CHAPTER 5:

VIRTUE ETHICS
 What is Virtue Ethics?
• Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics.

• Virtue theory is concerned with identifying and cultivating character traits

that enable individuals to flourish as members of a community.

• Father of virtue ethics theory:

– Plato
– Aristotle

• Virtue theories rely on an analogy between

– health (the good of the body), and

– eudaimonia (the good of the mind).

 Plato Aristotle

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 Plato
(427 – 347 BC)

• Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic

conception of ethics.

• Happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the

highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and
the virtues are the requisite skills and
dispositions needed to attain it.

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 Aristotle
(384 – 322 BC) • The virtues is the central to a well-lived life.

• Regards the ethical virtues (justice, courage,

temperance and so on) as complex rational,
emotional and social skills.

• Aristotle defines virtue as the average, or ‘mean,'

between excess and deficiency. Basically, he says,
the idea of virtue is 'all things in moderation’.

• Humans should enjoy existence, but not be selfish.

They should avoid pain and displeasure, but not
expect a life completely void of them. By striving to
live this virtuous life of moderation, human beings can
find happiness and, therefore, be ethical.
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 What is virtue?

• Virtue means “excellence”

• To do something well

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 Virtue

• A virtue (arete, excellence) is a character

trait

• Acquired by practice, that disposes a person

to adopt the right course of action in morally
charged situations.

• Virtues are life-skills that enable a person to

realize their potential for living the good life
as a rational, social, animal (naturally).
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What is the good?

• A Relative good useful for something else

• Non - Relative good in itself

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 Human soul

Rational Functions Non-rational Functions

Thinking about
Thinking about Appetites and Vegetative &
unchanging
changing things desires Nutritive
things

Truths of The weather Hunger Growth Cell

mathematics Our circumstances Fatigue Regeneration
Truths of science Our own appetites Sex Heartbeat
Truths of metaphysics and desires Learning Digestion

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Virtues are life-skills that
enable a person to realize
their potential for living the
good life as a rational, Human soul
social, animal (naturally).

Non-rational
Rational Functions
Functions

Thinking about
Thinking about Appetites and Vegetative &
unchanging
changing things desires Nutritive
things

- Thinking about our own Hunger Power

Growth Cell
Truths of mathematics appetites and desires Fatigue Fame
Regeneration
Truths of science - Deciding what to do Sex Things
about them Heartbeat
Truths of metaphysics Learning Respect
Digestion
Money Creating

The Sphere of Morality

 Becoming Excellent

• As a skill or craft, virtue is acquired by practice.

• Patterns of behavior produce states of character.

• Good character produces good behavior.

• If you imitate good people, you’ll become one.

• Moral virtues control natural feelings (passions, appetites) and

actions, making them arise in the right amounts at the right times for
the right reasons (such a rule or principle as would arise in the mind of
the practically wise person).
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Two set of Virtues
– Moral virtues – Virtues of Character

– Intellectual virtues – Virtues of Thought, Mind

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 Moral virtue

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 Moral virtue

• Aim at the mean between extremes

• What is a “mean”?
– In mathematics, it is an average
– Formula: Sum the series of numbers, then divide by the number of numbers in the
series.
– Ex.: What is the mean of 2 and 10?
– Sum the series → 2 + 10 = 12
– Divide by the # of numbers (2 numbers) → 12/2 = 6

The answer is absolute; same for everyone, no exceptions

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The moral mean
• The mean in morality is a Relative mean ( a “mean relative to
us”)
– Ex.: How much food should I eat?
– For everyone, 2 pounds per day is too little and 10 pounds is too much. Should I
therefore eat 6 pounds?
– Answer: Depend in who you are!
– Michael Phelps or Lecturer?

• Note: But anyone can eat either too little or too much, no matter
who they are or what their circumstances are.
“Moral virtues control natural feelings (passions, appetites) and actions, making
them arise in the right amounts at the right times for the right reasons (such a rule or
principle as would arise in the mind of the practically wise person)”

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 Virtue and Vice
• Every mean (“just right”) is between two extremes

– Extreme of deficiency (“two little”)

– Extreme of excess (“two much”)

• Every virtue is “between” two vices

• Note: Virtue and vice are about habitual behavior , about dispositions to
act a certain way

– If you smoke 1 cigarette, you do not have the vice of smoking

– It you regularly smoke, you’ve developed the vice of smoking

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 Moral virtue

Goodness Excellence

Activity

Two little Just right Two much

Vice of Deficiency Mean = Virtue Vice of Excess

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Aristotle’s
Golden
Mean
Moral behavior
is the mean
between two
extremes –
excess &
deficiency.

Find a moderate
position
between those
two extremes,
and you will be
acting morally.
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 Golden mean

• Aristotle believe that the greatest purpose people have is to live life well

• Involves using the virtues we were intended to use, like reason, courage,
honesty and moderation

• Too little or too much of anything can be bad

• Every good thing exists between two bad things

• Moral goodness and enjoyment of life are the same thing

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 Moral virtue

• Aim at a mean relative to us between extremes of behavior

• Learned by training, by doing
• Determined through imitation (exemplar)
• Develop a habit or (better) a disposition
– Virtue is an ongoing pattern of behavior

• Not a mediocrity – the mean is an excellence, as good as it

gets!

