Toward a Humean Virtue Ethics

In my paper, I maintain that Hume’s moral sentimentalism offers the philosophical tools to redefine the basic notions of virtue ethics in a more efficacious way compared to the opposing neo-Aristotelian model. I argue that the strength of Hume’s version of virtue ethics is that he aims at the unity of character instead of the unity of the virtues. This allows to develop a pluralistic and secularised morality which denies any supposed final cause or télos for human beings conceived as a species, and instead upholds the individuality of the person as the fundamental value which should be pursued and promoted.