This volume’s ostensive purpose is to “stimulate the emergence of a new area of multi-disciplinary study: virtue development studies” (2). The book’s chapters, from philosophers, psychologists, and a theologian, are divided into five themes, virtue and: 1. development (Chapters 1-6), 2. extension (Chapters 7 and 8), 3. nature and thinking (Chapters 9 and 10), 4. emotional development (Chapter 11), and 5. justice and benevolence (Chapters 12 and 13). While space limitations prevent more than a brief description of each, it should be noted that many of the chapters address the ‘situationist challenge,’ which runs roughly: empirical research indicates that there are nonconscious processes influencing behaviour and this challenges the notion of agents acting virtuously cross-situationally.
The first chapter, “Baselines for Virtue” by Darcia Narvaez, identifies the biological, psychological, and social sources of virtue development. Narvaez argues that small band hunter-gatherer societies evidence the type of care that is conducive to virtue development.
Daniel Lapsley, in “Moral Self-Identity and the Social-Cognitive Theory of Virtue,” proposes a social-cognitive, rather than trait-based, account of moral identity and virtue that replies to the situationist challenge by claiming that, while situational factors can facilitate or hamper access to one’s moral self-identity, there are still enduring moral schemata.
In the third chapter, “From a Baby Smiling: Reflections on Virtue in Development,” Robert N. Emde identifies the core features of morality and stresses the role of parental regulation in the development of these values. Guidance is provided for future research into these proto-virtues.
In “The Development of Virtuous Character: Automatic and Reflective Dispositions,” Ross A. Thompson and Abby S. Lavine describe the effects of chronic early stressors on the development of virtue and conclude that this could lead to automated dispositions that hinder the development of virtues.
In “Developmental Virtue Ethics,” Christine Swanton provides a minimal compatibilist definition of basic virtue as “a good quality of character, more specifically a disposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its field or fields in an excellent or good enough way” (118). In considering virtue relative to children, the author concludes both that children may exemplify virtues in different ways than do adults and that there may be some virtues of adults that are not virtues in children.
In “How Habits Make Us Virtuous,” Nancy E. Snow offers three accounts of virtue development through habituation, each describing a different relation of conscious and nonconscious processes that could count as a response to the situationist challenge.
In “Virtue Cultivation in Light of Situationism” Christian B. Miller considers four possible responses to the influence of nonconscious dispositions described by situationism and advocates an education program to correct for the morally relevant nonconscious dispositions.
In “Becoming Good: Narrow Dispositions and the Stability of Virtue,” Rachana Kamtekar cautions against trying to build virtues out of narrow dispositions simply because they are stable and recommends considering why the dispositions we are interested in are stable or not.
The ninth chapter, by Matt Stichter, is “The Role of Motivation and Wisdom in Virtues as Skills.” Stichter describes a model of virtue as skills with an evaluative component provided by practical wisdom, which is not itself a skill.
Julia Annas’ “Learning Virtue Rules: The Issue of Thick Concepts” is the 10th chapter and it examines the role of thick and thin concepts in virtue ethics. Annas argues that thick concepts, like cowardice or generosity, are a combination of fact and value, and so can be action guiding. Thin concepts, like right and ought, are evaluative but the evaluation is not derived from descriptive content. Annas warns that the thick concepts of virtue ethics may not be productively broken down into discrete descriptive and evaluative components. She cautions against an approach that would diminish the robustness of thick concepts in the service of the ‘purely descriptive.’
In the eleventh chapter, “Guilt and Shame in the Development of Virtue,” Jennifer A. Herdt maintains that guilt leads us to reflect on the quality of our agency and that this can be put in the service of virtue development.
“Benevolence in a Justice-Based World: The Power of Sentiments (and Reasoning) in Predicting Prosocial Behaviors,” by Gustavo Carlo and Alexandra N. Davis, is the penultimate chapter. The authors argue that the works of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg led to an undue privileging of justice as cognitive, over benevolence as emotive. They assert that benevolence is a good predictor of prosocial behaviour and is as relevant for understanding morality as justice is.
The final entry is Mark LeBar’s “Norms of Justice in Development.” LeBar advocates virtue ethics as a framework that can provide an understanding of the non-ideal origins of justice. LeBar traces the evolution of the sources of normativity and demonstrates the compatibility of this account with virtue ethics.
While each chapter serves well as an isolated foray into the broader interdisciplinary topic of virtue development, one might wish for a more unified or explicit conception of virtue around which the various authors could orient themselves. Some are content with a neo-Aristotelian conception of virtue while others make a clear departure from this. Overall, these chapters represent many interesting and compelling attempts at an interdisciplinary project that is well timed; virtue ethics continues to gain influence and empirical psychology has developed to a point where it needs an ethical framework in which to contextualize its findings. This book considers many of the most important questions faced by contemporary ethics and psychology research and each chapter provides a compelling possible direction forward in this uncharted and important territory.
