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Anthony Austin Bibus, Virtue Ethics, Social Work, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 January 2017, Page 95, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/sww079
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I appreciate the review of Wolfer and Brandsen's book Virtues and Character in Social Work Practice (2015) that appears in the recent issue of Social Work (Ude, 2016). Focusing on the moral qualities of the actor facing an ethical dilemma, virtue ethics offers an important perspective to complement deontological and utilitarian approaches that focus more on acts. Social workers in the United States are finally now benefiting from the resurging interest in virtue ethics (for example, Adams, 2009). We should be asking ourselves not only what would be the right social work action in response to a particular ethical issue, but also “What kind of social worker do I want to be at my best? And what virtues, accordingly, do I need to cultivate?”
I hope this book represents the first of a series of book-length social work publications tapping virtue ethics, as other professions have (for example, Fowers, 2005, for the American Psychological Association). Studies examining the role of a social worker's character would be in order. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) could commission a text following up the general social work ethics books by Allan Barsky (2010), Kim Strom-Gottfried (2014), and others, and of course Rick Reamer's several books (for example, Reamer, 1993). This new text could include chapters on some of the virtues most relevant to social work practice. See, for instance, the lists in Barsky (pages 262 and 378). Given the prominence of the virtue “cultural humility” in NASW's (2015)Standards and Indicators for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice, a chapter on humility as an important virtue in social work could be timely. Other chapters could compare various versions of virtue ethics with other perspectives from moral philosophy (for example, deontology, consequentialism, ethics of care, feminist ethics, existentialism, environmental, communitarian, contractarian, social-constructivist, narrative, anti-oppressive, and so on). Then, a concluding chapter presenting an integrated constellation of key virtues and showing how each can link holistically with the others could be very helpful.