Roles and Role Morality

The notion of role morality is based on the belief that individuals and groups have certain duties and virtues as a result of the specific roles they occupy within society. A conceptual framework for understanding these specific moral obligations can be found in Greek virtue ethics. Within the thought of Aristotle, virtues were carefully cultivated character traits that were teleologically related to the good life or happiness of the community as a whole. For a community to be happy, or prosper, each individual had to cultivate the virtues specific to his or her role in society. If you were a soldier within the Greek city-state, you had to cultivate the virtue of bravery; if you were a worker, you had to be diligent; and as ...