Towards Justice and Virtue

Constructs an account of the basic principles for moving towards just institutions and virtuous lives.

Towards Justice and Virtue challenges the rivalry between those who advocate only abstract, universal principles of justice and those who commend only the particularities of virtuous lives, and shows how a modest account of ethical reasoning, without metaphysical assumptions, can be used to construct accounts of just institutions and of social virtues.Towards Justice and Virtue challenges the rivalry between those who advocate only abstract, universal principles of justice and those who commend only the particularities of virtuous lives. Onora O'Neill traces this impasse to defects in underlying conceptions of reasoning about action. She proposes and vindicates a modest account of ethical reasoning and a reasoned way of answering the question 'who counts?', then uses these to construct linked accounts of principles by which we can move towards just institutions and virtuous lives.