TY - JOUR
T1 - Excellent Traits in Public Health
T2 - Virtuous Structures and the Structure of Virtue
AU - Meagher, Karen M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press. Available online at www.phe.oxfordjournals.org.
PY - 2022/4/1
Y1 - 2022/4/1
N2 - MacKay's Public Health Virtue Ethics offers a distinctive approach to public health ethics, with social structures at the forefront. MacKay's helpful overview of the recent literature considers three distinct referents for ascribing virtues in public health ethics: (i) individuals, such as public health practitioners, (ii) social structures, such as public health institutions and policies and (iii) the communities affected by public health policy. While MacKay is interested in virtuous structures, I am interested in the structure of virtue as a precursor to this approach. In this commentary, I seek to unpack the structure of virtue itself, to delineate what various accounts of public health virtues offer, including MacKay's new account. For such clarity, I turn to David Pears' neo-Aristotelian essay on moral courage, in which he distinguishes external goals, internal goals and countergoals. Additional virtue vocabulary advances discussion of how the moral psychology of virtue traditions can be best adapted to public health professions, policy and practice.
AB - MacKay's Public Health Virtue Ethics offers a distinctive approach to public health ethics, with social structures at the forefront. MacKay's helpful overview of the recent literature considers three distinct referents for ascribing virtues in public health ethics: (i) individuals, such as public health practitioners, (ii) social structures, such as public health institutions and policies and (iii) the communities affected by public health policy. While MacKay is interested in virtuous structures, I am interested in the structure of virtue as a precursor to this approach. In this commentary, I seek to unpack the structure of virtue itself, to delineate what various accounts of public health virtues offer, including MacKay's new account. For such clarity, I turn to David Pears' neo-Aristotelian essay on moral courage, in which he distinguishes external goals, internal goals and countergoals. Additional virtue vocabulary advances discussion of how the moral psychology of virtue traditions can be best adapted to public health professions, policy and practice.
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U2 - 10.1093/phe/phac003
DO - 10.1093/phe/phac003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132995357
SN - 1754-9973
VL - 15
SP - 16
EP - 22
JO - Public Health Ethics
JF - Public Health Ethics
IS - 1
ER -