In this chapter, we argue that human flourishing and the virtues are constitutive norms of human agency, thereby grounding virtue ethics in action theory. Building on Chapter 1’s critique of the Market Failure Approach, we argue that human action cannot be understood solely through instrumental rationality, as Humeans maintain. Instead, we contend that human flourishing – the harmonious pursuit of intrinsically valuable goods – is the constitutive aim of agency. Since the cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, justice, and practical wisdom are essential to achieving flourishing, they function as constitutive standards of action. We show how practical wisdom enables agents to apply virtue concepts in concrete situations, unifying the demands of diverse virtues and resolving conflicts between incommensurable goods. Responding to critics of virtue ethics, including Kantians and situationists, we defend a substantive conception of practical reason that is sensitive to context. This chapter lays the foundation for the market virtues framework developed in Chapter 3 and throughout the book by articulating how agents flourish in market contexts – through virtuous, mutually beneficial exchange.

This chapter critically evaluates the Market Failure Approach (MFA) to business ethics, focusing on two fundamental challenges it faces in real-world economic contexts: the theory of the second best and the ubiquity of negative externalities. While the MFA offers a simple, rule-based framework based on the concept of Pareto efficiency, we argue that its efficiency imperatives are often inapplicable or indeterminate in real-word market settings. Drawing on a neo-Aristotelian perspective, we contend that ethical formation and practical wisdom are essential for navigating these complexities. The chapter introduces eudaimonic efficiency as a more realistic and morally adequate ideal of market activity, one that emphasizes human flourishing and justice, rather than Pareto efficiency. The ideal of eudaimonic efficiency reframes the moral purpose of markets as enabling voluntary exchanges that enhance well-being without unjust harm. We show how the application of market norms inevitably requires virtues like honesty, justice, and practical wisdom, challenging the MFA’s aspiration to rule-based moral guidance. By embedding market ethics in a framework of virtue and formation, we lay the groundwork for a richer theory of market morality, developed throughout the book.

Courage is the virtue of acting when we would rather not. This chapter looks at some of the classic situations where courage is needed, such as war and emergency response. It suggests that we need to show the sort of courage that comes from treating climate change as an emergency. Drawing on specifically Christian examples, we also consider the courage of the martyrs.

Prudence is the virtue of seeing things clearly. It has been notably central to Christian accounts of what it means to be a virtuous person, and to live a virtuous life. At the foundation of that lies the idea that to act well we have not only to understand the sorts of traditions that help us know what is good, but also to work on having an accurate account of the concrete situations we face. Much of what is offered as convenient solutions to climate change fail in the second way: these easy fixes simply aren’t realistic or accurate, as they cannot be implemented at the speed or scale we need. Drawing on the work of the philosopher Iris Murdoch, we call this sort of techno-optimism ‘fantasy’, and contrast it with the sort of imaginative response to the world as it really is that Murdoch championed, and which any successful response to climate change demands.

The virtue of temperance, or moderation, is central to a discussion of responding to climate change by showing restraint. In this chapter, we discuss the idea that temperance is not about despising goods or pleasures, but about ordering them, being willing to forgo lesser goods for the sake of greater goods. Attention to the need for temperance helps us to be realistic that the climate challenge we face does require some sacrifice, some letting go. Approaching that in terms of the ordering of goods helps us to find motivation: we do it for the sake of the things we love most, among which we might list God, the earth, human societies and other people, not least those who will come after us.

Justice is about giving people what they deserve and not depriving them of what is properly theirs. Justice enjoys a commanding position among the cardinal virtues, as that which is to be sought. Applied to human life, it might seem that justice is rather a weak aim: that we certainly would not want injustice, but that other things seem necessary for a flourishing human community, such as kindness and love. That is true, but justice is a necessary backstop, and one at which we are failing, when we think about how climate change is already depriving people – indeed some of the poorest people – of land and homes.

Love holds the most exalted place in the Christian account of the virtues. In this chapter we propose that our actions are most of all determined by what we love. If we want to find the motivation to make changes to how we live, in response to climate change, we can do that best by thinking through what it is that we love, and what that might require of us. We think about how love often involves some sort of restraint or letting go (as in marriage, where we ‘forsake all other’), not out of any cold disdain, but on account of the warmth that characterises our attitude to what we love most.

In this chapter, we consider hope as the supremely political virtue, which is to say one that helps us to venture great things in the business of building a shared life. We also consider questions of scale, and the idea that we should be happy to ‘start small’ and attend, first of all, and even mainly, to the challenges and opportunities that lie closest to hand, in our homes, localities and places of work.

