Abstract: | The aim of my paper is to propose an account of the contribution, often neglected, of Peter Geach to the revival of virtue ethics. In the first half of the 20th century, meta-ethics was the dominant approach in the British moral philosophy, four types of meta-ethical theories being advanced: intuitionism, emotivism, prescriptivism and naturalism. Each type of theory supported a different view on the meaning of the term good; the understanding of good as denoting a natural property, an idea defended by naturalists, was rejected by the supporters of the rival theories. Peter Geach in Good and Evil was the first to rehabilitate naturalism as neo-Aristotelian ethics and to call for a new direction in ethics. Geach argues that good is a logically attributive adjective and therefore a good thing is a virtuous one, that is a thing that has the natural qualities it needs to perfectly accomplish its characteristic function. |
