The Benthamites, observed Melville, would never have urged Lord Nelson to risk his life on the bridge of his ship. The loss of so brilliant a tactician wouldn't have looked good on a cost/benefit analysis sheet. From the British perspective, his heroism would not have produced the greatest balance of good over evil.

Melville's comment slyly suggests that the field of ethics does not reduce to the utilitarian concern for producing good. Ethics must deal with being good as well as producing good, with virtues as well as principles of action. This chapter will explore some of the virtues central to professionals and to those upon whom they practise.

Let it be conceded at the outset that virtue theory is not the whole of ethics. Moralists should not concentrate exclusively on the subject of professional virtue. The terrain of professional ethics covers at least four major areas:

Quandary or case-oriented ethics

The quandarist searches for rules and principles that function as guidelines helpful to the decision maker in resolving moral binds. Some have called this approach dilemmatic or problematic ethics, or, alternatively, ethics for the decision maker. One hopes to arrive at principles that will establish priorities between conflicting goods and evils, rights and wrongs. This dilemmatic approach has dominated the field of professional ethics partly because of its intrinsic prestige in philosophical and theological circles, but partly because of its cultural convenience.