Human Agency and Virtue Ethics

Human agency can act as a concept that defines the good and can give rise to the existence of goodness in the world. The American philosopher Christine Korsgaard has used the concept of agency within a Kantian framework to develop an anti-realist account of value. However, Korsgaard’s requirement that agents constitute themselves overlooks the importance of social context to human identity and autonomy development and risks excluding the majority of human activity from moral consideration. This paper will argue that the dependence of human agents on social influences is better accounted for in an agency-based virtue ethics system, which also provides a reason for acting morally that can inform all human activity. The concept of human agency offers virtue ethics an agent-independent value concept to guide the integration of conflicting virtues in practical reasoning. In agency-based virtue ethics, virtues are the character traits that tend towards the effective realisation of human agency.