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John Duffy's Essay 'Virtue Ethics And The Teaching Of Writing'

443 Words2 Pages

Lily Nguyen/ V00900015
ENG 135 A27
Tiffany Parks
Summary
Jan 28, 2018

In “The good writer: Virtue Ethics and the Teaching of Writing," John Duffy sustains that teachers should value virtue ethics as a fundamental step for the teaching of writing. The author believes that the foundations of teaching writing are the rhetorical, linguistic, and aesthetic. Furthermore, he adds that another category should also be considered as foundational: he refers to that of “ethics” and “ethical decision”. It is suggested that students should be encouraged to make the right choice when they evaluate sources or examine the outcomes. According to Duffy, learning to make good decisions equates to learning how to become a good student. In the essay, the author …show more content…

For instance, Margaret A.McLauren describes the role of feminism in virtue ethics as the most promising context. According to Aristotle, as Duffy mentions in this essay, happiness always comes from a life with purpose. For example, the knife has the function to cut, the plant to grow, and the horse to run. Therefore, it is a rational conclusion that human beings also have a purpose that makes them different from things and animals. Following this, the most significant improvement in modern virtue ethics comes from a theory for differentiating between right and wrong, a theory for responding to specific situations. Surprisingly, appropriation by those identifying with neoconservative ideology is considered a cultural and political performance, rather than tradition or philosophy of virtue. Duffy offers three bases to reconsider the concept of virtue: practical, theoretical and cultural. In Duffy’s opinion, the practice of rhetorical virtue may work most effectively in the specifics of local contexts depending on the needs and the goals of students and teachers. It becomes more complicated, however, when it comes to rhetorical virtues in the writing class since what is

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