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Possible Moral Positions
• “Absolutely Absolute”
– There is ONE right way for everyone

• “Absolutely Relative”
– There is No right way for everyone – everyone does what he/she feels like
doing

• “Relatively Absolute”
– Aristotle’s position
– Absolute because everyone, no matter what, ought to develop the virtues
– Relative because everyone will develop virtues in accordance with their
circumstances

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 Intellectual virtue

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 Human soul

Rational Functions Non-rational Functions

Thinking about
Thinking about Appetites and Vegetative &
unchanging
changing things desires Nutritive
things

Truths of The weather Hunger Growth Cell

mathematics Our circumstances Fatigue Regeneration
Truths of science Our own appetites Sex Heartbeat
Truths of metaphysics and desires Learning Digestion

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Intellectual Virtues

– Learned by “teaching” not by “training”

– Not a “mean between extremes” but aims at an extreme:

more knowledge and understanding is always better

– Rational “side” of the soul is about thinking; but we think in

various ways about various things

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 WHAT IS A GOOD LIFE?

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What dose it mean to live a good life?

That all we desire?

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 What do you mean a good life?
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What is the good?

• A Relative good useful for something else

• Non - Relative good in itself

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 What is the #1 we all desire?

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Eudaimonia

Flourishing

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 Eudaimonia

➢Eudaimonia = "having a good guardian

spirit" = "happiness"

• happiness seems closely bound up with a subjective

assessment of the quality of one's life

• eudaimonia refers to an objectively desirable life.

➢Eudaimonia is then a more encompassing

notion than happiness since bad events that
do not contribute to one's experience of
happiness do affect one's eudaimonia.
 Eudaimonism

• Is the classical formulation of Virtue Ethics.

• It holds that the proper goal of human life is eudaimonia

– eudaimonia = "happiness", "well-being" or the "good life“

– This goal can be achieved by a lifetime of

practicing "arête" (the virtues) in one's everyday activities

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 Hedonism

• The term "hedonism" is derived from the Greek "hedone" meaning simply
"pleasure".

• Pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and the only thing that
is good for an individual.

• Hedonists, therefore, strive to maximise their total pleasure (the net of any
pleasure less any pain or suffering).

• They believe that pleasure is the only good in life, and pain is the only evil,

• Our life's goal should be to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

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 Two theories of “The good”
Pleasure (Hedonism) Happiness (Eudaimonism)
• Features • Features
– Short-term satisfaction – Long term satisfaction
– Emotional state – State of mind/being
– Quantitative/relative to feeling – Qualitative/relative to ‘being’
– Often possessive or passive – Active or involving action, choice
• Transient: “Felicity is the satisfaction of desire • Final: “[It] is desirable in itself, not for
after desire, which end only in death.” something else…[it] makes life desirable,
lacking nothing.”
• Relative to individual desires
• Universal, good for all humans
• Subjective:
• Objective:
– Based on personal preferences
– based on rational human
– Depends on ability and good fortune to fulfill nature/actualization
desires
– Grounded in the virtues
• Situational: involves person partially or for a
short while • Comprehensive: involves whole person
and is enduring
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 Ethics of Care
• motivated by the idea that men think in masculine terms
such as justice and autonomy, whereas woman think
in feminine terms such as caring.

• It emphasizes the importance

of solidarity, community and relationships rather than
universal standards and impartiality.

• Instead of doing the right thing even if it requires personal

cost or sacrificing the interest
of family or community members,

we can, and indeed should, put the

interests of those who are close to us above the interests of
complete strangers.
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Agent-Based Theories

• Developed recently by Michael Slote (1941), give

an account of virtue based on our common-sense
intuitions about which character traits
are admirable (e.g. benevolence, kindness,
compassion, etc), which we can identify by
looking at the people we admire, our moral
exemplars.

• The evaluation of actions is

therefore dependent on ethical judgments about
the inner life of the agents who perform those
actions.

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 Target-Centered Virtue Ethics
• Developed by Christine Swanton (2003), begins with our existing
conceptions of the virtues.
• A virtue is a disposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its field
or fields in an excellent or good enough way
• A virtuous act is an act that hits the target of a virtue, which is to say that it
succeeds in responding to items in its field in the specified way.
• An act is right if and only if it is overall virtuous, and that entails that it is the,
or a, best action possible in the circumstances.
• A more permissive target-centered account would not identify ‘right’ with
‘best’, but would allow an action to count as right provided “it is good
enough even if not the (or a) best action”.
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 What will you do according to Target-Centered Virtue Ethics?

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1. I must save the girl!
✓ The target is a good thing → ethical !
2. How?
✓ Defeat the man and escape the girl if I can do it well
✓ Call for help if I scare that he may kill me.
Aristotle: Right action is between two extremes: too little or too much
Courage: part of having courage is being able to recognize when,
rather than stepping in, you need to find an authority who can handle
a situation that’s too big for you to tackle alone.
Call for help is consider as a good enough action in this circumstance.
It’s virtuous act!
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 Criticisms of Virtue Ethics

• The difficulty of establishing the nature of the virtues, especially as

different people, cultures and societies often have vastly different
opinions on what constitutes a virtue.

• The theory is not "action-guiding", and does not focus on what sorts
of actions are morally permitted and which ones are not, but rather
on what sort of qualities someone ought to foster in order to become
a good person.

• Virtue Ethics is self-centered because its primary concern is with the

agent's own character, whereas morality is supposed to be
about other people, and how our actions affect other people.

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Use the virtue ethics theory to express your idea about a good life that may you
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