Virtue Ethics

Legal and Professional Ethics

Week 2 Part 1
Our lecture this week
Aristotle's Virtue ethics through
The development of
Nicomachean Ethics the ages – history,
virtue ethics and its
– the key Classical transmission,
historical concept
text in virtue ethics impact, and revival

VE's links with the

concept of character
for professionals 
What does it mean for
someone to be morally
virtuous?
Being habitually disposed, by the internal state
of their character, to have good feelings, think
good thoughts, and to have a certain type of
good character.

Aristotelian Virtue Ethics holds that the highest

human good is a morally good character,
therefore we should strive to be morally
virtuous.
The society that produced
virtue ethics 
• Athens was a city state (polis – a moral community with a particular goal,
the life of virtue) with a population of about 250,000 (half the size of
Liverpool and about the same size as Wolverhampton, Barnsley, Salford or
Derby). Most others in Greece had populations of only 1000-15,000
• However, only 30,000 had civil rights; adult males who had completed
their military training, not foreign (metics), not a slave, not a woman.
• These citizens enrolled in a deme and became part of the demos
(originally the word for village/suburb): they ruled (kratos) the city –
hence they had a demokratia.
• Athens established democracy around 500BC (some indications it existed
in Indigenous tribes).
"In a democracy there is, first that most splendid of virtues – equality before
the law" (Herodotus, 484-425BC).
What is a virtue?
• Arete – "excellence". The arete of a horse is different to the arete of a
person.
• We understand virtue to mean a behaviour which shows high moral
standards.
• Arete gives us our term "aristocracy" - the Greeks would use aristos to
describe the nobility, who were supposed/expected to be superior and have
superlative ability (compared to the hoi polloi like us).
• Classical society also had a strong culture of heroism – "...the ideal of citizens
transforming civic virtue into the highest form of civic action, accepting either
physical peril or social sacrifice" (Franco, Blau & Zimbardo 2011). The heroic
life is like the eudaimonic life - "...a lifestyle characterised by the pursuit of
virtue/excellence, meaning/purpose, doing good/making a difference, and
the resulting sense of fulfillment or flourishing" (Wong, 2011).
• Heracles – the choice between vice (a pleasant and easy life) and virtue (a
severe but glorious life).
• Socrates' dialogues, as recorded by Plato, note his view that justice, courage,
piety, and wisdom, among other things, are virtues that should be cultivated.
 Aristotle (384-382 BC)
• Aristotle (aristos totalis, "the best purpose") was orphaned at a young age, and
after being brought up by a guardian he joined Plato's Academy in Athens,
staying there until 347BC.
• He himself became the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy, based
in the Lyceum, or Temple of Apollo Lyceus. Peripatos means "walkway" - so we
know the school met in the covered corridors of the temple.
• The Temple had long been a centre for education, military practices as well as
religious cult activity and Plato and Socrates had also taught there. The main
reason Aristotle chose it? He wasn't a citizen of Athens and could not own
property, so he had to meet his students in public places like the Lyceum!
• Aristotle lectured on physical science, logic, metaphysics, astronomy, geology,
politics and psychology, as well as philosophy. The Peripatetic school was
student led, with pupils having their own committees and a say in how the
school was run (the original "student voice").
• Aristotle's teaching across all topics had experience as its starting point –
observing the operations of the world.
    "To experience is to learn"