For three decades, politicians have promised that new technologies will solve climate change, but they haven’t emerged at meaningful scale. So, instead we must act with technologies we already have, which will involve some restraint. However, knowing this fact does not of itself motivate change. Instead, we present a new framing of our response to climate change as an expression of our values. The restraint, perhaps lasting for two or three decades, that is required to deal with climate change is not only a sacrifice. Embracing it can also help us to find a different good life, as responsible and joyful custodians of creation. The seven virtues inspire us to lift up our heads, be honest about the options and motivate our action, and encourage us to find a safe climate, in good faith.

With this chapter we move from the ‘cardinal’ virtues of courage, prudence, temperance and justice to the ‘theological’ virtues of faith, hope and love. In particular, we ask what faith – belief in God, and in the wider Christian creed – means for what we have already considered. We see that, far from encouraging us to disregard justice and responsibility in this life for the sake of the next, it teaches us to see the world as God’s creation and other human beings as bearing God’s image, spurring us to action with all the more energy.

The ninth chapter adopts a somewhat different point of view and asks whether the Bhagavad-gītā can be a source of an educational doctrine. As opposed to the present book, which is mostly engaged with the metaphysics of the Gītā, its structure and the way it gradually leads toward liberation, this concluding chapter aims to look at the Gītā in humanistic terms. Applying our terminology, it looks at the Gītā in first storey terms, with the aim of highlighting some of its major educational elements, or stated differently, looking at elements out of which an educational doctrine could possibly be articulated. As such, this chapter looks into the following topics: spirituality, virtue ethics, conquering lust and anger, following dharma in every sphere of life, happiness, meditation, the divinity of nature and an ecological worldview and finally devotion.

In the eighteenth century, the practice of law was not a self-governing profession in the modern sense. Many lawyers and judges lacked specialized knowledge and formal training, and only a few were subject to regulation or oversight. This chapter examines how Henry Fielding grapples with the consequences of this undisciplined, undereducated, and ethically unmoored legal culture in Tom Jones (1749). Fielding derides the inadequacies of the period’s legal order by featuring magistrates and attorneys whose primary characteristics are intellectual incompetence, poor judgment, and moral corruption. Yet he also proposes a remedy to the law’s limitations. Drawing from moral philosophies circulating in the mid eighteenth century, Fielding implicitly advocates for a professional system that fosters its representatives’ innate moral virtues and enforces a stable but flexible code of ethics. His proposal has relevance for today’s legal profession, which is likewise susceptible to charges of ineffectiveness, injustice, and unfairness.

Moral philosophy can and ought to be a source of moral wisdom. Wisdom is a special kind of understanding, in particular, an ethical understanding of what it is to be a success as a human being, a healthy and fully formed specimen. Such understanding involves both a delicate grasp of the grammar of moral concepts and an appreciation of their import for a human life, including the philosopher’s. Virtue ethics is an important department of moral philosophy, especially for the philosophical goal of becoming wise. It consists in a careful investigation of the concepts of moral virtues (generosity, justice, the sense of duty, and so forth), both in their conceptual contours and in their importance for a human life.

Final Chapter 9 explains why ‘free’ market competition under regulatory capitalism underlies widespread unrecognized regulatory violence and argues that the cultivation of competitive desire (cf. Girard 2000) succeeds at the expense of what have become ‘sacrificeable’ patients. After a discussion of suggestions of altering the social contract between science and publics, and the observation of the prevalence of competitive desire in the context of political debate in the UK, I explain how, instead of regulatory capitalism based on competitive desire, a vision of caring solidarity applying the generative principle of creative desire (Adams 2000) would be more conducive to policies aimed at medical and public-health targets. I argue that guidelines rooted in ‘caring solidarity’ can largely prevent the violence of regulatory competition that has become endemic to regulatory capitalism. By avoiding high-risk strategies that are oriented on one-size-fit-all solutions expected to generate high-profit margins, the proposed vision of caring solidarity is more conducive to sustainable health. The rudiments of such a model, I suggest, would use the generative principle of creative desire, building on local notions of wisdom incorporating virtue ethics of prudence and justice.

This chapter argues that because judging inevitably requires the exercise of judgment, one of our most critical concerns should be ensuring that the people we select as judges have good judgment. It explores what good judgment might mean and draws on work in both law and philosophy exploring the nature of judicial character. It further explores two components of judicial character, specifically practical wisdom and intellectual humility, and in the case of the latter, surveys a growing body of work in philosophy and psychology that investigates humility’s nature and benefits. It briefly outlines ways in which a renewed emphasis on judicial character might be implemented.

Normative ethics is divided between ethical theory and practical ethics. Three families of ethical theories are consequentialism, virtue ethics, and Kantianism. Consequentialism is the view that consequences determine what we ought to do. Virtue ethics is the view that right actions should be understood in terms of virtuous agents and their character. Kantianism’s central concern is with how rational agents ought to relate to themselves and to each other. Ethical theory is difficult to disentangle from practical ethics, which is concerned with what we ought to do in particular situations, which – along with the question “How should I live?” – is the most important topic in ethics and perhaps all of philosophy.