Terms Used in Ethical Judgments

Obligatory:
we mean that it is not only right to do it, but that it is wrong not
to do it. In other words, we have a ethical obligation to perform
the action. Sometimes the easiest way to see if an action is
ethically obligatory is to look at what it would mean NOT to
perform the action.
Impermissible:
meaning that it is wrong to do it and right not to do it. For
example, we would say that murder is ethically impermissible.

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Permissible: Sometimes actions are referred to
as ethically permissible, or ethically “neutral,”
because it is neither right nor wrong to do them
or not to do them.
Supererogatory: These types of actions are seen
as going “above and beyond the call of duty.”
They are right to do, but it is not wrong not to
do them.

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How are we to relate the past events to
ethics?
Lesson II.

Virtue Ethics
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• person rather than action based. It looks at the
moral character of the person carrying out an
action.
Principles:

❖ An action is only right if it is an action that a virtuous

person would carry out in the same circumstances.
❖ A virtuous person is a person who acts virtuously
❖ A person acts virtuously if they "possess and live the
virtues"
❖ A virtue is a moral characteristic that a person needs
to live well.
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 TRIUMVIRATE
SOCRATES

PLATO

ARISTOTLE
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SOCRATES (470/469 – 399 BC)

❖ Virtuous Man
The Socratic Method
• DIALECTIC: A method of seeking truth through a
series of questions and answers.
• The Socratic method is a “dialectic” method
teaching.
• To solve a problem, it is broken down into a series
of questions, the answers to which gradually distill
the answer a person would seek.

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 Socrates

Ethics
primary concern in
philosophy was, “How
should we live?”
3 Questions
• What is good?
• What is right?
• What is just (justice)?

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Socrates Ethics:
Socrates' ethics assumes that
Education is the key to living an
ethical life.
• No one desires evil.
• No one errs or does wrong
willingly or knowingly.
• Virtue—all virtue—is
knowledge.
• Virtue = positive moral
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behavior
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 Plato
• Socrates' Student
• Founded the Academy –
First institution for higher education

• First Western philosopher

whose writings have survived
• Most of what we know about
Socrates comes from Plato's
writings
• Agreed with Pythagoras that
Mathematics were essential in
understanding the world

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 Plato
Ethics
Humans are made of 3
INTELLECT PASSIONS conflicting elements:
• Passions
• Intellect
• Will
WILL
Most people live life allowing
the PASSIONS, INTELLECT
and WILL to be in conflict
with one another.
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Virtue Ethics: Plato’s ethics.
“Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire,
emotion, and knowledge.”
Virtue ethics says that the reasoning of what is moral is
decided by the person instead of by rules or consequences.
YOU decide what’s moral and right, not by what will happen.
Plato believed that the human soul is divided into three parts.
Reason: our thinking ability to judge
Spirit: our emotional ability to feel empathy
Appetite: our desires
According to Plato, we should balance these three parts of
our souls to make good decisions and moral choices. Letting
one take too much control of our minds is not good for us
and leads to bad decisions.
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 Plato

Ideal living is when the INTELLECT controls the PASSIONS through the WILL
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 Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

RPCorpuxz 2013
•Everything aims at some
end—has some purpose
•Ethics requires that we
discover what is the purpose
or end of human life.
• There are lots of things that people pursue, but most of
these are pursued for the sake of something else.
• We need to discover the ultimate goal or end of human
life.
• Ethics then will tell us how best to achieve this ultimate
end.
• Everyone admits what the goal is: Happiness. Happiness
is pursued for its own sake, not just for the sake of
something else
• But what is happiness?
• Some say its honor,others pleasure, others money
 Why pleasure is not happiness
• Whatever the human good is, it should capture what is
distinctive about human beings
• But pleasure is shared with other animals
• Therefore, pleasure is not the human good (it is “too
brutish”)
 Honor and wealth is not happiness
• Honor is dependent on what others think of us. It is thus
too superficial.
• People pursue honors to reassure themselves that they
are good—so honor is not pursued for its own sake.
• Wealth also is not happiness for the same reason—we
pursue wealth for the sake of something else
 ARISTOTLE
Ethics: Virtues
theory of happiness that is still relevant
today
• happiness is a final end or goal that
encompasses the totality of one’s life.
• It is not something that can be gained
or lost in a few hours, like pleasurable
sensations.
• It is more like the ultimate value of your
life as lived up to this moment,
• Acquired by Habit measuring how well you have lived up to
your full potential as a human being.
• Not innate
• Habit develops a disposition to act virtuously
• The Golden Mean: Mid-point between 2 extremes
Courage
Cowardice RECKLESNE
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 THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS AS
THE EXERCISE OF VIRTUE
• Aristotle tells us that the most important factor in the effort to
achieve happiness:

is to have a good moral character — what

he calls “complete virtue.”
But being virtuous is not a passive state: one must act in
accordance with virtue. Nor is it enough to have a few virtues;
rather one must strive to possess all of them. As Aristotle writes,
He is happy who lives in accordance with complete
virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods,
not for some chance period but throughout a complete
life. (Nicomachean Ethics)
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 THUS,
• Happiness is the ultimate end and purpose of human existence

• Happiness is not pleasure, nor is it virtue. It is the exercise of virtue.

• Happiness cannot be achieved until the end of one’s life. Hence it is a
goal and not a temporary state.

• Happiness is the perfection of human nature. Since man is a rational

animal, human happiness depends on the exercise of his reason.

• Happiness depends on acquiring a moral character, where one

displays the virtues of courage, generosity, justice, friendship, and
citizenship in one’s life. These virtues involve striking a balance or
“mean” between an excess and a deficiency.

• Happiness requires intellectual contemplation, for this is

the ultimate
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 Eudaimonia
or Happiness
A key theme in
Aristotle's
thought is
that happiness is
the goal of life.
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“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit. ... At his best, man
is the noblest of all animals;
separated from law and
justice he is the worst.”

(Aristotle, 384 - 322 B.C.)

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Thus, HAPPINESS DEPENDS OURSELVES!

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Good points of virtue ethics
It centers ethics on the person and what it means to be
human
It includes the whole of a person's life
Bad points of virtue ethics
it doesn't provide clear guidance on what to do in moral
dilemmas
-although it does provide general guidance on how to be a good
person
-presumably a totally virtuous person would know what to do and we
could consider them a suitable role model to guide us
there is no general agreement on what the virtues are
-and it may be that any list of virtues will be relative to the culture in
which it is Prepared
being drawn up.
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