ABSTRACT I focus on Pettigrove’s attack on the ‘proportionality principle’ of value, according to which our actions and attitudes ought to be proportioned to the degree of value present in an object, action, or event. I compare Pettigrove’s strong rejection of this principle with Aristotle's less radical view. There is no room in Aristotelian theory for a phronetic decision that does not take account of overall value. Yet how phronesis operates is clearly no mere utility calculus. What is clear is (...) that phronesis does not only attach itself to individual virtues in individual agents; it acts as a conductor of the whole virtue orchestra. Aristotle’s phronesis theory seems to bring him close to ‘proportionality principle’ territory. However, on a closer look, the whole idea of maximization is totally alien to Aristotelian virtue ethics. I explain how Aristotle's solution to the problem Pettigrove addresses lies in his individuality-adjusted account of virtue. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Pettigrove advances a persuasive case against the proportionality principle. In my view, the moral respect that his modus operandi account of virtue affords to each person’s ‘characteristic way of being’ is also to be applauded. While various philosophers have come to believe in the proportionality principle, it is something that presupposes a monistic account of value. Moreover, it is readily arguable that the kind of abstraction that this involves provides nothing more than an illusion of understanding, and that any (...) supposed insights associated with it have no genuine or practical application. While Pettigrove presents the modus operandi account of virtue as something that competes with consequentialist accounts of virtue, his discussion of consequentialist considerations is both minimal and equivocal. With this in mind, I seek to challenge Pettigrove’s apparent suggestion that the goodness of virtue is always ‘fundamental’. (shrink)