Moral Character

Abstract A moral character is the set of traits, good or bad, that make someone the kind of person she is. In the original Greek, kharaktēr is an engraving or stamping tool; the Latin “character” comes to mean a distinctive engraving or mark. This idea of distinctiveness is often imported into talk of moral character by contemporary philosophers and psychologists. Yet although our characters do nearly always distinguish us from each other, distinctiveness is not essential to the idea of moral character. Two identical twins with the same virtues or vices, the same strengths or weaknesses, have a character, even though their characters don't distinguish them from each other.