Module 4: Weeks 10 and 11: Virtue Ethics and Virtue and Virtue and Happiness

The module provides discussions on telos, or purpose, the natural law and its tenets, virtue as habit, and happiness as constitutive of
moral and cardinal virtues. The module also provides an avenue for self-reflection on what truly brings happiness to men.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this Module, students should be able to:

 understand the significance of the postulates of morality to human actions,
 apply Kant’s categorical imperatives in dealing with ethical issues,
 differentiate moral rights from legal rights, and
 differentiate positive rights from negative rights.

Aristotle’s Concept of Virtue Ethics

Telos
 Telos is derived from the ancient Greek term that means purpose, end, fulfillment, completion, goal, or aim. Every human
action is thought to be aimed at some goal. Every human action is thought to be aimed at some goal. The telos of a tree is to
grow, which is merely to state an obvious fact about nature. If one of your telos (purposes or goals) in life was to be happy,
you're discussing something you chose for yourself. In the natural science of Aristotle, the telos of a member of a species is the
complete and perfect state of that entity in which it can reproduce itself (so, insects reach their telos when they become
adults).

Proper Functioning

 Virtue theory reflects the ancient assumption that humans have a fixed nature—an essence—and the way we flourish is by
adhering to that nature. Everything has a function, and a thing is good to the extent that it fulfills its function, and bad to the
extent that it doesn't.  What is the function of knife? A dull knife is a bad knife. 
 What are the functions of humans? Since humans are animals, they need to grow and be healthy and fertile. Humans are
rational and social animals. Humans use reason and get along with others. Aristotle argued that nature has built into us the
desire to be virtuous. Aquinas purported that God made us with the tools we need to know what’s good.

Preliminary Activity
 Instruct students to form groups of five.
 Scenario: Walking home from a movie, you see an old lady being mugged. What is the most courageous action for you to take?
Are you going to intervene? call for help? Or leave?

Aristotle’s Golden Mean and Buddhism’s Middle Path

 The golden mean is a virtue, the desirable middle between two extremes or vices, deficiency or excess, or too much or too
little.
 Analogy: Some traditions say that, absorbed in meditation, a boat with musicians talking passed by on the nearby river. When
they were playing the sitar, one of them said to the other, "When the string is too tight, the music flies away; when it is too
loose, it is silent and the music dies; grant the sitar neither too loose nor too tight." From there, Siddhartha understood that his
asceticism was too extreme and that it did not allow him to meditate properly. whereupon he developed the middle way as the
main way and started eating properly.
 Honesty is the virtue or the "golden mean" between the deficiency of failing to say things that need to be said and the excess of
brutal honesty. Generosity is the virtue between stinginess or a lack of generosity and prodigality or wasteful extravagance in
spending.

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Assessment Task
Which action is considered deficiency, excess, or balance?

1. Cowardice 4. Shameless
Courage Modesty
Rashness Shyness
2. Secrecy 5. Lack of spirit
Honesty Patience
Loquacity Irascibility
3. Mock modesty
Truthfulness
Boastfulness

What does it mean to be virtuous?

 Having virtue just means doing the right thing at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, toward the right people. If
you’re virtuous, you know what to do all the time. You know how to get along with others. You have good judgment. You can
read a room, and you know what’s right and when.

Eudaimonia
 You can attain the pinnacle of humanity if you are virtuous. It allows you to achieve "eudaimonia," or human flourishing, or a
life well-lived. Choosing to live life this way means facing disappointments and failures. It’s the satisfaction of knowing that you
have accomplished a lot and that you’ve pushed yourself to be the very best person you could be. Honing your strengths while
working on your weaknesses The kind of person who lives like this is the kind of person who will do good things.

Moral Exemplars
 Moral exemplars are people who already have virtues and individuals who demonstrate outstanding moral conduct in the face
of difficult or demanding circumstances (going above and beyond the "call of duty").  We’re built to recognize moral exemplars
and emulate them.

Assignment
Moral Exemplar and influence on individuals
 Identify a moral exemplar and provide a narrative description of his or her life story.
 What are the positive and negative influences you can identify on your moral exemplar?
 What good deeds did your exemplar carry out?
 What obstacles did your moral exemplar face, and how did he or she overcome them?
 What skills, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions helped to orient and motivate your moral exemplar?

