Shame, virtue, and right action

An influential objection to a virtue ethics criterion of right action claims that such a criterion cannot account for duties of self-improvement. In this paper, I argue that examining the moral status of our analogous obligations regarding shame helps to reveal how oughts of self-improvement are actually morally inferior to oughts of moral excellence. Because agents who meet their obligations regarding shame and self-improvement are not plausibly regarded as displaying a moral excellence on a par with that of the virtuous agent, I argue that these are not cases of moral excellence which a virtue ethics criterion of rightness is to be rejected for failing to accommodate.