Michael Slote


Michael A. Slote is UST Professor of ethics at the University of Miami and an author of a number of books. He was previously professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, and at Trinity College Dublin.
He argues that virtue ethics, in a particular form which draws on the concept of an ethics of care, offers significant intuitive and structural advantages over deontology, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality. He has also recently endorsed the meta-ethical view of moral sentimentalism in opposition to moral rationalism.
Most recently he expanded his work on sentimentalism into a philosophy of mind. In his latest work he also stresses the importance of receptivity as a virtue, a value and as a psychological characteristic. The significance of receptivity feature was first considered by Nel Noddings in 1984, but did not receive further attention in the ethics of care neither was it used to criticize typical Western philosophical values. In The Impossibility of Perfection, he argues against moral perfection as it was endorsed by Aristotle and the Enlightenment and defends a more realistic view of moral issues.

Books