Virtue Ethics

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Virtue Ethics
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Return to Virtue

• The moral vacuity of duty-following
• A good person should want to do the right thing
  not just do their duty
• The need to motivate moral action
• Why should we care about doing our duty?

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What is Virtue Ethics

• The important thing is to be a good person
• (as opposed to doing the right thing or
  achieving a good outcome)
• A virtue ethics is interested in finding the
  characteristics that make someone a good person

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Ends

• Every action has a goal
• Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly
  every action and rational choice, is thought to
  aim at some good and so the good has been aptly
  described as that at which everything aims.
• (1094a)

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Ends

• Every action has a goal
• A hierarchy exists
• Eg. Bridle-maker lt bridles lt horsemanship lt war
• Most ends are instrumental
• Some (one) ends are final

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Ends

• There is one goal for all actions
• So if what is done has some end that we want
  for its own sake, and everything else we want is
  for the sake of this end and if we do not choose
  everything for the sake of something else
  (because this would lead to an infinite
  progression, making our desire fruitless and
  vain), then clearly this will be the good, indeed
  the chief good.
• (1094a)

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Ends

• There is one goal for all actions
• Aristotle cant prove this, but he believes it
• He has a candidate final end

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Eudaimonia

• Happiness is the one goal for all actions
• an overall-condition of a persons life
• Not a mental state
• The end for which everything is pursued
• unconditionally complete
• self-sufficient

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Eudaimonia

• Justified in terms of our characteristic activity
• But perhaps saying that happiness is the chief
  good sounds rather platitudinous, and one might
  want its nature to be specified still more
  clearly. It is possible that we might achieve
  that if we grasp the characteristic activity of a
  human being. For just as the good the doing
  well of a flute-player, a sculptor or any
  practitioner of a skill, or generally whatever
  has some characteristic activity or action, is
  thought to lie in its characteristic activity, so
  the same would seem to be true of a human being,
  if indeed he has a characteristic activity.

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Eudaimonia

• Justified in terms of our characteristic activity
• Our capacity to reason sets us apart from all
  other species.
• So our characteristic activity (ergon) consists
  in using reason.
• Thus our use of reason is the key to our
  distinctive happiness (eudaimonia).
• We live a happy (eudaimonic) life only if we use
  reason with great skill.

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Eudaimonia

• Justified in terms of our characteristic activity
• Aristotles ideal life - one view
• Ends by telling us that the best kind of life is
  the life of contemplation.
• Not many people think this is so desirable
• It doesnt match what he tells us elsewhere
  describing a practical and active life.

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Eudaimonia

• A happy life is a life lived virtuously
• Happiness requires the excellent use of reason
• Excellence in the use of reason is virtue
• Virtues are character traits

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Virtues

• Arete
• Excellence
• A functionalist concept
• For just as the good the doing well of a
  flute-player, a sculptor or any practitioner of a
  skill, or generally whatever has some
  characteristic activity or action, is thought to
  lie in its characteristic activity, so the same
  would seem to be true of a human being, if indeed
  he has a characteristic activity.
• (1097b)

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A Virtue Courage

• We all recognise and value courage, but there are
  problems
• Were the hijackers on 9/11 brave?
• Is someone reckless of all danger courageous?

• Bill Maher
• staying in the airplane when it hits the
  building, say what you want about it, its not
  cowardly.

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The Doctrine of the Mean

• Aristotle
• We can experience fear, confidence, desire,
  anger, pity, and generally any kind of pleasure
  and pain either too much or too little, and in
  either case not properly. But to experience all
  this at the right time, towards the right
  objects, toward the right people, for the right
  reason, and in the right manner that is the
  mean and the best course, the course that is the
  mark of virtue

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The Doctrine of the Mean
Deficiency Mean Excess
Cowardice Courage Foolhardiness
Miserliness Generosity Profligacy
Insolence Respect Obsequiousness
Callousness Care Pity
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Problems

• Still cant tell us what is the right thing to do
• No idea how to resolve conflicts
• Doesnt cover enough cases for a moral theory