Quotation
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Virtues are corrective. They stand at a point where there is some temptation to be resisted or some deficiency of motivation to be made good.
Philippa Foot · Virtue ethics · Modern · 1978
What does it mean?
Virtues are corrective. They stand where there is a temptation to be resisted or a deficiency of motivation to be made good. Courage corrects fear, temperance the pull of pleasure. A virtue is intelligible as a corrective to something human beings are prone to, not as a free-floating shine. A rival reading says this makes virtue miserable, a permanent grit of the teeth. She explicitly says a virtue need not be hard on every occasion. The brave person is not someone who finds every brave act agonising.
Did Philippa Foot really say this?
The library’s label is Summary. Summary, not a sentence she wrote. The card restates her account in the essay 'Virtues and Vices': each virtue corresponds to a tendency it corrects, and that does not mean every virtuous act feels difficult.
Where it comes from
'Virtues and Vices' (1978), a summary of her account
Approximate date: 1978.
How to use it
Name the temptation your admired trait is for, in a ward, a courtroom, or a Sunday league dressing room in Stoke. If you cannot, you may be praising a style rather than a virtue. She thinks the temptation is what gives the virtue its point. A trait with no corresponding human difficulty is not yet, on this account, a virtue.
A mindset reading
Corrective does not mean miserable. The summary here restates the 1978 essay and is not a single sentence lifted unchanged. Treat it as her account, and go to the essay before you carve the wording in stone.
Understand the philosophy
The essay helps restart virtue ethics inside analytic philosophy. The corrective thesis and the warning about virtues used for bad ends belong together. One without the other flatters courage in any cause.
- virtue
- ethics
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
Virtues are corrective. They stand where there is a temptation to be resisted or a deficiency of motivation to be made good. Courage corrects fear, temperance the pull of pleasure. A virtue is intelligible as a corrective to something human beings are prone to, not as a free-floating shine. A rival reading says this makes virtue miserable, a permanent grit of the teeth. She explicitly says a virtue need not be hard on every occasion. The brave person is not someone who finds every brave act agonising.
Did Philippa Foot really say this?
Summary. Summary, not a sentence she wrote. The card restates her account in the essay 'Virtues and Vices': each virtue corresponds to a tendency it corrects, and that does not mean every virtuous act feels difficult.
Which work is it in?
'Virtues and Vices' (1978), a summary of her account Approximate date: 1978.