Rebecca Stangl, Associate Professor of Philosophy, The University of Virginia

Rebecca Stangl is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Virginia. She specializes in contemporary virtue ethics, and her recent work has appeared in such leading journals as Ethics, Philosophical Quarterly, and The Hastings Center Report, as well as several edited collections from Oxford University Press.

"In this innovative, scholarly work Stangl...questions whether in neo-Aristotelian virtue theory, heroic, supererogatory acts should be viewed as falling beyond the mean into the vice of excess. If virtuous acts are more broadly defined as falling within a range, somewhere on the target, then heroic acts simply come closer to the center of the target than ordinary virtuous acts, and do not exhibit vices of excess. What is innovative in this book is Stangl's radical claim that there is a virtue, hitherto unnamed, of self-cultivation...[which] involves a willingness to learn from failures and gain satisfaction from the experience of growth. This openness to growth has been found to be present in several psychological studies of heroic people. Such people have a continual focus on problem solving and do not view failures as denigrations of their own worth. Their focus remains, in general, on benefitting others. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." - CHOICE

"Rebecca Stangl's contribution to virtue theory boldly changes the contours of the contemporary debate. In a highly original move, she argues that neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics can give an attractive account of supererogation. This will give rise to fertile debate, since virtue ethics is standardly taken to reject the ethical structure within which supererogation arises. This rigorously argued book takes the debate into further territory and opens up new lines of debate, for which all ethical philosophers will be grateful." - Julia E. Annas, The University of Arizona

"Rebecca Stangl breaks new ground in offering a virtue ethical account of supererogation. The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary virtue allows for the possibility of an action being right without being as virtuous as possible. Based on a conception of right and wrong action in terms of the virtue and vice concepts, Stangl offers an original and highly plausible approach to a perennial difficult issue in ethical theory: the analysis of both supererogation and suberogation." - Christine Swanton, University of Auckland

"This book makes a strong case for the existence of a novel virtue Stangl calls 'self-cultivation.' Unlike the conception of virtue in traditional Aristotelian virtue ethics, this virtue is realistic for the aspirations of human beings, who even in the best cases are never perfect. Written in an engaging style and addressing a timely topic, Stangl presents a framework that explains why the self-improvement ordinary people can be classified as virtuous as well as the acts of the heroic and saintly." - Linda Zagzebski, University of Oklahoma