Virtue Politics and its limits: a review essay (original) (raw)

Virtue ethics in the contemporary social and political realm

2010

This thesis concerns the problem of applying the ideas developed in contemporary virtue ethics to political philosophy. The core of the problem, explained in the opening chapters, is that assessment of right action offered by virtue ethics - in terms of what 'the virtuous person' characteristically does or would do - is focused on individual persons, rather than political principles of government. Accordingly, interpretations of traditional Aristotelianism have struggled to accommodate the putative value of modern value pluralism and manifold conceptions of the 'good life', whilst liberal theories that employ virtue concepts fail to offer a political philosophy that is distinctly virtue ethical. Rather than trying to fit individualistic virtue ethics to political theory in these ways, subsequent chapters start from the viewpoint of individuals and look outward to their social and political environment, arguing that an adequately socio-political virtue ethics requires...

Virtue and Politics: An Aristotelian Reading of Niccolo Machiavelli

Problemos, 2011

The paper discusses Niccolò Machiavelli's conception of virtue (virtú) and republican politics from the point of view of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Machiavelli's emphasis on civic virtue and the support of republican politics bear similarity to Aristotle's conception of politics. Against two competing interpretations of Machiavelli's legacy (the Cambridge contextual historians school and Joseph V. Femia), this paper argues that while Machiavelli moves away from the classical conception of aretē / virtus, he also, at the same time, shares with an Aristotelian practical philosophy the concept of the republican common good. Machiavelli's modified conception of classical virtus and his republican rhetoric allows us to interpret his position as proto-nationalist. Finally, this paper argues that Machiavelli's cynical advice and observations can be partly explained by the gap between the Renaissance education of studia humanitatis and the ruthlessness of Italian Realpolitik.

Machiavelli, Civic Humanism, and the Humanist Politics of Virtue

Italian Culture, 2014

Modern studies of Italian humanist political thought emphasize the theme of republican liberty, but this conception has been understood in anachronistic ways and exaggerated in importance. Much more central is the problem of how to encourage virtuous and prudent behavior in the ruling class. The humanist answer -a classical education in virtue and wisdom, along with the creation of new social technologies of persuasion -was comprehensively rejected by Machiavelli, whose own approach to political success truly introduced new modi e ordini.

"Renaissance Humanism and Its Discontents," The European Legacy 20.5 (2015): 1-17

The essay explores humanism’s modernity by inquiring into the way the fifteenth-century humanist cultural program posited moral values and, at the same time, contributed to a sense of moral confusion. While Niccolò Niccoli, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and Leonardo Bruni associated ethical enlightenment with learning and even social acclaim, Leon Battista Alberti criticized these assumptions not only for their susceptibility to political manipulation but also for their failure to cultivate the attributes they promised: virtue, and by extension happiness and tranquillity. The tensions in humanist culture between conformity and dissent, rational certainty and sense of mutability, generated the creative energy that we, as moderns, have come to attribute to this culture.