CONFIDENCE AND CRITIQUE ; MORAL OBJECTIVITY AND RELATIVITY OF IN VIRTUE ETHICS

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Deontological ethics and utilitarianism are of typical modern concern. From a viewpoint of universal rationality, both intended to establish some principle that controls moral conducts. The principles which modern ethics have deduced, however, brought about many aspects of interminable disagreements on practical moral issues. Furthermore they proved scarcely any effectiveness on cognitive or conductive response required on any specific and practical situation. For that reason, virtue ethics which estimates tradition, custom and concreteness as more important than principle in given moral conducts, has lately attracted our concern. Restoration of virtue ethics, however, might cause the uncritical and obstinate conservatism. How can it be possible, then, after so-called modern enlightenment, to argue on the possibility of the virtue ethics?Relativity and objectivity of morality, then, is our current concern ; which is argued along the points as follows :1.The loss of human "telos" (i.e.man's true end or essential nature) replaced the ancient virtues with the modern ethics. The present research shows that, following Kant, under such circumstances, virtues must be also contained by deontological ethics.2.Against the criticism which claims that such a "thin concepts" as "happiness" or "right" are too abstract to solve any practical problem, estimated possibilities are considered as to relocating modern ethics on the stage of (internal) realism as transcendental idealism, in order to integrate virtue ethics and liberalism.3.Internal realism bound by a viewpoint can go beyond its limitation and criticize itself, not by any external point of view, but by means of plural aspects that (within a person) can be obtained from different contexts brought by varieties of communities in which a person participate.