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A special alumnus
• Aristotle's late parents had had links to the Macedonian
royal family, who were at that time ruling the city state
of Athens.
• In 343BC Aristotle was summoned by King Philip II to
tutor his son, Alexander – later to be known as
Alexander the Great. Aristotle tutored Alexander until
shortly before he ascended the Macedonian throne in
336BC.
"For a while, [Alexander] loved and cherished Aristotle no
less, as he was wont to ay himself, than if he had been his
father, giving this reason for it, that as he had received life
from the one, so the other had taught him to live well... He
desired not pleasure or wealth,  but only excellence and
glory" (Plutarch, Life of Alexander).
• As King, Alexander took 42,000 soldiers across Persia,
Egypt, Afghanistan and India, taking with him Aristotle's
ideas of self-sufficient, happy cities in which wellbeing
and the fine arts are the common purpose of all citizens
– "the good life" (Aristotle, Politics, 1278b, 22-26). He
also packed Aristotle's books! In this way, Aristotle's
works spread and his "Hellenisation" of the east is 
thought by many to have had an influence on the
development of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology.
• Before his death from malaria aged 33, Alexander ruled
over most of the known world between the Balkans and
modern day Pakistan. He exported Hellenistic
ideas across the globe, with a long lasting cultural
legacy; his military strategies are still taught once you
reach the very highest level of seniority in the military. This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-SA.
 Aristotelian ethics

• Aristotle believed that the highest human good is

not just having a morally good character, but
rather happiness (eudaimonia).
• Moral virtue is the essence of happiness – it is the
foundation of and has control over our happiness.
• So, we ought to strive to be morally virtuous.

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 • The Stoics believed that the highest human good is
a morally good character; but they did not think it
was possible for humans to be happy in this mortal
world. 
• Their view was that the morally best kind of life is
The Stoics one that also keeps an attitude of ataraxia
(resolute detachment) from anxiety, distress and
emotional upheaval. 
• Epictetus said that human beings should live in
unconditional surrender to the course of nature -
"don't be wishing for figs in winter"!

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Parallels with Eastern
Philosophy
Buddhism, which dates from around 500BC, I.e. 200
years before Stoicism, has some similar ideas:
• non-attachment to the world and its material things
is part of the path to happiness.
• There is no self - all nature is one and all perceptions
of separation are an illusion (NB - this has some
echoes in modern environmental ethics)
• All one has is the present moment:
   "Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a
whole. Don't try to picture everything bad that could
possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand and
ask "Why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it?"
You will be embarrassed to answer... Remind yourself
that past and future have no power over you. Only the
present – and even that can be minimised. Just mark off
its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can't
hold out against that... well, then, heap shame upon it."
(Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, Meditations)

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Other Classical ideas
• Epicureanism – Pleasure is the sole intrinsic good, and pain is what is intrinsically
bad for humans. you must be detached from vulnerable/difficult to obtain
physical/external goods and happiness (ataraxia – tranquility) will come from your
own psychological states. Virtue is just the means to achieve happiness
(hedonism). 
• Skepticism (skeptomai, to search, to think about or look for) - claims about reality
can't be justified. See for example the 5 tropes of Agrippa:
 Dissent - The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among
philosophers and people in general.
 Progress ad infinitum – All proof rests on matters themselves in need of proof,
and so on to infinity.
 Relation - All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look
upon them from different points of view.
 Assumption– The truth asserted is based on an unsupported assumption.
 Circularity – The truth asserted involves a circularity of proofs

So the route to happiness is the suspension of judgment.

• Cynicism - Lead a simply life – you will have no unnecessary concerns and allow
you to properly develop your virtues. Cynics neglected everything not furthering
their perfection of virtue and attainment of eudaimonia - hence other Athenians
called them dogs (kynikos)

