What is it about?
The virtues are character traits that help you lead a good life; or so it has been argued by Confucius, Socrates and many others. Recent research by 'positive psychologists' has provided evidence for this millenia old argument. But are positive psychologists talking about the same thing when they investigate the virtues? This paper introduces some differences between the old notion of the virtues and the contemporary one.
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Why is it important?
Positive Psychology has succesfully crossed the boundary between academic research and a mass audience encouraging people to concentrate on their character strengths in order to flourish. But what if their notion of character strengths was faulty? Not only that, what if their claim to be bringing ancient virtues up to date was downright false? This paper argues that positive psychology doesn't really understand what virtue is.
Perspectives
This paper introduces a Special Edition of the journal 'Business Ethics: a European review' which ivnvited sholars and researchers to write about the ralationship between the understanding of virtue in the classical traditions and the ways in which positive psychologists were understanding virtues in individuals, teams and organizations. Our Introduction attempts to give an overview about this debate.
Professor Ron Beadle
Northumbria University
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This page is a summary of: Introduction-virtue and virtuousness: when will the twain ever meet?, Business Ethics A European Review, August 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/beer.12098.
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