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Teaching the Virtues: Justifications and Recommendations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Candace C. Gauthier
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Extract

The current interest in and discussion of virtue ethics suggests that this approach to moral decisionmaking has several distinct advantages as applied to ethical issues in healthcare delivery. For the most part, calls to incorporate the virtues of the healthcare provider in discussions of these issues have sought to supplement rather than totally replace traditional ethical theories, such as the utilitarian focus on maximizing the best overall consequences and the Kantian concern to act on the duty of respect for persons. Including virtue-based ethics in such discussions allows for a more eclectic view of what should be considered in resolving difficult moral problems. As many critics of the purely principle-based approach have noted, real moral dilemmas are usually quite messy and are not easily susceptible to satisfactory resolution solely on the basis of abstract moral theories or principles.

Type
Bioethics Education
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes

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