The Role of Moral Judgment

Another significant aspect of virtue ethics is its rejection of a rule-based approach to moral education. Acting ethically in a given situation is less a function of rule adherence and more a function of exercising sound moral judgement. MacIntyre makes this very clear:

"What can never be done is to reduce what has to be learned in order to excel at such a type of activity to the application of rules. There will of course at any particular stage in the historical development of such a form of activity be a stock of maxims which are used to characterize what is taken at that stage to be the best practice so far. But knowing how to apply these maxims is itself a capacity which cannot be specified by further rules, and the greatest achievements in each area at each stage always exhibit a freedom to violate the present established maxims, so that achievement proceeds both by rule-keeping and by rule-breaking. And there are never any rules to prescribe when it is the one rather than the other that we must do if we are to pursue excellence". [1984, p. 31]

This does not mean that, for example, derivatives traders should ignore exchange standards or codes of conduct, but rather that these should be viewed – not as the entire professional ethic – but as the foundation from which to pursue the professional ideal in this activity. This professional ideal will be defined in terms of the internal goods specific to the practice of derivatives trading, but more on this later.