Is virtue ethics able to provide concrete ethical guidance to doctors Essay

Is virtue ethics able to provide concrete ethical guidance to doctors Why or why not - Essay Example This raises the question of the sort of person one should be rather than what they should do. Due to the assumption, virtue ethics is not considered as a normative rival in relation to utilitarian and deontological ethics. However, its revival serves as a reminder to moral philosophers that a full account of our moral life may not be given due to the normative theory elaboration. The grounds one might have for believing that a choice of action cannot be given by virtue ethics is based on the claim that it is concerned with character rather than action, meaning it is not able to provide concrete ethical guidance (Mukherjee, 223). The above claim highlights the contrast that is there between virtue ethics and the other two approaches. While virtue ethics is agent-centered the other two are said to be act-centered. The conflict problem comes about with supporting the general claim that virtue ethics does not give a course of action. Different virtues have different requirements and it is said that these different requirements can point us in different directions. This goes to support the idea that virtue ethics is not able to provide concrete ethical guidance to doctors (Hursthouse, 651). The Emperor of All Maladies gives a history of cancer. It is an ancient disease that was not talked about much but its effects brought about the need for it to be looked into. This was in an attempt to learn more about its personality and behavior. It traces back the origin of the disease, the triumphs and deaths encountered. It brings out the start, the progressiveness and the war waged against it by people who were determined to see that it comes to an end or find ways of preventing and curing the disease (Mukherjee, 224). A thirty year old kindergarten teacher named Carla Reed and a mother of three woke up one morning with a headache. As she later found out, it was not an ordinary headache. She was a very active