Most advocates of a MacIntyrian or Aristotelian virtue-ethics might not immediately agree. But consider: Most of our behavior, according to the virtue-ethicist, is in fact predetermined by previous determinations of the will, which usually result in observable patterns of repeated action, eventually becoming habits. These habits significantly determine, and even allow others to predict, a given individual’s actions. So oddly, virtue-ethics as an explanation of human behavior can hold its own among competing determinist accounts of human behavior.
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…