RT Article
T1 The Possibility of Virtue
JF Business ethics quarterly
VO 22
IS 2
SP 377
OP 404
A1 Alzola, Miguel
LA English
YR 2012
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1824190468
AB To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They claim a sizable amount of empirical evidence in their support. This article is concerned with the existence and explanatory power of character as a way to assess the possibility of achieving moral virtue, with particular attention paid to business context. I aim to unsettle the so-called situationist challenge to virtue ethics. In the course of this article, I shall defend four claims, namely, that virtues are more than just behavioral dispositions, that at least some virtues may not be unitary traits, that psychologists cannot infer virtues from overt behavior, and that the situationist data do not account for the observational equivalence of traits. Since it rests on a misconception of what virtue is, the situationist objection remains unconvincing.
K1 Business Ethics
K1 Character
K1 Situationism
K1 Moral Psychology
K1 Virtue
DO 10.5840/beq201222224