L3: MORAL UNIVERSALISM | L4: VIRTUE ETHICS

Agree to Disagree

• e.g., Lawmakers, No Jaywalking

• We cannot simply agree to disagree (in side of moral relativism) because we are setting standards on what is right and wrong

Moral Appraisal

• The practice of evaluating an action whether it is right or wrong

• Asks the question “Is there a truly universal moral system? Or is it a matter of taste or convention?”

  • Who has the authority to designate an action as right or wrong?

• Is God doing right because He knows it is right, or does He do it because that's what's happening to Him?

Cultural Relativism

• A recurring theme in the social sciences: different cultures have different moral codes

• Right and wrong differ from culture to culture

  • Morality as culture-bound

  • Universality of ethics as a myth

Tolerance

• allows us to “live in peaceful cooperation with those who see things differently”

  • However, tolerance requires you to think that some cultural practices are better than others

  • The way our country treats poor people differently:

Gay Marriage, Toleration need active attempts. If you're not actively doing anything, that is also an ACTION.

Cultural relativism

• warns us about the assumption that all our preferences are based on some absolute rational standard.

Aristotle

• born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece. 

• His father, Nichomachus, was the physician of Amyntas III (reigned c. 336 - c. 370 BCE), king of Macedonia and grandfather of Alexander the Great (reigned 336 - 323 BCE).

• Migrated to Athens after his father's death, and joined Plato’s Academy.

• Founded Lyceum

• Tutored and mentored Alexander the Great

• Usually attributed for the virtue ethics

Virtue

• Moral character 

• An excellent trait

• A disposition 

• A mindset that has a “distinctive range of considerations as reasons for action” (Hursthouse)

Virtue Ethics

• Concerned with the person.

• Ought to be takes primacy that ought to do.

1. Prudentially Good

2. Intellectually Good

3. Morally Good

TYPES OF GOOD

Virtues

primary mode of evaluation, and all other modes are understood and defined in terms of virtue. (Driver)

• Act evaluation is understood in terms of character evaluation.

Virtues

• mean state, which means that it does not exhibit excess.

  • Here, practical wisdom comes into play since it is crucial for the virtuous person in choosing the mean:

… virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice, and… it consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is defined by a rational principle, such as man of practical wisdom would use to determine it. (Aristotle)

Practical Wisdom

• Theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom involve contemplation and action.

Contemplation

• think of yourself first before doing the action

Cultivating Virtue (Phronesis)

• We are what we repeatedly do. Thus, excellence is not an act, but it is a habit.

• Cultivating a virtuous character is something that happens by practice.

• Developing one’s skill, a continuous process.

• Ethical characteristics are developed by practical learning and habitual action, not merely by intellectual teaching.