Virtue Ethics for Skin-Bags: An Ethics of Love for Vulnerable Creatures

By:  Pedro A. Tabensky (Rhodes)

I will defend an account of virtue ethics that flows from the idea that we are deeply vulnerable creatures, needy of love and fearful of separateness. The story I will tell challenges the mainstream idea that virtues are stable enduring dispositions. I do not deny that virtuous individuals tend to be more reliable than non-virtuous ones, but qualifying what I mean by "tend to be more" will show to what extent virtues should not be understood as stable and enduring. Instead, the virtuous subject's integrity is permanently at risk or corruption. And I will show to what extent this risk is constitutive of virtue.