Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 8, 2024

Virtue Ethics as a Modern Intellectual Movement

(Abstract)

Li Yitian

Starting the mid-20th century, there have emerged a lot of major works and a series of intense arguments about virtue ethics, which gives rise to a true modern intellectual movement. The movement consists of three phases: (1) to criticize the lawlikeness of modern moral philosophy and analyze the basic properties and meanings of the concept of virtue; (2) to make appeal to the ancient ethical resources such as Aristotle’s ethics and argue for the main contents and history of the concept of virtue; and (3) to reform or sublate the ancient theories with clear intent, respond actively to the claims and questions from modern ethical life, and create the modern theoretical system of virtue ethics. Therefore, virtue ethics, as a modern intellectual movement, commands definite temporal and spatial boundaries, various theoretical forms and complicate connotative levels. In a broad sense, the movement manifests serial discussions about the issue of virtue, while in a narrow sense, it is a conscious inquiry for the modern system of virtue ethics. However, such a transformation has not only led to a division within virtue ethics, but also has created inherent difficulties in the knowledge constitution of modern ethics.