Abstract

Transhumanists accuse their critics of pessimism and defeatism, but they display these attitudes toward humanity itself. Marked improvements in our situation must stem from dedicated efforts to narrow the gap between reflectively affirmed human ideals and their worldly manifestations. Virtue ethics is well poised to serve as an umbrella for these efforts because it concentrates on who we are as people, integrating levels of concern, individual up through civic. A potent way to mobilize people is to tap into what many already care substantially about but whose opportunities for cultivation and expression are constricted as things stand. In the United States, both virtue and core American ideals fit the bill. Recourse to the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. shows that virtue ethics and liberal commitments to justice and equality are compatible. The approach to virtue ethics whose cornerstones the author sketches in this chapter is rooted in Aristotle but adapted to America today.