As the title indicates, this book sets forth a theory of virtue understood as ‘excellence in being for the good’. In saying that virtue consists in ‘being for . . .’ something, Adams hopes to capture the idea that virtues are enduring dispositions towards approbation, along the lines of saying that one is ‘for’ a political candidate or a set of social programmes. Understood in this way, virtues will normally be expressed through appropriate actions, but they cannot be reduced to a disposition to act in certain ways; nor can they be equated with a desire for certain goods, since it is possible to approve of something without desiring it for oneself. ‘The good’ in this context – that is to say, ‘concrete thinking about virtue’ – should really be understood as ‘the goods’, identified with the wide diversity of things that human beings can care about in an excellent way (p. 19). Thus the scope of ‘the good’ at least extends beyond moral goodness, to include, for example, aesthetic goods and natural beauty. In this book, ‘excellence’ remains a somewhat elusive category – the term certainly implies that virtue is itself an intrinsic, rather than an instrumental good and it further implies that the kind of approbation in question is developed and expressed within parameters set by one's concerns for others and one's sense of duty (pp. 22–3). At any rate, Adams clearly rejects the common view that a ‘virtue-centered ethic’ is necessarily at odds with an ethic of duty; rather, the ethics of virtue has ‘its own proper subject, the assessment of character’ (p. 8), which is connected to, yet distinct from, the proper sphere of duty and obligation. By the same token, Adams rejects dominant neo-Aristotelian approaches to virtue, which in his view tie virtue too closely to questionable conceptions of right judgement and practical reason (pp. 10–11).

At the same time, however, those who are familiar with Adams' earlier Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (1999) may be surprised to find that the Platonic/theistic account of excellence and the good developed in the earlier book plays only a limited role in this book. This may reflect Adams' aim to do justice to the particularity and concreteness of our judgements about virtues and his desire to develop his theory in the largely secular context of contemporary Anglophone moral philosophy. The main lines of his exposition are determined by debates going on within this context and the rigorous, subtle and insightful arguments which he develops along the way constitute one of the main strengths of the book. This reviewer was especially impressed by the way in which he addresses the challenge posed by those who argue that men and women have few or no stable dispositions and therefore no true virtues, at all – that our ways of responding and acting are situational and culturally determined, reflecting no real unity within traits of character (such as courage), much less the coherence of a comprehensively good character. Adams agrees that the traditional doctrine of the unity of the virtues is implausible and he even grants that the virtues can usefully be understood as modular, insofar as they are engaged in specific contexts and are properly expressed in ways which take account of the particularities of a situation. Nonetheless, he also makes a persuasive case that particular virtues and the character of the genuinely virtuous person reflect an imperfect and fragile, yet genuine integrity, reflecting the individual's overall commitment to maintaining excellence in his or her approbation of what is good. ‘Moral integration is commonly a project rather than an achievement’ (p. 210), but no one who sincerely cares about the good in an excellent way can avoid taking this project on, or hoping to make some progress in the ideal that it represents.

There is much more of value in Adams' theory of virtue, more than can be conveyed in a brief review. Nonetheless, for this reviewer, at least, it was something of a disappointment to find that Adams' ambitious synthesis of Platonic and theistic conceptions of excellence and goodness play only a very limited role in the current book. Adams ties goodness and excellence to qualities which are worthy of divine approbation, in complex ways to be sure, but in such a way as to suggest a more radical critique of contemporary virtue ethics than Adams permits himself here. In particular, it would have been interesting to observe how Adams would work out the relation between the ideal of transcendent goodness and the particular goods towards which the virtuous person relates in an excellent way. Might it not be the case that a transcendent reference point would transform our conceptions of excellence, in such a way as to undermine widely held assumptions about what counts as a genuinely excellent/virtuous stance towards transient goods?

One further point – many readers of this journal will be struck by the similarities between Adams's theory of virtues and the theories of religious sentiments and virtues developed by that other Reformed Platonist, Jonathan Edwards. Yet Edwards is never cited, either in this book or in Finite and Infinite Goods. While Adams undoubtedly does not need suggestions for a further project, it would be fascinating – and no doubt illuminating – to see how he would engage Edwards's thought. At any rate, A Theory of Virtue represents a distinctive and important contribution to virtue ethics, which merits – and will undoubtedly receive – widespread engagement.