VIRTUE ETHICS

METAETHICS:

VIRTUE ETHICS

Virtue Ethics

  • Concentrates on the character of the actor

  • More interested not with what makes an act right, but with what makes a person good

  • Questions what characters are virtuous or vicious

Being a good moral person is more than doing what is right. 

Aristotelian Ethics

  • Nicomachean Ethics

  • Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good, and for this reason, the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. -Aristotle

Knowledge of the ultimate good is crucial in one’s attainment of a good ethical life.

Eudaimonia

  • The ultimate end of all human actions is eudaimonia.

  • Eu + daimon = To have a good spirit

  • A state of being, rather than a feeling or experience

  • Eudaimonia - “well-being” “flourishing” “living well”

  • Consists on the (unimpeded) activity of the soul in conformity with virtue

Virtue

  • To live well, one must develop virtues. (Aristotle)

  • virtue – (“arete”) excellence

  • We can be excellent in many fields.

  • To be a VIRTUOUS PERSON is to achieve excellence as a person.

Virtuous Person

  • The proper and peculiar end of human beings is to live a life in accordance with reason.

  • To be virtuous is to develop characteristics or attributes that enable one to live a life of reason.

  • Courage, Generosity, Temperance

    • The VIRTUE of courage is different from a courageous act.

Virtue

Moral Action

A state of character, internally located

External exercise or an overt act

Demands that the right act flow effortlessly from the personality as its characteristic trait

Doing the right thing to the right person, at the right time in the right manner and to the right extent

  • Virtues are developed by habit

    • None is implanted by nature

Virtues and Endowments

  • Endowments are given by nature; we receive the power of using them first and only later exercise these endowments in action.

  • With regard to virtues, we have to first practice them before we can acquire them.

Test of Virtue

  • A man who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys doing so is self-controlled; if he finds it troublesome, he is self-indulgent; a man who endures danger with joy, or at least without pain, is courageous; if he endures it with pain, he is a coward. (Aristotle)

Doctrine of the Mean

  • Achieving eudaimonia or well-being is a matter of living one’s life in accordance with reason.

Virtue

Vice

Mean between two extremes of our emotions and desires, as well as of the actions that they motivate.

Undesirable character trait of either the extreme of

excess or the extreme of deficiency

  • Aristotle notes that the mean between extremes does not lie in the act, but is relative to the moral agent.


This means that what constitutes a virtuous action can vary from person to person, depending on their individual circumstances and the specific context in which they find themselves.