Rubric

Criteria Ratings Points

A narrative about the moral exemplar 5 Points 0 Points 5 Points

The narrative provides a clear overview of the person. Full No
Marks Marks
Influences 15 0 Points 15
The influences of the moral exemplar are clearly outlined. Points No Points
Full Marks
Marks
TOTAL 20
Points

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Aquinas’ on Virtue and Happiness

 “Virtue is the path to happiness.”-Aquinas

 Most people think that morality is about following rules that God or the church impose on us, which make us do some things
that we would rather not do and forbid us from doing some things that we may want to do.
 Morality is about figuring out what will make us truly happy in a deep and lasting way by attaining what is truly good for us and
then arranging our lives so that we can move towards that goal.
 Morality is about seeking what leads to our flourishing and success.
 False candidates for true happiness (Summa Theologica): money, honor, power, fame, and pleasure.
 Final happiness consists in beatitude, or supernatural union with God. For this reason, we not only need the virtues; we also
need God to transform our nature—to perfect or "deify" it—so that we might be suited to participate in divine beatitude.

Cardinal Virtues

 The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues. The English word cardinal comes from the Latin word cardo, which
means "hinge." All other virtues hinge on these four: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  
 Prudence. St. Thomas Aquinas ranked prudence as the first cardinal virtue because it is concerned with the intellect. Aristotle
defined prudence as recta ratio agibilium, "right reason applied to practice." It is the virtue that allows us to judge correctly
what is right and what is wrong in any given situation.  When we mistake the evil for the good, we are not exercising prudence
—in fact, we are showing our lack of it. Because it is so easy to fall into error, prudence requires us to seek the counsel of
others, particularly those we know to be sound judges of morality.  Disregarding the advice or warnings of others whose
judgment does not coincide with ours is a sign of imprudence.
 Justice. Justice, according to Saint Thomas, is the second cardinal virtue because it is concerned with the will. As Fr. John A.
Hardon notes in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, it is "the constant and permanent determination to give everyone his or her
rightful due." We say that "justice is blind" because it should not matter what we think of a particular person. If we owe him a
debt, we must repay exactly what we owe. Justice is connected to the idea of rights. While we often use justice in a negative
sense ("He got what he deserved"), justice in its proper sense is positive. Injustice occurs when we, as individuals or by law,
deprive someone of that which he is owed. Legal rights can never outweigh natural ones.
 Fortitude. The third cardinal virtue, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is fortitude. While this virtue is commonly called courage,
it is different from much of what we think of as courage today. Fortitude allows us to overcome fear and remain steady in our
will in the face of obstacles, but it is always reasoned and reasonable; the person exercising fortitude does not seek danger for
danger's sake. Prudence and justice are the virtues through which we decide what needs to be done, and fortitude gives us the
strength to do it. Fortitude is the only one of the cardinal virtues that is also a gift of the Holy Spirit, allowing us to rise above
our natural fears in defense of the Christian faith.
 Temperance. Temperance, Saint Thomas declared, is the fourth and final cardinal virtue. While fortitude is concerned with the
restraint of fear so that we can act, temperance is the restraint of our desires or passions.  Food, drink, and sex are all
necessary for our survival, individually and as a species, yet a disordered desire for any of these goods can have disastrous
physical and moral consequences. Temperance is the virtue that attempts to keep us from excess and, as such, requires the
balancing of legitimate goods against our inordinate desire for them. Our legitimate use of such goods may be different at
different times; temperance is the "golden mean" that helps us determine how far we can act on our desires.

References
Brennan, T. (2002). Telos. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/telos/v-1
Flloyd, S. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Thomas Aquinas: moral philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/thomasaquinas-moral-
philosophy/
Crash Course (2016, December 6). Aristotle and virtue theory: crash course philosophy #38 [Video file]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrvtOWEXDIQ&t=461s
Legge, D. (2017, January 24). Virtue and happiness w/ Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=uGQBVkcM42Y
Richertt, S. (2019, January 3). What are the 4 cardinal virtues? Learn religions. https://www.learnreligions.com/the-cardinal-virtues-
542142
Frey, W. and Cruz, J. (2021, March 3). Moral Exemplars in Business and Professional Ethics. Libre Texts.
https://biz.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Management/Book%3A_Corporate_Governance_(Frey_and_CruzCruz)/

3
 01%3A_Ethical_Leadership/1.04%3A_Moral_Exemplars_in_Business_and_Professional_Ethics#:~:text=Moral%20Exemplar
%20Terms-,Moral%20Exemplar,%2C%20ordinary%2C%20or%20even%20extraordinary
Van Thiel, E. (2022, April 8). Personality test. 123 Test. https://www.123test.com/personality-test/

Module 4: Week 12: Rights and Categorical Imperatives

The module provides discussions on postulates of morality, rights, and Kant’s categorical imperatives. The module also examines
moral issues in the context of universalizability and humanity.

