The Fourth way? An Ethical Foundation of Agathology

Abstract

Advantages of virtue ethics over two other main programs of metaethics, i.e. utilitarianism and deonthologism, leave, nevertheless, undecided the question about why this “ “third way” in ethics has managed to make more contribution into critics of its opponents than to building its own coherent theory. The main answer offered in the paper is that Anscombe, Foot, MacIntyre and their followers haven’t laid into the basement of their new Aristotelianism what Aristotle himself considered to be the foundation of his teaching of virtues – a theory of the goods. But this mode of basing arethic ethics leads beyond its limits, to “the fourth way”, that is to agatological ethics.