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24 - Virtue

from V - Issues in Modern Jewish Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Dov Nelkin
Affiliation:
The Abraham Joshua Heschel School
Martin Kavka
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Zachary Braiterman
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
David Novak
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

Like Adam and Eve after the fruit, Jews in the modern world found their eyes opened to choices not imagined before, and as in the earlier case, that experience was not altogether pleasant. Without the certainties of the past, how could one know what a proper life looked like? How was one to live? What was one to do? In a manner akin to the modern Jew responding to the prevailing trends in Western philosophy by rejecting the demand that the particular yield before the universal, contemporary virtue ethics is an approach to the ethical life that considers the dominant ethical theories of modernity and responds, in effect, “these are not enough. These do not understand the depth of the moral life and they are powerless to answer how to live a morally rich life.” Where the modern Jew negotiated a way of maintaining particularity while participating in the universal, the virtue ethicist attempts to find a way to respond to the demands that ethics be somehow universally applicable while recognizing the essential embeddedness of the virtues and ethics themselves. Virtue ethics, which demands that we consider the question of how one should live before we attempt to evaluate the morality of a given action or attempt to choose how to act when facing a moral dilemma, draws our attention to the rupture in the moral certainties at the point when Jewish tradition encounters modernity.

Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
The Modern Era
, pp. 739 - 758
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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  • Virtue
  • Edited by Martin Kavka, Florida State University, Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University, New York, David Novak, University of Toronto
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
  • Online publication: 28 September 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521852432.026
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  • Virtue
  • Edited by Martin Kavka, Florida State University, Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University, New York, David Novak, University of Toronto
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
  • Online publication: 28 September 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521852432.026
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Virtue
  • Edited by Martin Kavka, Florida State University, Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University, New York, David Novak, University of Toronto
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
  • Online publication: 28 September 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521852432.026
Available formats
×