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The Nicomachean Ethics 

Book 1 – The highest human good

Book 2 – The nature of moral virtue

Book 3 – the internal conditions of

moral virtue
Book 1 – The highest
human good
• Aristotle is a teleologist - that is, everything and everyone in the world has a
purpose for existing (telos). You can deduce what this purpose might be
by observing and experiencing the known world.
• To say that an act is teleological is just to say that it has some end, goal, or
purpose.
• The cause, or causal route to, a given end or outcome is the means to that
end. All teleological reasoning looks at ends and means.
• For Aristotle, all things and acts aim toward some good or other as ends.
Some of these are means to other ends, and some are good for their own
sake. So there is always some form of "highest good" for which everything
else is done.
1. All actions have a telos
2. An object is good when it properly secures its telos
3. The telos of a human being is reason
4. The good for a human being is, therefore, acting in accordance with reason
Eudaimonia
• The highest human good is eudaimonia, or happiness (sometimes
translated as "flourishing"), because human happiness is the end for
the sake of which everything else is done, so all human beings by their
very nature seek to be happy.
• "The human tendency to bestow a timeless quality to heroic
leadership is the culmination of a pervasive narrative about human
greatness that people have been driven to construct since the advent
of language” (Allison & Goethals, 2014)
• This peak state, and the idea of transcendence that is associated with
it, go to the basis of the word ‘eudaimonia’, the ‘daemon’, i.e., being
taken over by the ‘good spirit’ (Bošković and Šendula Jengić, 2008;
Froh et al, 2009).
• Music example of the idea of "flourishing".

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More about Eudaimonia
• Happiness is not:
• Pleasure (psychological) - this can be momentary, or you can have it but still be deeply unhappy
• Being honoured by others (social)
• Having health, good looks (physiological)
• wealth etc...(the right equipment)
• A potential or passive state - it's an activity
• dependent on anything outside itself.
• These things can all be part of happiness, but one on its own is not sufficient.
• So what is the essence of happiness? To know this, is to be able to control and determine when and how
to be happy.
• Interestingly, luck plays a role for Aristotle., even if he does not intend it. He says it
is our responsibility to develop and achieve eudaimonia – but he suggests you need external things to do
this. Possibly, only a lucky few can achieve his ideal.
• Our English word happiness comes from the Norse Happ,  meaning fortune or luck ("Perhaps"/"I
happened to find out...")
 Aristotle believes that everything has a proper function and
corresponding kind of active excellence – this is its "virtue"
(arete).
Arete carries the idea of living up to one's full potential, or
fulfillment.

Arete again • The proper function and active excellence of human

beings is moral virtue

• So happiness is morally virtuous activity, or activity

in accordance with moral virtue.

