are many reasonable objections that aren't fully responded to (those responses that are there are usually leveraged to highlight some interesting aspect of the account) and there are claims that, while plausible, are not as backed up as they might be expected to be. I think expectations and reactions have to be adjusted accordingly to get the most from the book.
December 22, 2011
It's a little difficult to rate this since virtue ethics isn't my cup of tea. This book didn't really make it any more likely for me to make it my cup of tea. The theory strikes me as very thin and her main idea about happiness, eudaimonia, is left frustratingly nebulous as some kind of ultimate 'aim' in life. I don't think she succeeds, either, in telling us why certain things ought to be valued other than saying that virtuous people ought to be admired and imitated. But what makes a person virtuous? Habits, skills, she says, resulting from a commitment to the good. But how can when an action is in accordance with the good in order to tell if someone is virtuous? I don't see how this theory is helpful. I don't think the hard ontological questions can or should be ignored to get to 'pragmatic matters', such as, cultivating some ill defined skill in the good.
Nevertheless, I think I'd be a jerk to rate this too low since I already do not subscribe to this view and I think Annas has certain virtues (haha) such as fairly clear and accessible writing.
Nevertheless, I think I'd be a jerk to rate this too low since I already do not subscribe to this view and I think Annas has certain virtues (haha) such as fairly clear and accessible writing.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews