Virtue Ethics

Aristotelian Virtue Ethics

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)

Aristotle is considered to be the most important virtue ethicist.

Plato Socrates Aristotle

How to live a flourish life?

Aristotelian philosophy and the place of virtue ethics

• Aristotle attempts to identify what are the characteristics of human being that differentiate it from other
species.

• Every species has its own role in the universe.

• It is the fulfilling its role well that defines what is the ultimate good of that thing or animal.

Happiness

• When one does what one is supposed to do, one feels fulfillment.

• In other words, when one is what is supposed to be, one is happy.

• Happiness/satisfaction is considered to be a good thing.

• In fact, happiness is the ONLY really good thing in the sense that we won’t want it for the sake of another thing
(as a tool) but for its own sake.

Human Being as an animal

• There are natural criteria for judging whether the act leads to happiness (eudaimonia) to misery

• These criteria are defined by what the human being (as a species) is.

• By observing, what makes human being happy (eudaimonia) and what make him suffer, one can find out what
kind of acts are virtuous.

Key concepts of Aristotelian virtue Ethics

 • Ergon (Function)

• Eudaimonia (Flourishing)

• Arete (Excellence or Virtue)

• Phronesis (practical or moral wisdom)

Ergon (Function)

What is the function of human being?

Aristotle asks what is the ergon (“function,” “task,” “work”) of a human being is, and argues that it consists in
activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue.

One important component of this argument is expressed in terms of distinctions he makes in his psychological and
biological works.

The soul is analyzed into a connected series of capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for growth and
reproduction, the locomotive soul for motion, the perceptive soul for perception, and so on.

What is the function of human being? (cont)

• Human beings are the only species that has not only these lower capacities but a rational soul as well.

• The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from
other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason.

• If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of
a full life is what happiness consists in.

• Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by the
rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.

Three different kinds of souls

• Plant soul – capacity for nourishment and reproduction

• Animal soul –capacities of perception and self-motion

• Intellectual soul – capacity to reason

 Eudaimonia (human flourishing)

• Eudaimonia is standardly translated as "happiness" or "flourishing" and occasionally as "well-being.“

• Each translation has its disadvantages.

"flourishing" - animals and even plants can flourish but

• eudaimonia is possibly only for rational beings.

 "happiness“ – in modern understanding it connotes something which is subjectively determined. It is for me, not
for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy. But according to classical thinkers I may have wrong idea about
what eudaimonia is and therefore think that I am have eudaimon but I fact I don’t.

• comparison: I might think that I am healthy but am not

Eudaimonia – the true happiness

• Eudaimonia is a moralised, or "value-laden" concept of happiness, something like "true" or "real" happiness or
"the sort of happiness worth seeking or having.“

• Thereby virtue ethicists claim that a human life devoted to physical pleasure or the acquisition of wealth is not
eudaimon, but a wasted life

• All standard versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordance with virtue is necessary for
eudaimonia.

• Eudaimonia involves virtuous life – virtues are goals in themselves, not instruments for achieving eudaimonia.

Is something else than virtues needed in order to achieve eudaimonia?

• Aristotle says that virtue is necessary but not sufficient — what is also needed are external goods that are (to an
extent) a matter of luck:

• Health
Wealth
Friends
Functional society

Happiness and friendship

• Friendship is one of the most important virtues in achieving the goal of eudaimonia (happiness).

• While there are different kinds of friendship, the highest is one that is based on virtue (arête).

• This type of friendship is based on a person wishing the best for their friends regardless of utility or pleasure.

• Aristotle calls it a “... complete sort of friendship between people who are good and alike in virtue ...”

The supreme value of friendship

• Friendship based on virtue is long lasting and tough to obtain because these types of people are hard to come by
and it takes a lot of work to have a complete, virtuous friendship.

• Aristotle notes that one cannot have a large number of friends because of the amount of time and care that a
virtuous friendship requires.

• Aristotle values friendship so highly that he argues friendship supersedes justice and honor.

• > First of all, friendship seems to be so valued by people that no one would choose to live without friends.

• People who value honor will likely seek out either flattery or those who have more power than they do, in order
that they may obtain personal gain through these relationships.

• Aristotle believes that the love of friendship is greater than this because it can be enjoyed as it is. “Being loved,
however, people enjoy for its own sake, and for this reason it would seem it is something better than being
honoured and that friendship is chosen for its own sake”.

• The emphasis on enjoyment here is noteworthy: a virtuous friendship is one that is most enjoyable since it
combines pleasure and virtue together, thus fulfilling our emotional and intellectual natures.
What makes virtue a virtue that promotes eudaimonia?

• Eudaimonism - the virtues are what enable a human being to be eudaimon because the virtues just are those
character traits that benefit their possessor in that way, barring bad luck.

• Pluralism - the good life is the morally meritorious life, the morally meritorious life is one that is responsive to
the demands of the world. The virtues just are those character traits in virtue of which their possessor is thus
responsive.

• Perfectionism or naturalism - the good life is the life characteristically lived by someone who is good qua human
being, and the virtues enable their possessor to live such a life because the virtues just are those character traits
that make their possessor good qua human being (an excellent specimen of her kind.)

Virtue (arete)

• Arete could be translated “excellence”, standard translation, however, is “virtue”

• A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what is honest or generous, nor is it to be
helpfully specified as a "desirable" or "morally valuable" character trait.

• A character trait —a disposition to behave in certain way

• Virtue is not like a habit which is more specific, action oriented, and related to something particular (habit of
drinking tea)

• Virtue is more “general” in nature: it enables its possessor to evaluate things in an appropriate way so that one
has – as a result of this virtue - right kinds of emotions, attitudes, desires, perceptions, expectations, sensibilities.

• Virtue enables one to make right choices from the point of view of eudaimonia (flourishing life).

Phronesis – an important element of practical reason

• Phronesis is something that the virtuous morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice adolescents,
lack.

• Both have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up because he is ignorant of what
he needs to know in order to do what he intends.

• Children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set
about securing the benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful
is limited and often mistaken.

• Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in
adults.

• Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted,
and by assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objective viewpoint.

The animal called ”human being”

• There are natural criteria for judging whether the act is leads to happiness (eudaimonia) to misery

• These criteria are defined by what the human being (as a species) is.

• By observing, what makes human being happy (eudaimonia) and what make him suffer, one can find out what
kind of acts are virtuous.

Failure

• People who fail to achieve the goal, do so because their soul are not in balance

• The unbalanced soul strives for wrong things in the wrong way in the guidance of uncontrolled and distorted
desires.

Success

• The good life can only be achieved by striving for the best things in the right way.

• The best things are truth, goodness, and beauty.

• Only the virtuous soul can achieve happiness.

To be happy, you need to be virtuous

What are virtues and what virtues are there?

Honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, fidelity, integrity, fairness, self-control, and prudence are
all examples of virtues. How does a person develop virtues? Virtues are developed through learning
and through practice.

The Aristotelian mean

The golden mean

• The virtuous (right) conduct as a mean between two vices of excess.

Virtue

• Virtue is a “golden mean” between the extremes of excess and deficiency

 Courage, for example, is a mean regarding the feeling of fear, between the deficiency of rashness (too little fear)
and the excess of cowardice (too much fear).

 Benevolence is a mean between giving to people who don’t deserve it and not giving to anyone at all.

Personal differences

• The mean is “relative to ourselves,” indicating that one person’s mean may be another person’s extreme.

• Milo the wrestler, as Aristotle puts it, needs more gruel than a normal person, and his mean diet will vary
accordingly.

• Similarly for the moral virtues. Aristotle suggests that some people are born with weaker wills than others; for
these people, it may actually be a mean to flee in battle (the extremes being to get slaughtered or commit
suicide).

Criticism against virtue ethics

• No fundamental principles

 Virtue ethics doesn’t provide fundamental principles that would amount into decision procedure for
determining what to do.

- Reply: it is not realistic to hope that there are such principles

- Principles and logic are not enough to determine what to do.

The problem of cultural relativism

• Different cultures embody different virtues, and hence what is virtuous is relative to particular culture.
Therefore, one type can of action can be both right and wrong depending on the culture.

*this is not helpful for anyone who wants to do what is right.

Reply: All other normative theories have the same problem.

Two kinds of virtues

• Intellectual virtues
• Moral Virtues
Two kinds of intellectual virtues
1. Theoretical intelligence (nous) is the human faculty that apprehends fundamental
principles such as the laws of thinking and other fundamental truths.
• Intelligence Apprehends these truths directly and without demonstration or inference.
*This is unique to humans and gods.
*Theoretical intelligence cannot be learned.
*All people have some theoretical intelligence, some people have a lot of it.
2. Practical wisdom
• This is the ability to make right judgment on practical issues.
*it can be learned
*old people normally have more of it than the young.
2. Moral virtues
• A moral virtue is the ability to be reasonable in actions, desires and emotions.
For example, courage is the ability to deal with fear in a reasonable way.
*Courage is the reasonable mean between cowardice and foolhardiness or rashness.
• A virtue is the mean between two extremes, a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess.
In the case of courage, cowardice would be the vice of deficiency and foolhardiness would
be the vice of excess.
• Moral virtue is the outcome of habit.
• Virtues are not implanted on us by nature. This is because, we acquire virtues by
exercising them
Two kinds of good life
• All kind of good life is life in the guidance of reason.
The life devoted to study and thinking
1. The good life in which the subject devotes himself to abstract contemplation of
knowledge.
*This is truly the best way of life, but it is not within the reach of all men.

Active life in society

The other alternative is active life in society which involves taking part in all the activities
that human beings undertake to make their own life and the life of their society better.

Pursue virtue!
See you next class!