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Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, (1999). 9780415170734, Routledge. ISBN 9780415170734 from Ancient Greek ἀρετή]] ) is a philosophical approach that treats virtue and moral character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role.
Virtue ethics is usually contrasted with two other major approaches in ethics, consequentialism and deontology, which make the goodness of outcomes of an action (consequentialism) and the concept of moral duty (deontology) central. While virtue ethics does not necessarily deny the importance to ethics of goodness of states of affairs or of moral duties, it emphasizes virtue, and sometimes other concepts, like , to an extent that other ethics theories do not.
In early versions and some modern versions of virtue ethics, a virtue is defined as a character trait that promotes or exhibits human "flourishing and well being" in the person who exhibits it. Some modern versions of virtue ethics do not define virtues in terms of well being or flourishing, and some go so far as to define virtues as traits that tend to promote some other good that is defined independently of the virtues, thereby subsuming virtue ethics under (or somehow merging it with) consequentialist ethics.
To Aristotle, a virtue was not a skill that made you better able to achieve eudaimonia but was itself an expression of eudaimonia — eudaimonia in activity.
In contrast with consequentialist and deontological ethical systems, in which one may be called upon to do the right thing even though it is not in one's own interests (one is to do it instead for the greater good, or out of duty), in virtue ethics, one does the right thing because it is in one's own interests. Part of training in practical virtue ethics is to come to see the coincidence of one's enlightened self-interest and the practice of the virtues, so that one is virtuous willingly, gladly, and enthusiastically because one knows that being virtuous is the best thing one can do with oneself.
For example, a generous person can reason well about when and how to help people, and such a person also helps people with pleasure and without conflict. In this, virtuous people are contrasted not only with vicious people (who reason poorly about what to do and are emotionally attached to the wrong things) and with the incontinent (who are tempted by their feelings into doing the wrong thing even though they know what is right), but also with the merely continent (whose emotions tempt them toward doing the wrong thing but whose strength of will lets them do what they know is right).
According to Rosalind Hursthouse, in Aristotelian virtue ethics, the emotions have moral significance because "virtues (and vices) are all dispositions not only to act, but to feel emotions, as reactions as well as impulses to action... and In the person with the virtues, these emotions will be felt on the right occasions, toward the right people or objects, for the right reasons, where 'right' means 'correct'..."
(φρόνησις; prudence, practical virtue, or practical wisdom) is an acquired trait that enables its possessor to identify the best thing to do in any given situation. Unlike theoretical wisdom, practical reason results in action or decision. As John McDowell puts it, practical wisdom involves a "perceptual sensitivity" to what a situation requires.
(εὐδαιμονία) is a state variously translated from Greek as 'well-being', 'happiness', 'blessedness', and in the context of virtue ethics, 'human flourishing'. in this sense is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the well-lived life.
According to Aristotle, the most prominent exponent of in the Western philosophical tradition, defines the goal of human life. It consists of exercising the characteristic human quality—reason—as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, like Plato before him, argued that the pursuit of is an "activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue", which further could only properly be exercised in the characteristic human community—the or city-state.
Although was first popularized by Aristotle, it now belongs to the tradition of virtue theories generally. For the virtue theorist, describes that state achieved by the person who lives the proper human life, an outcome that can be reached by practicing the virtues. A virtue is a habit or quality that allows the bearer to succeed at his, her, or its purpose. The virtue of a knife, for example, is sharpness; among the virtues of a racehorse is speed. Thus, to identify the virtues for human beings, one must have an account of what is the human purpose.
Not all modern virtue ethics theories are eudaimonic; some place another end in place of , while others are non-teleological: that is, they do not account for virtues in terms of the results that the practice of the virtues produce or tend to produce.
Virtue ethics began with Socrates, and was subsequently developed further by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Virtue ethics concentrates on the character of the individual, rather than the acts (or consequences thereof) of the individual. There is debate among adherents of virtue ethics concerning what specific virtues are praiseworthy. However, most theorists agree that ethics is demonstrated by the practice of virtues.
Plato and Aristotle's treatments of virtues are not the same. Plato believes virtue is effectively an end to be sought, for which a friend might be a useful means. Aristotle states that the virtues function more as means to safeguard human relations, particularly authentic friendship, without which one's quest for happiness is frustrated.
Discussion of what were known as the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, Courage, and temperance—can be found in Plato's Republic. The virtues also figure prominently in Aristotle's ethical theory found in Nicomachean Ethics.
Virtue theory was inserted into the study of history by moralistic historians such as Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus. The Greek idea of the virtues was passed on in Roman philosophy through Cicero and later incorporated into Christianity moral theology by Ambrose of Milan. During the Scholasticism period, the most comprehensive consideration of the virtues from a theological perspective was provided by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica and his Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics.
After the Reformation, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics continued to be the main authority for the discipline of ethics at Protestant universities until the late seventeenth century, with over fifty Protestant commentaries published on the Nicomachean Ethics before 1682.
Though the tradition receded into the background of European philosophical thought in the past few centuries, the term "virtue" remained current during this period, and in fact appears prominently in the tradition of classical republicanism or classical liberalism. This tradition was prominent in the intellectual life of 16th-century Italy, as well as 17th- and 18th-century Britain and America; indeed the term "virtue" appears frequently in the work of Tomás Fernández de Medrano, Niccolò Machiavelli, David Hume, the republicans of the English Civil War period, the 18th-century English Whigs, and the prominent figures among the Scottish Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers.
