Introduction

Abstract This book links together an account of love with virtue ethics. The overall moral theoretic framework presupposed is a form of virtue ethics; specifically target centred virtue ethics. It is a form of virtue ethics because the thick virtue concepts are deemed central to ethics and notions of rightness and excellence are understood in terms of virtuousness (whether of action, motive, or character). It is a form of target centred virtue ethics because what makes actions right, feelings appropriate, and traits of character virtues, is understood through the notion of the targets of the virtues. The targets of virtue are their aims, goals, or point and function in a life well lived. The modern development of virtue ethics as a moral theory has gone through several phases. I identify five, of which the most significant is the first, the wrenching away of ethics from what Williams called ‘morality that peculiar institution’ to the prioritizing of the thick concepts. In this work I contribute to the latest phase, a phase where one presupposes a type of virtue ethics (in my case the target centred virtue ethics already developed) and giving that view some normative content (an account of the place of love in virtue).