Beneficent Bodies: Exploring the Body's Contribution to Virtue

Abstract

In their article, ‘Vicious Trauma: Race, Bodies and the Confounding of Virtue Ethics’, Terese Lysaught and Cory Mitchell argue that the academic virtue ethics discourse has largely ignored non-White voices, failing to take embodiment seriously. This article attempts to address their concern by proposing a virtue ethics framework that emphasizes the positive role embodiment plays in virtue maintenance and development. Drawing from both ancient and modern virtue ethical discourse, I modify Plato's tripartite soul paradigm to elevate the body's significance. I also employ insights from ante-Nicene Christian theologians, who recognized the moral goodness of the body, to articulate how the body can both hinder and contribute to virtue. The framework is applied to analyze Jesus’ experience in Gethsemane and examine racial trauma. This article argues that a robust theory of embodiment within virtue ethics can address issues like race and trauma, which have been neglected due to the lack of attention to embodiment. By integrating philosophical and theological resources, I aim to provide a nuanced understanding of how the body influences virtue formation and how external forces acting on the body shape virtue development.