The aretaic turn in moral philosophy is paralleled by analogous developments in other philosophical disciplines. One of these is epistemology, where a distinctive virtue epistemology was developed by Linda Zagzebski and others. In political theory, there has been discussion of "virtue politics", and in legal theory, there is a small but growing body of literature on virtue jurisprudence. The aretaic turn also exists in American constitutional theory, where proponents argue for an emphasis .
Aretaic approaches to morality, epistemology, and jurisprudence have been the subject of intense debates. One criticism focuses on the problem of guidance; one opponent, Robert Louden in his article "Some Vices of Virtue Ethics", questions whether the idea of a virtuous moral actor, believer, or judge can provide the guidance necessary for action, belief formation, or the resolution of legal disputes.
John McDowell argues that virtue is a "perceptual capacity" to identify how one ought to act, and that all particular virtues are merely "specialized sensitivities" to a range of reasons for acting.
Aristotle's list is not the only list, however. As Alasdair MacIntyre observed in After Virtue, thinkers as diverse as Homer, the authors of the New Testament, Thomas Aquinas, and Benjamin Franklin have all proposed lists. Walter Kaufmann proposed as the four cardinal virtues: ambition/humility ("humbition"), love, courage, and honesty.
Other proponents of virtue theory, notably Alasdair MacIntyre, respond to this objection by arguing that any account of the virtues must indeed be generated out of the community in which those virtues are to be practiced: the very word ethics implies . That is to say that the virtues are, and necessarily must be, grounded in a particular time and place. What counts as a virtue in Athens would be a ludicrous guide to proper behaviour in Toronto and vice versa. To take this view does not necessarily commit one to the argument that accounts of the virtues must therefore be static: moral activity—that is, attempts to contemplate and practice the virtues—can provide the cultural resources that allow people to change, albeit slowly, the of their own societies.
MacIntyre appears to take this position in his seminal work on virtue ethics, After Virtue.
Another objection to virtue theory is that virtue ethics 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. In other words, while some virtue theorists may not condemn, for example, murder as an inherently immoral or impermissible sort of action, they may argue that someone who commits a murder is severely lacking in several important virtues, such as compassion and . Still, antagonists of the theory often object that this particular feature of the theory makes virtue ethics useless as a universal norm of acceptable conduct suitable as a base for legislation. Some virtue theorists concede this point, but respond by opposing the very notion of legitimate legislative authority instead, effectively advocating some form of anarchism as the political ideal. Other virtue theorists argue that laws should be made by virtuous legislators, and still another group argue that it is possible to base a judicial system on the moral notion of virtues rather than rules. Aristotle himself saw his Nicomachean Ethics as a prequel for his Politics and felt that the point of politics was to create the fertile soil for a virtuous citizenry to develop in, and that one purpose of virtue was that it helps you to contribute to a healthy .
Some virtue theorists might respond to this overall objection with the notion of a "bad act" also being an act characteristic of vice. That is to say that those acts that do not aim at virtue, or that stray from virtue, would constitute our conception of "bad behavior". Although not all virtue ethicists agree to this notion, this is one way the virtue ethicist can re-introduce the concept of the "morally impermissible". One could raise an objection that he is committing an argument from ignorance by postulating that what is not virtuous is unvirtuous. In other words, just because an action or person 'lacks of evidence' for virtue does not, ceteris paribus, imply that said action or person is unvirtuous.
Nussbaum also points to considerations of virtue by utilitarians such as Henry Sidgwick ( The Methods of Ethics), Jeremy Bentham ( The Principles of Morals and Legislation), and John Stuart Mill, who writes of moral development as part of an argument for the moral equality of women ( The Subjection of Women). She argues that contemporary virtue ethicists such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, and John McDowell have few points of agreement and that the common core of their work does not represent a break from Kant.
In "What Is Virtue Ethics All About?", Gregory Velazco y Trianosky identified the key points of divergence between virtue ethicists and what he called "neo-Kantianism", in the form these nine neo-Kantian moral assertions:
Trianosky says that modern sympathizers with virtue ethics almost all reject neo-Kantian claim #1, and many of them also reject certain of the other claims.
The next predominant school of thought in normative ethics is consequentialism. While deontology emphasizes doing one's duty, consequentialism bases the morality of an action on its outcome. Instead of saying that one has a moral duty to abstain from murder, a consequentialist would say that we should abstain from murder because it has undesirable effects. The main contention is what outcomes should (or can) be identified as objectively desirable.
John Stuart Mill's greatest happiness principle is a commonly-adopted criterion of what is objectively desirable. Mill asserts that the desirability of an action is the net amount of happiness it brings, the number of people it brings happiness to, and the duration of that happiness. He tries to delineate classes of happiness, some preferable to others, but classifying such a concept is difficult.
A virtue ethicist identifies virtues (also known as desirable characteristics) that a good person embodies. Exhibiting these virtues is the aim of ethics, and one's actions are a reflection of one's virtues. To the virtue philosopher, action cannot be used as a demarcation of morality because a virtue encompasses more than a selection of an action; it is a way of being that leads the person exhibiting the virtue to consistently make certain types of choices. There is disagreement in virtue ethics about what are, and what are not, virtues. There are also difficulties in identifying the "virtuous" action to take in all circumstances, and how to define a virtue.
Consequentialist and deontological theories often still employ the term virtue in a restricted sense: as a tendency (or disposition) to adhere to the system's principles or rules. In those theories, virtue is secondary and the principles (or rules) are primary. These differing senses of what constitutes virtue are a potential source of confusion. Dogmatic claims about the purpose of human life, or about what a good life is for human beings, are typically controversial.
Virtue ethics has a number of contemporary applications:
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