ETHICS Week 3: Virtue Ethics and

Egoism
Happiness and Character: Aristotle’s Ethics (Part 2)
WEEK 4, LECTURE 2: ARISTOTLE ON THE
VIRTUES

Overview of Lecture

1. Aristotle on the virtues

2. Aristotle’s ‘doctrine of the mean’

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1.1 ARISTOTLE ON THE
VIRTUES (1)

• Having outlined (in book 1 of the Ethics) what happiness (the good life)
means, Aristotle then asks: What is it to be a good person?

• His answer (sketched in book 2) is that the good person is one who has the
moral virtues or excellences of character.

• What, then, are the ethical virtues for Aristotle?

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1.2 VIRTUES AS DISPOSITIONS

For Aristotle, virtues are desirable character traits that dispose a person to:

1. have the appropriate kinds of feeling or emotion in response to certain

situations, and to
2. habitually act in the right way, over the course of a life.

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1.3 APPROPRIATENESS OF
FEELING

• The virtuous person has the appropriate feelings towards the right objects.
Her/his feelings are appropriate to the circumstances

• e.g. joy when a friend does well, or an injustice is corrected, but not when it is
inappropriate (a friend’s misfortune); or anger at a serious injustice, but not
over a petty squabble.

• Contrast with the Stoics

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1.4 APPROPRIATENESS OF
ACTION

• To have an ethical virtue is to be habituated to acting rightly in response to

the demands of a situation. Having a virtue means having the right
emotional response and conducting oneself in the right way.

• E.g. To have the virtue of generosity is to be habitually disposed to give

freely (to fit the circumstances). Generosity is the mean between extremes
of profligacy (giving away everything) and miserliness (giving away nothing).

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1.5 HOW DO WE BECOME VIRTUOUS?

• For Aristotle, ethical virtues are acquired or learned traits; we aren’t born
generous, trustworthy, responsible, courageous.

• We must be educated and train ourselves into acquiring the virtues. They are
integrated into one’s character by living a certain kind of life.

• It is by doing virtuous things that one becomes virtuous (compare with other
skills). Practice makes perfect in moral as well as technical or artistic
excellence.

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1.6 SOME EXAMPLES

• I only become generous through performing repeated acts of generosity;

once I become habituated to performing these acts, generosity becomes a
settled character trait (‘second nature’).

• The courageous person has a settled character trait of being courageous,

which falls between the extremes of being reckless and being cowardly.

• Or temperance (self-control): someone who gratifies himself to excess is

intemperate (lacks self-control), but someone who avoids pleasures
altogether also goes wrong (a ‘wowser’ – pious and prudish).

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2.1 ARISTOTLE’S ‘DOCTRINE OF THE
MEAN’

• As a rule of thumb, we should aim at the mean between extremes of action

and feeling in given circumstances.

• This is the doctrine of the mean (sometimes called the “Golden Mean”).

• But hitting the target is not easy.

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2.2 THE MEAN IS NOT
ABSOLUTE

1. The ethical mean is relative to the person and the situation, depending on
his/her capacities, aims, and circumstances.

E.g.. temperance depends upon one’s temperament, circumstances, bodily

constitution (e.g. alcohol); a small donation may be generous for a poor
person but miserly for a rich one.

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2.3 THE MEAN IS NOT MERE
MODERATION

2. The appropriate emotional response is not always a moderate one.

Sometimes, a moderate or ‘mild’ response is inappropriate (e.g. a calm or

indifferent response to a massacre).

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2.4 NOT A UNIVERSAL RULE OR
METHOD

3. The theory of the mean doesn’t work in every case.

Not every action or feeling has an appropriate mean between extremes (e.g.
envy and adultery, which are to be avoided even though they are neither
excess nor deficiency).

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2.5 VIRTUE AS GETTING IT
RIGHT

The virtuous person responds to a situation with the appropriate feeling, but
also by acting:

• at the right time

• about the right thing
• towards the right people
• for the right end
• in the right way.

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2.6 PRACTICAL WISDOM

• Hitting the target (getting it right) isn’t easy. It requires sound practical
judgment.

• Emotion and action go together in exercising our ethical virtues. The

ethically virtuous person enjoys doing the right thing in response to the
circumstances.

• If I do the right thing under sufferance, I have not got excellence of

character.

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