Virtuous ambition and right action

Standard accounts of virtue ethics claim that an action is right just in a case it would be characteristically performed by a virtuous person in similar circumstances. Several philosophers have argued this account fails to assign the correct moral status in certain cases. There are allegedly some situations that no virtuous agent would ever be in because the situation at hand only exists due to prior wrongdoing. Other alleged counterexamples describe moral agents who are internally flawed, or embedded in imperfect institutional roles such that attempting to emulate virtuous persons will result in moral disaster. In this article, I argue that once virtue ethical accounts of right action are further clarified and enriched with a conception of virtuous ambition, these objections concerning failures in action guidance miss their mark. The virtue of ambition is a disposition to feel dissatisfied with some target(s) and to aspire to improve the objects of dissatisfaction. Moral agents who seek restitution for past misdeeds, perform self-improving actions, or perform actions sensitive to severe internal or institutional flaws can be described as acting ambitiously. Since the performance of ambitious actions are characteristic of virtuous agents, standard accounts of virtue ethics entail that these actions are right. Hence, virtue ethics can assign the correct moral status to actions even in cases that are alleged to be problematic.