Guanzhang Li
University of Antwerp
When G. E. M. Anscombe’s Modern Moral Philosophy (1958) appeared, virtue ethics emerged as a third alternative to deontology and consequentialism in explaining what is good. Many virtue ethicists, such as Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre, joined this project, engaging in both a critique of modern moral philosophy and a defence of virtue ethics. At the same time, increased attention to the normativity of virtue coincided with a growing interest in its linguistic and conceptual structure, often discussed under the label of “thick concepts,” a notion that has gained recognition not only in philosophy but also in sociology. This helps explain why Pekka Väyrynen (2025) remarks that “the revival of virtue ethics… coincides with increased attention to thick terms and concepts in metaethics.”
However, there appears to be a tension between virtues and thick concepts. Virtues are typically taken to have an invariant positive valence—they are, by definition, good (Crisp 2000; Rebecca 2008; Chappell 2021). By contrast, thick concepts seem to exhibit a degree of evaluative flexibility: they can carry positive, negative, or even neutral valence, including those associated with virtues (Dancy 2003; Kirchin 2017).
Christine Swanton (2018), drawing on Jones (2012), implies a possible solution by distinguishing between thick concepts grounded in virtuousness and those grounded in other forms of normativity. According to Swanton, a concept such as ‘honest’ may be good in some contexts because of its connection to virtue, and in others because of its role in promoting social stability. However, she seems to overlook the fact that a similar line of thought had already been developed in detail by Philippa Foot (1978).
In this paper, I first aim to clarify the discussion of the tension between virtues and thick concepts. I then return to Foot to show how Swanton’s approach can be developed into a more robust solution. Finally, I argue that the tension, once properly understood, extends beyond linguistic and metaethics into normative—and even meta-normative—ethics.
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SOPhiA 2026 