Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles

by Justin Oakley, Dean Cocking

Overview

Taking medical and legal practice as key examples, the authors develop a rigorous articulation and defence of virtue ethics, contrasting it with other types of character-based ethical theories and showing that it offers a promising new approach to the ethics of professional roles. They provide insights into the central notions of professional detachment, professional integrity, and moral character in professional life, and demonstrate how a virtue-based approach can help us better understand what ethical professional-client relationships would be like.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521027298
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/02/2006
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 10.16(h) x 0.59(d)
Lexile:	1870L (what's this?)

About the Author

Dean Cocking is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia. He has published a number of articles in journals including Ethics and The Journal of Philosophy.

Justin Oakley is Director of the Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics. His publications include Morality and the Emotions (1992) and a number of journal articles.

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The nature of virtue ethics; 2. The regulative ideals of morality and the problem of friendship; 3. A virtue ethics approach to professional roles; 4. Ethical models of the good general practitioner; 5. Professional virtues, ordinary vices; 6. Professional detachment in health care and legal practice; Bibliography; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'The great achievement of this book is that it renders virtue ethics plausible … It certainly offers a new and constructive way of viewing the meaning and the purpose, the roles and the goods of professional life.' Heythrop Journal

' … there have been relatively few theoretical contributions of this caliber to the literature on virtues and the professions, this book will be a welcome addition to the field.' Jennifer Welchman, Philosophy in Review

'This excellent volume has something for everyone … It is a thought-provoking read [and] …offers a significant contribution to the ethics literature' Derek Sellman, Nursing Philosophy

Editorial Reviews

'The great achievement of this book is that it renders virtue ethics plausible … It certainly offers a new and constructive way of viewing the meaning and the purpose, the roles and the goods of professional life.' Heythrop Journal

' … there have been relatively few theoretical contributions of this caliber to the literature on virtues and the professions, this book will be a welcome addition to the field.' Jennifer Welchman, Philosophy in Review

'This excellent volume has something for everyone … It is a thought-provoking read [and] …offers a significant contribution to the ethics literature' Derek Sellman, Nursing Philosophy

From the Publisher