• Since happiness is also the highest human good, we

should all choose and act in a morally virtuous way.
 Book II – The Nature
of Moral Virtue
"Moral virtue is (1) a state of character (2) concerned with choice (3) lying in a mean (the
mean relative to us) (4) this being determined by a rational principle of reason and (5) by
that principle which the person of practical wisdom (phronesis) would determine it."
• Unlike the innate faculties we are born with, virtue has to be acquired and learned. So
a bad upbringing, or negative traits you may have in your character, can be overcome
with a long period of training!
• Virtue is not merely the ability to do good acts - it is about being a good person who
acts well for the right reasons, not just accidentally, and the for the sake of those good
and right things.
• So we can become virtuous by doing virtuous things, for the right reasons.
• So what is virtuous activity?
• Typically brings pleasure to the agent (I.e. the person acting)
• Pleasure and pain are fairly good indicators of good and bad choices, acts, and
things.
• Vicious (bad) acts are often brought about through excessive attraction
to pleasure and/or the avoidance of pain.
The Golden Mean
• Good practical judgment can't be reduced to a
formula – everything has to be judged on a
case by case basis (this idea should sound
familiar to common lawyers like you!)
• You must aim to hit the mean between excess
on one hand, and defect on the other (similar
to the Buddhist "middle path")
• This is a longstanding theme in
Greek philosophy going back to Socrates in
philosophy, and it appears in myths as well,
like the one of Icarus.
• Like Icarus, Aristotle advises that we avoid
both the fire of the sun and the spray of the
sea.
The principal virtues
according to Aristotle
• Courage – not reckless, not cowardly
• Temperance – not prudish, not excessive
• Liberality – not too mean, not a spendthrift
• Magnificence
• Magnanimity
• Ambition
• Patience
• Friendliness
• Truthfulness
• Wit
• Modesty
• Justice This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.
Book III – The internal
conditions of moral virtue
• These are the conditions of morally good choice and action, and also the
conditions of moral responsibility.
• To be morally praiseworthy, a choice or act must be voluntary, and this is
so if:
• X has an internal source in your own psychology;
• You have the ability to choose or do X; and
• I have knowledge of the relevant particular facts about X.
Whereas if either
 I choose to do X only because of some irresistible outer force that
overrides my ability to stop myself from choosing or doing it; or
 I choose to do X only through my ignorance or the relevant
particular facts about X,
Then I act involuntarily and cannot be responsible I.e. deemed morally
blameworthy.
e.g. Barton v Armstrong 
 Is ignorance always an
excuse?
• Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse, so for Aristotle there are general rules of
good choice and conduct that every rational human agent should know – for example,
that killing innocent people is wrong.
• As well as being voluntary, an act must also have been made  by choice, that is
following a deliberated or reasoned desire aimed at some end. This is what
distinguishes the act of a child or a person with a lack of mental understanding, from a
morally responsible adult.
• This concept of culpability and understanding runs through English criminal law, for
example.
• A lucky escape from 1847 – Baron Alderson applying his test from R v Pritchard (1836):
"There are three points to be enquired into:- first, whether the prisoner is mute of malice
or not; secondly, whether he can plead to the indictment or not; thirdly, whether he is of
sufficient intellect to comprehend the course of the proceedings in the trial so as to make a
proper defence - to know that he might challenge any of you to whom he may object - and
to comprehend the details of the evidence, which in a case of this nature must constitute a
minute investigation."
Habits are important
• "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence,
then, is not an act but a habit." (Will Durrant,
1885-1981)
• You can certainly decide to be a more virtuous
person; but to become one, you have to not
just think but also act like one, repeatedly.
• Then, after a period of time, you can not only
recognise an ethical dilemma when you see
one more easily, you can also be more
confident in deciding what the right thing to
do it, and have better prospects of what you This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

do actually achieving the best outcome.

Criticisms of Aristotle's ethics
• Luck seems to play a crucial part in happiness – can this be right?
• Moral goodness might come apart from happiness if you had, say, a happy
slave-owner, a happy murderer, or a happy Nazi?
• Is there too much emphasis on the necessity for being happy in order to
have a good character; it seems possible to choose and/or do the right
thing even if you're generally unhappy or that particular choice or act
makes you unhappy. If you're resisting temptation to do the right thing,
doing so might make you unhappy, even though morally you shouldn't be
criticised!
• His description of involuntary acts may not be complete: what if you were
being forced to kill a person, and if you did not, a third person would kill
you? Do you really have any choice here? Would you not still be morally
responsible for the act you commit?
• His outdated, parochial view of society – he lived in a city state where very
limited classes of people – or put more accurately, men – had the
remotest chance at happiness

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Criticisms continued
• “…We all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity…I am a citizen of
this or that city…I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the
good for one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe,
my nation a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the
given of my life, my moral starting point. This is in part which gives my life its own moral
particularity.” (Macintyre, After Virtue: a study in moral theory). 
• However, this ignores the fact that citizens rely on states for the safeguarding of everyday freedoms,
such that their lives are constructively informed by national constitutions and legislature and
communities are not only (in fact seldom) voluntary but also geographic territories to which people
belong more so by birth than disposition  (K Breen, The state, compartmentalization and the turn to
local community: A critique of the political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, The European Legacy,
10:5, 485-501). In Aristotle's society, females are just deformed males and have no prospect of
participating in politics or being psychologically equal to men.
• Did he follow his own advice? Denounced for impiety, he e took a different route to Socrates. "I
will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy".
Conclusion
Whatever Aristotle’s philosophical
or personal shortcomings, his is
one of the most important
philosophies of all time, and it has
had a profound effect on ethics
and thinkers from many different
subject areas throughout history. 

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