Choosing Character

Are there key respects in which character and character defects are voluntary? Can agents with serious vices be rational agents? Jonathan Jacobs answers in the affirmative. Moral character is shaped through voluntary habits, including the ways we...

Jonathan Jacobs is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Division of the Humanities at Colgate University. He is the author of Ethics A-Z, Aristotle's Virtues, Dimensions of Moral Theory, A Philosopher's Compass, and Practical Realism and Moral Psychology, among other books.

This book offers a short, highly accessible and extremely well-turned introduction to some key issues of moral psychology.... It also represents a highly accomplished exploration of a central issue of moral psychologyThat of the relationship of responsibility to character—which should be of great interest to more advanced students.... A generally rich and illuminating work which deserves wide attention.

Jennifer Welchman, University of Alberta:

This book is overall to be recommended for its succinct and challenging analysis of moral responsibility for character and its defects, which should be of interest to specialists in ethics, legal theory, and theory of mind, as well as more general readers.

Jacobs has written an accessible and important book.... This book is appropriate for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students, who will appreciate the clear writing style as they receive a solid grounding in this important area of moral psychology and ethics.

Robert Kane, The University of Texas:

Jacobs has written a timely book on a too-often neglected topic of responsibility for character in ethical theorizing.

Jacobs develops his thinking—which holds profound implications for current debates about ethics, blame, and punishment—in chapters on voluntariness and habits, ethical disability and responsibility, ethical accessibility and plasticity of character, conscience and its work, and metaethics and moral psychology.

Daniel Frank, University of Kentucky:

Choosing Character is very well-written. While the book will be of interest to students of ethics, history of ethics, and moral psychology, its very accessible style makes it suitable for a much broader audience. In defending a notion of 'ethical disability' Jonathan Jacobs has much to contribute to current debates on moral responsibility, on the possibility of revision of character, and on the metaethical issues that undergird virtue theory.