Sudden Actions and Decisions: Aristotle vs. Contemporary Virtue Ethics

Sudden Actions and Decisions: Aristotle vs. Contemporary Virtue Ethics

Benjamin Koons

I. INTRODUCTION

Although it was often billed as an account of character rather than action in its beginnings, in the past two decades contemporary virtue ethics has increasingly turned its attention to giving an account of right action in terms of virtuous action.2 Simultaneously, virtue ethicists have been grappling with the problem of how virtuous action is even possible, since virtuous actions are both habitual and done for a reason.3 The problem is that habitual actions are taken to be automatic and hence unthinking actions, while one can’t act for a reason unthinkingly.

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