Читать книгу The Wiley Handbook of Sustainability in Higher Education Learning and Teaching - Группа авторов - Страница 56

As a first approximation, virtues can be defined as moral dispositions that guide thinking, feelings, and acting (MacIntyre 2007). Although there is not a unitary approach to virtues, three features are shared among the defenders of virtue ethics (Nussbaum 1999): concern with the agent, together with choice and action; concern with the agent's inner moral life (patterns of reasoning, motives, and emotions); and concern with the whole course of the agent's moral life (patterns of commitment, conduct, and passion). From this common ground, cultivating compassion, for instance, would involve not only carrying out specific actions that show compassion, but also (and more importantly) developing compassionate thoughts, emotions, values, and attitudes (Hartman 2006). In other words, a compassionate character includes perceiving the necessity of compassion, experiencing it permanently, and driving one's life from feelings of compassion. Subsequently, concerning the role of good character in addressing ill‐defined socioecological problems, virtues might enhance more sustainable ways of life based on inner feelings and dispositions for sustainability, rather than on a list of externally defined practices to be performed.

We specifically follow an Aristotelian approach to virtue (Aristotle 2014, hereafter Nicomachean Ethics, NE), mainly because of its aim at forming souls of excellence for the common good: eudaimonia, normally translated as “flourishing,” “true happiness,” or “a life worth living” (Hartman 2006; Kristjánsson 2015; Roberts 2017). As a non‐instrumental goal or an end in itself, eudaimonia cannot be achieved without actualizing virtues (Kristjansson 2016; Roberts 2017). In addition, although Aristotle leaves the constituent and preconditions of eudaimonia open, he applies a political stance to it and considers it as a common good (Kristjansson 2016). In this regard, it is noteworthy that previous work in the field of environmental virtue ethics brought character traits to the field of environmental issues (Cafaro 2015); some examples are virtues of communion with nature, sustainability, respect for nature, stewardship, and environmental activism (Sandler 2018). In the same vein, we should highlight proposals of new virtues oriented to include interconnectedness with nature, such as the virtue of acknowledged dependence (Hannis 2015) and the virtue of harmony with nature (Jordan and Kristjánsson 2017).

Building on this literature we bring out four dimensions of Aristotelian virtue to ground the moral and political dimensions of ES: directional, relational, situational, and learnable.