1. From Aristotle to the 21st century
VIRTUE ETHICS
From Aristotle to the 21st century

2. Why Should I Be Moral? Because of My Character!

3. Aretology Arete - Excellence, Strength, Virtue
Aretaic Ethics - Strength-Centred Ethics
Emphasizes Virtues (Strengths) and Vices (Weaknesses) of Character
Not “What Should I Do?” (both Deontology and Teleology) but
“What Kind of Person Should I Be?”

4. Aristotle’s Ethics 384-322 B.C. The Nicomachean Ethics
Two Kinds of Persons
Continent:
Do what is right, but not necessarily because they want to
Temperate:
Do what is right because they want to; the more holistic person

5. The Goal of Human Existence
Eudaimonia
Flourishing, Happiness
A Lifelong Pursuit, accomplished
Rationally, through theoretical wisdom and contemplation
Functionally, through practical wisdom and politics

6. The Goal of Human Existence & Eudaimonia
Aimed at the “perfect happiness” which is the perfect activity
An excellence in any activity in accordance with the nature of that activity
Thus, “Human happiness is the activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue (excellence)”. (I.8; Pojman, 394).

7. The Virtues Intellectual Virtues Moral Virtues
Wisdom, Understanding, Prudence
Taught through instruction
Moral Virtues
Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance
The result of habit
Not natural or inborn but acquired through practice
Habit or disposition of the soul (our fundamental character) which involves both feeling and action
“Those strengths of character that enable us to flourish” (Hinman)

8. The Virtues
Defined / understood in terms of spheres of human experience
Fear of important damages
Courage
Bodily appetites and their pleasures
Moderation
Distribution of limited resources
Justice
Attitude to slights and damages
Mildness of Temper
Adapted from Martha C. Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues”

9. The Doctrine of the Mean
Proper position between two extremes
Vice of excess
Vice of deficiency
Not an arithmetic median
Relative to us and not the thing
Not the same for all of us, or
Any of us, at various occasions
“In this way, then, every knowledgeable person avoids excess and deficiency, but looks for the mean and chooses it” (II.6)

10. The Mean

11. Virtues and the Mean Defined through Reason
Education, contemplation, reflection
Balanced with Other Virtues and applied using phronesis:
To have any single strength of character in full measure, a person must have the other ones as well.*
Courage without good judgement is blind
Courage without perseverance is short-lived
Courage without a clear sense of your own abilities is foolhardy
“The virtuous person has practical wisdom, the ability to know when and how best to apply these various moral perspectives.” (*Hinman)

12. Virtues and Community Virtues are defined and lived in community
Sharing a common identity and story
Modelling the Virtues
Importance of Moral Exemplars (Saints and Heroes)
Practicing the Virtues – Habit is Crucial!
“In a word, then, like activities produce like dispositions. Hence we must give our activities a certain quality, because it is their characteristics that determine the resulting dispositions. So it is a matter of no little importance what sort of habits we form from the earliest age ̶ it makes a vast difference, or rather all the difference in the world.” (II.i.) (Pojman, 396)
Reinforcing the Virtues

13. Other Virtue Ethicists
G.E.M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe
In 1958 she published an article
called Modern Moral Philosophy arguing
that we should return to the virtues,
as the idea of a law without a lawgiver
was incoherent.

14. Other Virtue Ethicists
Alasdair MacIntyre
After Virtue (1981)
Modern moral philosophy is bankrupt; it must recover the tradition of virtue.
Importance of Narrative as a
“live tradition” – you need to know where ethics has come from.
Virtues change over time.

15. Other Virtue Ethicists
Philippa Foot
Tries to modernise Aristotle.
Ethics should not be about dry
theorising, but about making the
world a better place (she was one of the founders of Oxfam)
Virtue contributes to the good life.

16. Other Virtue Ethicists
Rosalind Hursthouse
A neo-Aristotelian – Aristotle was wrong on women and slaves, and there is no need to be limited to his list of virtues.
We acquire virtues individually, and
so flourish, but we do so together
and not at each other’s expense.

17. Other Virtue Ethicists
Carol Gilligan
In a Different Voice (1982)
Developmental theories have been built on observations and assumptions about men’s lives and thereby distort views of female personality.
The kinds of virtues one honors depend on the power brokers of one’s society.
The Ethics of Care

18. Other Virtue Ethicists
Michael Slote
Develops the feminist ‘ethics of care,’
and links it to a virtue ethics inspired
more by Hume and Hutcheson’s moral
sentimentalism than by Aristotle.
Slote’s version of virtue ethics is agent-based (as opposed
to more Aristotelian forms which are said to be agent
focused) i.e. the moral rightness of acts is based on the
virtuous motives or characters of the agent. The motives are all important.

19. Other Virtue Ethicists
Martha Nussbaum
She interprets Aristotle’s views as
absolutes… justice, temperance,
generosity etc. are essential to human flourishing
in all societies and in all times.
Nussbaum sees a relativist approach as being incompatible with Aristotle’s virtue theory.

20. Examples of Virtue Ethics
Bruderhof and Amish communities
Anti-worldly
Pacifist
Family
Story

21. What makes one group virtuous and not another?
Inner-City Gangs
Common values
Models
“Virtuous” actions
Codes of honour

22. Ku Klux Klan? Focused Live tradition Stories and Models Common enemy
“The family is the strength of our nation.”

23. The Christian Church?
The Taliban?
The Scouting Movement?
Your school?
Your friends?

24. Are the virtues the same for everyone?
People are very different.
But we face the same basic problems and have the same basic needs.
Everyone needs courage as danger can always arise.
Some people are less well off, so we will need generosity.
Everyone needs friends so we need loyalty.

25. Strengths of Virtue Ethics
Importance of the Person, Motive, Heart, Conscience
Connection to Community
Realization that morality is not defined by moments but by a long-term process
Allowance for gray areas, varying contexts, different levels of moral maturity and life contexts

26. Weaknesses of Virtue Ethics
Dependence on strong communities
Not easily applied to ethical issues or to give us practical solutions
Demands time
Can be turned into a really poor duty- based ethics
Might be taken as situational ethics

27. Conclusions Utilitarianism and Deontology are helpful
They demand some kind of larger criteria or grounding, a larger view
Virtue ethics seems to provide this view
It seems to reflect Christian ethics best, and
It is not dependent on any particular way of thinking (e.g. Enlightenment rationalism)