How Virtues Provide Action Guidance: Confucian Military Virtues at Work

Robert B. Louden in his widely reprinted essay (Louden 1997(1984)) argues that virtue ethics suffers from several shortcomings, the first of which is its inability to provide action guidance in resolving moral dilemmas in applied ethics. He concludes in that section of the essay, “Virtue theory is not a problem-oriented or quandary approach to ethics: it speaks of rules and principles of action only in a derivative manner. And its derivative oughts are frequently too vague and unhelpful for persons who have not yet acquired the requisite moral insight and sensitivity. Consequently, we cannot expect it to be of great use in applied ethics and casuistry. The increasing importance of these two subfields of ethics in contemporary society is thus a strike against the move to revive virtue ethics” (Louden 1997, 206).