Rosalind Hursthouse is a key figure in the twentieth-century revival of virtue ethics. Her On Virtue Ethics was one of the first—and remains one of the best—systematic developments of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics (Hursthouse 1999). But Hursthouse has also written a number of important essays that not only clarify and extend the argument of that book but also take her distinctive approach to ethics into new territory. Julia Annas and Jeremy Reid have done a great service by collecting and editing the most significant of these essays into this volume. Combined with an insightful introduction that highlights the main themes of her work, Virtue and Action will prove an invaluable resource for moral philosophers.
The book contains nineteen previously published essays, organized into three sections: “Aristotle and Ancient Virtue Ethics,” “Normative Virtue Ethics,” and “Action Theory, Politics, and Naturalism.” Given that Hursthouse’s interest in Aristotle is never purely historical or exegetical,...
