Please provide a short response to this student’s weekly conversation
In the example given about John Smith, I searched around to find more information befitting the Virtue ethics subject. Some information was on 20th century philosophy in respect to virtue ethics, to even talking about theory, but I final found information on a BBC webpage I thought fit this example perfectly. The webpage Virtue Ethics (2014) says “Virtue ethics is person rather than action based, it looks at the virtue or moral character of the person carrying out an action, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of particular actions. Virtue ethics not only deals with the rightness or wrongness of individual actions, it provides guidance as to the sort of characteristics and behaviors a good person will seek to achieve.”
From the example I see Jim as a professional, and a person who is very good at his job, but in his “eagerness to maximize profits” he chooses to do the wrong thing. It may have been his moral character of being such a good accountant, and knowing that everyone looks at him as a brilliant mind, or that he feels he is the only one to make things happen. Either way his moral compass was off, and his character I feel was an influence in the decisions he made.
Virtue ethics. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/virtue.sh…
