Rosalind Hursthouse

Rosalind Hursthouse is a British-born New Zealand moral philosopher who taught for many years at the Open University and later at the University of Auckland. She is one of the main figures in the modern revival of virtue ethics, the approach that puts character rather than rules or consequences at the centre of ethics. Her book On Virtue Ethics gives the theory a clear account of right action and grounds the virtues in what human beings need to live well. She has also applied virtue ethics to abortion and to our treatment of animals.

Key ideas

• An action is right if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances.
• Virtue ethics can guide action through 'v-rules' such as 'be honest' and 'do not be cruel'.
• The virtues are the character traits a human being needs to flourish, given our nature as rational social animals.
• Some moral dilemmas are tragic: even a virtuous agent may be unable to come out of them with clean hands.
• Moral questions such as abortion are better approached by asking what a good person would do than by appealing to rights alone.

Major works

• On Virtue Ethics (1999)
• Beginning Lives (1987)
• Ethics, Humans and Other Animals (2000)

In the Book corner

• On Virtue Ethics 1999 · Intermediate
  A systematic defence of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics against the charge that it cannot tell anyone what to do. Part I, on action,…

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