Virtue theorists of various stripes have the resources to deny that a terrorist need be displaying virtues, such as courage, if they are doing something unjust. Classical virtue theorists (including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among others) thought the virtues had to be admirable and praiseworthy. So they reasoned that traditional assumptions about the virtues and their the extension were mistaken. Standing firm in battle is not courageous if one's cause is not just. Indeed, on some classical views, the virtuous action must always be morally best. This assumption tends to make some version of the unity of the virtues -- according to which the virtues are inseparable and one -- attractive. But then if the terrorist's act is unjust it cannot be brave, because this would violate the unity of the virtues. Many modern conceptions of the virtues would also have the resources to condemn terrorism. Julia Driver is a consequentialist about virtue who sees virtues as dispositions with largely...

I'm not sure why you think that Plato would deny that there are objective and universal moral values. To the contrary, Plato is often taken to be a prototypical advocate of the sort of realism or objectivity about moral value that posits moral truths that obtain independently of the appraiser's beliefs or attitudes about what is right or wrong (cf. John Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong , ch. 1). This would be the common reading of Plato, with which I would agree. In the Euthydemus and Theaetetus Plato offers extended arguments against relativistic views, and the in Euthyphro he extends his realism to virtues, such as piety. You'd certainly be swimming against the scholarly current to read Plato as an advocate of any significant kind of relativism.

We can take one of two different attitudes toward the sanctity of life. We could try to promote this value or we could honor it on each and every occasion. Promoting value reflects a consequentialist approach to morality, whereas honoring values treats them as side constraints on the pursuit of goals. Sometimes promoting and honoring values seem to provide different guidance. In the lifeboat case, promoting human life would seem to require sacrificing one to save several, whereas honoring human life would seem to require that no one be sacrificed against her will, even if this means that fewer lives would be saved or even no lives saved. Sacrifice to promote human life will be less objectionable if the determination of who is to be sacrificed is made in some fair (e.g. random) way. It may not be objectionable at all (it may not even violate side constraints) if someone consents to be sacrificed, and her consent is informed and uncoerced. It's often permissible to impose a burden on someone...

I see nothing wrong with your using your girlfriend's love for you to get her to seek medically and/or psychologically necessary help with her eating disorder. It might be wrong to use another's love to achieve some purely personal or private benefit for yourself that your lover did not and could not approve or share. Healthy love involves mutual concern for the other for the other's own sake. This concern for the other's own sake requires concern for her true good, and this may require working to change or reform some aspect of the beloved or her situation, even if this involves some resistance. This would certainly be true if your girlfirend's problem was once of substance abuse. It's not clear to me how an eating disorder is relevantly different. However, one caution is that concern for the beloved's own sake does seem to speak against being manipulative in the way you use her love for you to get her into treatment. Moreover, your goal should be to use her love for you simply as a stepping...

I don't know what your legal rights are. If you are interested, you should consult a lawyer. However, I can understand your outrage and humiliation. As you tell it, their accusation was false and lacked probable cause. They also lied in the course of interrogating you, apparently with the hope of eliciting a confession, rather than as part of a good faith investigation. If it were me, I would follow the issue up with my supervisor or by filing a formal grievance. It sounds like you deserve an explanation and a formal apology. It sounds like the company needs to rethink its understanding of various aspects of due process. If I didn't get a satisfactory reply, I would think seriously about looking for a new position in another firm with a solid track record of fair and honest dealing with employees.

Retributivists about punishment are keen to distinguish between retributive justice and revenge. They presumably distinguish between punishment as restribution -- where that involves inflicting punishment for wrongdoing because it is wrong and in proportion to is wrongness -- from punishment as revenge -- where that involves punishing indpendently of wrongfulness or out of proportion to wrongfulness. Still, even if a private citizen exacts proportional retribution that smacks of revenge, doesn't it? If so, revenge may sometimes involve a wrongful assumption of penal authority.

I would think that it depends on the details. If B promises A to fulfill her last wishes, then it seems B has a promissory obligation to A. Also, someone functioning as an executor to an estate has a (legal) obligation ot respect A's last wishes. There may be people related to A in ways that make them quasi-executors. They may have some obligations to fulfill A's last wishes. But absent a promise or some other clear role duty, it would seem to depend upon B's relation to A and the nature of A's wish. Does A's wish concern something that would have been fully within A's control during her lifetime? Does A's wish harm anyone? Would honoring A's wish involve neglecting others to whom A owed things?

That adopted children have a right to know they are adopted and that the adoptive parents have a duty to tell the adopted child that he or she is adopted both seem pretty clear. Surely, one has a right to know whether one's parents are also one's biological parents, and it would be wrong for parents to have their relationsip with the adopted child based on deception. Add to this the fact that the deception might be uncovered, which would prove even more traumatic than if the fact of adoption is discussed openly and honestly .... But when and how to tell the child that he or she is adopted, that's hard. It might be best to explain it in some way early so that the child does not feel that anything is hidden from him or her but then to offer opportunities to discuss it in greater detail when the child is older, more mature, and more reflective. But these are questions better posed to a child psychologist or counselor than a philosopher, I would think. I don't see that it is...

You don't have to be religious to think that trust and fidelity are important values that should regulate intimate associations. So, barring some special background that you have not supplied (e.g. the marriage is an "open marriage" or the wife has been in a persistent vegetative state for years), I would think that the extramarital affair was morally wrong, at least in part because it was inconsistent with marital trust and fidelity. It seems to me the unmarried woman does wrong if she knowingly enters such a relationship, even if it is not her vows that are being broken. If it's wrong for you to breach a contract, and I knowingly help you breach your contract, I've done something wrong. Moreover, if the unmarried woman genuinely cares for the married man, then she presumably has reason not to want him to do something wrong. So, to answer your original question, this gives her reason not to contribute to his infidelity. But this seems to be an additional reason not to have the affair, in addition...

Atheism and agnosticism are only two reasons not settle moral perplexity by trying to ascertain God's will (see below). Atheists and agnostics will try to find reflectively acceptable principles and rules to guide their actions. It makes sense to start with widely shared rules about nonmaleficence, beneficence, honesty, fidelity, and fair play. Different ethical systems justify and sometimes interpret these rules in different ways. Finding the right moral theory is a matter of finding an ethical system that interprets and justifies these rules in a reflectively acceptable way. In the meantime, most of us will try to regulate our affairs as best we can byapplying these secondary rules. The interesting question is not so much how is morality possible independently of religion, but how is religion possible independently of morality. Even if we are theists, there's a strong case for thinking that morality is independent of religion. Socrates long ago asked whether something was right because God...