| Western Philosophy Ethical Theory |
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Name |
Rosalind Hursthouse |
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Birth |
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Main interests |
Virtue Ethics; Philosophy of Mind |
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Notable ideas |
neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics |
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Rosalind Hursthouse is a moral philosopher noted for her work on virtue ethics. Hursthouse is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Formerly, she has taught at the Open University in the United Kingdom, at the University of California at Los Angeles in the United States, and elsewhere. She received the M.A. degree from Auckland and she received the D.Phil. from Oxford University, having studied with Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot. Hursthouse's book, On Virtue Ethics provides one of the most sophisticated and influential treatments of virtue ethics in the modern philosophical literature. She has also made significant and notable contributions to the philosophical debate around the morality of abortion, in her book Beginning Lives and elsewhere. Hursthouse has also edited, and written commentary within, a volume of important writings on the ethical treatment of animals in her book Ethics, Humans and Other Animals. Rosalind Hursthouse has a very Aristotelian framework for her Virtue ethics, even though she does not agree with all of Aristotle's conclusions. Hursthouse defends a version of Virtue ethics which claims that virtues are virtues because they help a person achieve eudaimonia, and so living a virtuous life is a good thing for a human being. Like Julia Annas she sees the virtues as shaping the virtuous person's practical reasoning in characteristic ways, and not simply shaping that person's attitudes or actions. For Hursthouse being virtuous is the most reliable path to flourishing and she seems to think that no other path is as reliable. She also attempts to address the major criticism of Virtue ethics that provides no guidance in moral dilemmas-not by telling us how a virtuous person would act, but by showing how a vituous person would think about a moral dilemma.
Bibliography
- ‘The Central Doctrine of the Mean’ in The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Richard Kraut, Blackwell, 2006, pp.96-115.
- ‘Are Virtues the Proper Starting Point for Ethical Theory?’ in Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, ed. James Dreier, Blackwell, 2006, pp.99-112.
- ‘Virtue Ethics’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, 2003
- 'Virtue Ethics vs Rule-Consequentialism: A Reply to Brad Hooker', Utilitas Vol 14, March 2002 pp 41-53.
- Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, Routledge, 2000 (written as a part of an Open University course).
- On Virtue Ethics, Oxford University Press, 1999. For the author's account of how this book came to be written, go to OUP site
- 'Virtue and Human Nature' in Hume Studies double issue, Nov.1999/Feb.2000.
- 'Intention' in Logic, Cause and Action, ed. Roger Teichmann, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- 'Virtue Ethics and the Emotions' in Virtue Ethics, ed. Daniel Statman, Edinburgh University Press, 1997.
- 'Hume's Moral and Political Philosophy' in History of Philosophy, Vol. 5, British Philosophy and the Enlightenment, ed. Stuart Brown, Routledge, 1996.
- 'The Virtuous Agent's Reasons: a reply to Bernard Williams' in the Proceedings of the Keeling Colloquium on Aristotle on Moral Realism, ed. Robert Heinaman, UCL Press, 1995.
- 'Normative Virtue Ethics' in How Should One Live? ed. Roger Crisp, OUP, 1995.
- 'Applying Virtue Ethics' in Virtues and Reasons, Festschrift for Philippa Foot, eds. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, Warren Quinn, OUP, 1995.
- 'Arational Actions' in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. LXXXVIII 1991.
- 'Virtue Theory and Abortion' in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 20, 1990-91.
- 'After Hume's Justice' in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. XCL, 1990/91.
