Aristotle’s starting point in the Nichomachean Ethics is not ‘how should I live morally’ or how can I resolve ethical dilemmas’ it is instead ‘How am I to achieve eudaimonia’. At first sight this has nothing to do with morality. But Aristotle’s answer is that in order to achieve eudaimonia we need to acquire and exercise the virtues.

 

4.1 Virtue

 

4.2 Golden Mean

  

• Aristotle said virtues a balance between two vices, one an excess the other deficiency. However, the mean is not the same for everyone and depends on circumstance – you need to apply phronesis (practical wisdom) to decide on the right course of action in each situation. Phronesis is acquired as we grow up and move away from rules and the demands of authority figures to a more autonomous, person-centred and virtue-centred morality.

 

5. Strengths

• Virtue ethics avoids having to use a formula (e.g. ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’) to work out what we ought to do and focuses instead on the kind of person we ought to be.

• Virtue ethics is not legalistic– just because one obeys the law and follows the rules does not make one a good person.  Intuitively, someone who helps the poor out of compassion may seem to be morally superior to someone who does it out of duty.

• Virtue ethics tells us how we learn moral principles and involves our entire life, as every moment, even the most mundane, is an opportunity for developing a virtue.

 

6. Weaknesses

 

8.1 The Application Problem

• Deontologists and utilitarians claim an ethical theory must provide universal rules or principles to determine an ethical theory (don’t lie, maximise happiness). Virtue ethics being “agent-centred rather than act-centred” cannot provide action-guidance.

• Robert Louden focuses on inability of virtue ethics to resolve ethical dilemmas. It is difficult to work out what is the virtuous response to stem-cell research or abortion.

 

Related… 8.2 The Conflict Problem

• What does virtue ethics have to say about dilemmas in which, apparently, the requirements of different virtues conflict because they point in opposed directions?

• E.g. Charity prompts me to kill the person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it. Honesty points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion to remaining silent or even lying. What shall I do?

 

Rosalind Hursthouse’s Response

• Rosalind Hursthouse in On Virtue Ethics attempts to address the application problem.

• She accepts some dilemmas are irresolvable, but this is okay as life is messy and there’s something wrong if a theory claims to be able to give you the right answer in every case.

• She proposes ‘An action is right if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances’. To know what a virtuous agent would characteristically do we need to think about how a virtuous person would think. In this way we can create action-guiding ‘v-rules’ (e.g. do what is kind, do what is honest).

 

8.3 The problem of character traits

• Objection: Virtue ethics seems to praise some virtues that we might see as immoral (e.g. soldiers fighting unjust wars may be courageous but that does not make them morally good).

• Modern Reply: Philippa Foot argues that a virtue does not operate as a virtue when turned to a bad end.

 

8.4 The problem of eudaimonia

• Virtue Ethics depends on some final end which gives shape to our lives – there may not be one and being virtuous may not affect it anyway.

• Either Virtue Ethics is accepting Aristotle's natural teleology which is discredited (Williams 1985) or rationalising their own personal values as a human function.

 

Alasdair Macintyre’s Response

• Macintyre abandons Aristotle’s function argument but defends the idea that morality should be seen in terms of human purpose/function/flourishing but links it with community.

• For MacIntyre virtues are ‘any virtues which sustain the households and communities in which men and women seek for good together’.

• These virtues improve and evolve through time; and so there is a difference between the Homeric virtues such as strength, courage and honour, the Aristotelian virtues such as courage, justice and temperance, and the Christian virtues outlined by Aquinas.

• The best available science today (including evolutionary theory and psychology) supports the ancient Greek assumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves. Like other social animals, our natural impulses are not solely directed towards our own pleasures and preservation, but include altruistic and cooperative ones. This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claim that the virtues are at least partially constitutive of human flourishing.