Books by Michael (Professor of Philosophy Slote

Most people think that the difficulty of balancing career and personal/family relationships is the fault of present-day society or is due to their own inadequacies. But in this major new book, Michael Slote argues that the difficulty runs much deeper, that it is due to the essential nature of the divergent goods involved in this kind of choice.

Developing a virtue ethics inspired by moral sentimentalism, this book argues that a reconfigured and expanded 'morality of caring' can offer a general account of right and wrong action and also of social justice. It also shows how a motive-based 'pure' virtue theory can also help understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.

Advocating a particular form of virtue ethics for its intuitive and structural advantages over Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality, Slote argues that a contemporarily plausible version of virtue ethics can be achieved only by abandoning specifically moral concepts for general aretaic notions like virtue.