Are we able to limit ourselves? Educational Perspective on Virtue Ethics and Global Responsibility Ethics

Abstract

The subject of the article is the issue of combating the threat of a global ecological catastrophe, which is currently taking the form of a global climate catastrophe. The anthropogenic nature of the threat indicates the need to seek means of this combat in modifying the current behaviors of the human community inhabiting the Earth. This modification must rely on consistent self-limitation of the predatory use of the planet's resources leading to catastrophe. The ethical tradition offers two strategies: and responsibility ethics. The traditional ethics of restraint derived from Plato and Aristotle have been radically questioned in recent centuries, losing their persuasive power. The ethics of global responsibility, developing in the twentieth century and based on the recovery of competences lost in the process of development of contemporary civilization, is an alternative to virtue ethics. Is it a real alternative? This is the question we try to answer in the text.