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this Module, students should be able to:
 understand the significance of the postulates of morality to human actions,
 apply Kant’s categorical imperatives in dealing with ethical issues,
 differentiate moral rights from legal rights, and
 differentiate positive rights from negative rights.

Categorical Imperatives
 Categorical imperatives are commands you must follow regardless of your desires. Moral obligations are derived from pure
reason. It doesn't matter whether you want to be moral or not. The moral law is binding on all of us. You do not need religion
to determine what the law is because what is right and wrong is totally knowable by just using your intellect.
 Formulation 1: The Universalizability Principle: “Act only according to that maxim which you can at the same will that it
should become a universal law without contradiction.”
 Formulation 2: The Formula of Humanity: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or, in that of
another, always as an end, and never as a mere means.”
 Kant maintained that each of us has a worth or dignity that must be respected. This dignity makes it wrong for others to abuse
us or to use us against our will. Kant expressed this idea in a moral principle: humanity must always be treated as an end, not
merely as a means.  To treat a person as a mere means is to use a person to advance one's own interests. But to treat a person
as an end is to respect that person's dignity by allowing each the freedom to choose for himself or herself.
 Kant's principle is often used to justify both a fundamental moral right, the right to freely choose for oneself, and also rights
related to this fundamental right. These related rights can be grouped into two broad categories: negative and positive rights.
 Negative Right. The holder of a negative right is entitled to non-interference. Negative rights oblige inaction. The right
against assault, the right to privacy, the right not to be killed, the right to do what one wants with one's property, and rights
that protect some form of human freedom or liberty are examples of negative rights. These rights are called "negative"
rights because they are a claim by one person that imposes a "negative" duty on all others—the duty not to interfere with a
person's activities in a certain area. Where "negative" rights are "negative" in the sense that they claim for each person a
zone of non-interference from others, The right to privacy, for example, imposes on us the duty not to intrude into the
private activities of a person.
 Positive Right. Positive rights oblige action. The holder of a positive right is entitled to the provision of some good or service.
The right to welfare assistance is a prototypical positive right. They claim for each person the positive assistance of others in
fulfilling basic constituents of human well-being like health and education. In moral and political philosophy, these basic
human needs are often referred to as "welfare" concerns (thus, this use of the term "welfare" is similar to but not identical
with the common American usage of "welfare" to refer to government payments to the poor). Many people argue that a
fundamental right to freedom is worthless if people aren't able to exercise that freedom. A right to freedom, then, implies
that every human being also has a fundamental right to what is necessary to secure a minimum level of well-being. Positive
rights are rights that provide something that people need to secure their well-being, such as the right to an education, the
right to food, the right to medical care, the right to housing, or the right to a job. Positive rights impose a positive duty on us
—the duty to actively help a person have or do something. A young person's right to an education, for example, imposes on
us a duty to provide that young person with an education. Respecting a positive right then requires more than merely not
acting; positive rights impose on us the duty to help sustain the welfare of those who are in need of help.
 It is sometimes said that negative rights are easier to satisfy than positive rights. Negative rights can be respected simply by
each person refraining from interfering with each other, while it may be difficult or even impossible to fulfill everyone’s
positive rights if the sum of people’s claims outstrips the resources available. 

4
Assessment Task
Present news articles that depict violation of Kant’s Categorical Imperatives.

Rubric

Criteria Ratings Points

Selection of news articles 5 Points 0 Points 5 Points

The news articles are carefully selected. Full No
Marks Marks
Discussion on ethical issues 15 0 Points 15
Kant’s categorical imperative formulations are critically applied. Points No Points
Full Marks
Marks
TOTAL 20
Points

References
Crash Course. (2016, November 15). Kant & categorical imperatives: crash course philosophy #35 [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bIys6JoEDw
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. (2014, August 8). Rights. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/
rights/#:~:text=Kant's%20principle%20is%20often%20used,categories%E2%80%94negative%20and%20positive%20rights.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2005, December 19). Rights. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/