The Limited Unity of Virtue

Abstract

According to Aristotle, one moral virtue entails all the others. This unity of virtue (UV) doctrine has important implications for moral understanding, evaluation, and education. I reject UV-as also the commonly advanced alternatives that the virtues are disunited or, even, mutually incompatible-and argue that the major virtues are disunited across different domains but united within domains (the limited unity of virtue of LUV). A domain is an area of practical concern that can be psychologically compartmentalized from other areas of concern and that is important enough to justify the ascription of virtue. LUV fits what we know of human psychology and character better than the unity, disunity, or incompatibility theses.