A high-level virtue ethics approach to situations of deep uncertainty would complement and/or contrast with consequentialist and deontological approaches to uncertainty. Such an account would satisfy the following criteria: (1) it provides normative guidance that allows individuals and societies to cope with deep uncertainty ethically and sustainably in the presence of strong emotions of fear, apprehension, and anxiety; (2) it allows for responsiveness to unexpected situations (“black swans” (Taleb 2007)); and (3) it is realistically accessible to ordinary people. 

There are two serious philosophical challenges embedded in these criteria. The first is that some of the candidate virtues for deep uncertainty are in tension with one another, particularly steadfastness with flexibility. This apparent conflict mirrors a tension in the literature on virtues in relation to the uncertainties of climate change and new technologies: between seeing virtues under uncertainty as fixed dispositions (Jamieson 2007), and seeing them as allowing for flexibility and bold action in response to unexpected, disruptive change (Michelfelder 2018). I call this the malleability challenge, in analogy to the property of materials to deform without failure. The second challenge is the portability problem, grounded in the worry that virtue theory cannot provide rationally articulated normative guidance that is portable across contexts and agents. 

This paper focuses on two structural features of virtues for deep uncertainty that respond to these two philosophical challenges. The first is the division of the virtues into strategic- and tactically-focused virtues, helping to address the apparent conflict between virtues of steadfastness and flexibility. The second concerns the virtue of justice in relation to the emotional and political challenges of deep uncertainty. In one important sense, justice is a structural excellence of groups that enables shared deliberation and action. This helps to solve the portability problem by taking the pressure off of individual agents as the sole possessors of virtue (cf. Feldman 2000). At the same time, this makes it clear that justice requires consistent political investment and development. Concretely, this implies that there is a need to balance investments in material and technological preparedness for uncertainty, with investments in social preparedness.