Honesty, honour and trust

pp. 54-65

in: Robert Grant, Imagining the real, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Abstract

On one reckoning, actions can be rated simply according to the desirability oftheir consequences. Virtue resides, however, neither in the bare action nor in its outcome per se, but in the disposition which the desire or intention to secure a certain outcome by performing it displays. In short, virtue is a matter ofchoice, motive and character. Virtue, or the virtues collectively, are what we normally call goodness.