The Supremacy of Love

The Supremacy of Love advocates a love-centered vision of Aristotelian virtue ethics that portrays love as the most important moral virtue, and the goals of love as a partial constituent of every genuine virtue. This improvement to Aristotelian virtue ethics—found originally in the ethics of Thomas Aquinas—enables this account to address several controversial topics in contemporary virtue ethics, including why the virtues cannot be used badly, in what sense is there a unity between the virtues, how the virtues benefit the virtuous person, and how virtues provide action guidance. Eric J. Silverman demonstrates how and why a love-centered approach to virtue ethics should make the view widely attractive in comparison to alternative accounts of virtue ethics, duty based deontological theories, as well as results-based consequentialist views.