Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 22/2019 (International issue no. 6):74-86 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2019.007

Key Aspects of Moral Character in the Situationist Challenge

Jan Brázdil
Department of Philosophy, Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts

Situationist Challenge in moral philosophy refers to the contemporary criticism of Aristotle's concept of moral character. It is based on a different area than the previous criticism, and thus presents a new challenge to the classical theory. Whether or not this critique is successful in challenging the empirical and normative adequacy of the Aristotelian concept, it is linked with an extensive discussion. I considered it important to explore what we can learn about the classical theory in the mirror of contemporary moral psychology. In this paper, I will introduce some of the aspects which constitute the Aristotelian concept of moral character, but have not been taken into account in the situationist criticism: the moral reasoning, the cultivation based on experience and the aspiration to self-improvement. These aspects are of course based on the general features of moral character (they are implied by them), and the argumentation which fails to appreciate them, fails in proper understanding of its object of criticism.

Published: September 30, 2019  Show citation

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Brázdil, J. (2019). Key Aspects of Moral Character in the Situationist Challenge. Aither, 11(22), 74-86. doi: 10.5507/aither.2019.007
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