VIRTUE ETHICS

INSTRUCTOR:
LJ ZAPHAN LAMBOLOTO, MA CAND.

FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY EXPANDED LEARNING (FUEL)

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

ARISTOTELIA
N VIRTUE
ETHICS
ARISTOTLE
(384 BC – 322 BC)
ARISTOTLE IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE
MOST IMPORTANT VIRTUE ETHICIST.
PLATO SOCRATES ARISTOTLE
PLATO: THE THREE SOULS

Intellectual soul whose virtue is wisdom, the most

important virtue. Intellectual soul should rule over the
other parts of the souls.

The will-soul whose virtue is courage which is the second

most important virtue.

Desire-soul whose virtue is moderation which is the third

most important virtue.
HOW TO LIFE A
FLOURISHING LIFE?
 • Aristotle attempts to identify what are the
ARISTOTELIAN characteristics of human being that
PHILOSOPHY differentiate it from other species.
AND THE • Every species has its own role in the universe.
PLACE OF • It is the fulfilling its role well that defines
VIRTUE ETHICS what is the ultimate good of that thing or
animal.
 • When one does what one is supposed
to do, on feels fulfillment.
• In other words, when one is what is
supposed to be, one is happy.
• Happiness/satisfaction is considered to
HAPPINESS
be a good thing.
• In fact, happiness is the ONLY really
good thing in the sense that we won’t
want it for the sake of another thing (as
a tool) but for its own sake.
 • There are natural criteria for judging
whether the act leads to happiness
(eudaimonia) to misery
• These criteria are defined by what the
HUMAN BEING
human being (as a species) is.
AS AN ANIMAL
• By observing, what makes human being
happy (eudaimonia) and what make him
suffer, one can find out what kind of acts
are virtuous.
 • Ergon (Function)
KEY CONCEPTS
OF • Eudaimonia (Flourishing)
ARISTOTELIAN • Arete (Excellence or Virtue)
VIRTUE ETHICS
• Phronesis (practical or moral wisdom)
 • What is the function of human being?
Aristotle asks what is the ergon (“function,”
“task,” “work”) of a human being is, and argues
that it consists in activity of the rational part of
the soul in accordance with virtue.
One important component of this argument is
1. ERGON expressed in terms of distinctions he makes in
(FUNCTION) his psychological and biological works.
The soul is analyzed into a connected series of
capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for
growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul
for motion, the perceptive soul for
perception, and so on.
 • Human beings are the only species that has not only
these lower capacities but a rational soul as well.
• The good of a human being must have something to do
WHAT IS THE with being human; and what sets humanity off from
other species, giving us the potential to live a better
FUNCTION OF life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason.
HUMAN • If we use reason well, we live well as human beings;
BEING? (CONT) or, to be more precise, using reason well over the
course of a full life is what happiness consists in.
• Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and
therefore living well consists in activities caused by the
rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.
 • Plant soul – capacity for nourishment
THREE and reproduction
DIFFERENT • Animal soul –capacities of perception
KINDS OF
SOULS and self-motion
• Intellectual soul – capacity to reason
 • Eudaimonia is standardly translated as "happiness" or
"flourishing" and occasionally as "well-being.“
• Each translation has its disadvantages.
"flourishing" - animals and even plants can flourish but
2. • eudaimonia is possibly only for rational beings.
EUDAIMONIA  "happiness“ – in modern understanding it connotes
(HUMAN something which is subjectively determined. It is for
FLOURISHING) me, not for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy.
But according to classical thinkers I may have wrong
idea about what eudaimonia is and therefore think that
I am have eudaimon but I fact I don’t.
• comparison: I might think that I am healthy but am not
 • Eudaimonia is a moralised, or "value-laden"
concept of happiness, something like "true" or
"real" happiness or "the sort of happiness
worth seeking or having.“
• Thereby virtue ethicists claim that a human
life devoted to physical pleasure or the
EUDAIMONIA – acquisition of wealth is not eudaimon, but a
THE TRUE wasted life
HAPPINESS • All standard versions of virtue ethics agree
that living a life in accordance with virtue is
necessary for eudaimonia.
• Eudaimonia involves virtuous life – virtues
are goals in themselves, not instruments for
achieving eudaimonia.
IS SOMETHING • Aristotle says that virtue is necessary but not sufficient
ELSE THAN — what is also needed are external goods that are (to
VIRTUES an extent) a matter of luck:
NEEDED IN • Health
ORDER TO Wealth
ACHIEVE Friends
Functional society
EUDAIMONIA?
 • Friendship is one of the most important
virtues in achieving the goal of eudaimonia
(happiness).
• While there are different kinds of friendship,
the highest is one that is based on virtue
HAPPINESS (arête).
AND • This type of friendship is based on a person
FRIENDSHIP wishing the best for their friends regardless of
utility or pleasure.
• Aristotle calls it a “... complete sort of
friendship between people who are good and
alike in virtue ...”
 • Friendship based on virtue is long lasting and
tough to obtain because these types of people
are hard to come by and it takes a lot of work
THE SUPREME to have a complete, virtuous friendship.
VALUE OF • Aristotle notes that one cannot have a large
FRIENDSHIP number of friends because of the amount of
time and care that a virtuous friendship
requires.
• Aristotle values friendship so highly that he argues
friendship supersedes justice and honor.
• > First of all, friendship seems to be so valued by people that
no one would choose to live without friends.
• People who value honor will likely seek out either flattery or
those who have more power than they do, in order that they
may obtain personal gain through these relationships.
• Aristotle believes that the love of friendship is greater than
this because it can be enjoyed as it is. “Being loved,
however, people enjoy for its own sake, and for this reason it
would seem it is something better than being honoured and
that friendship is chosen for its own sake”.
• The emphasis on enjoyment here is noteworthy: a virtuous
friendship is one that is most enjoyable since it combines
pleasure and virtue together, thus fulfilling our emotional
and intellectual natures.
 • Eudaimonism - the virtues are what enable a human being to be eudaimon
because the virtues just are those character traits that benefit their possessor
WHAT MAKES in that way, barring bad luck.
VIRTUE A • Pluralism - the good life is the morally meritorious life, the morally
VIRTUE THAT meritorious life is one that is responsive to the demands of the world. The
virtues just are those character traits in virtue of which their possessor is thus
PROMOTES responsive.
EUDAIMONIA? • Perfectionism or naturalism - the good life is the life characteristically lived
by someone who is good qua human being, and the virtues enable their
possessor to live such a life because the virtues just are those character traits
that make their possessor good qua human being (an excellent specimen of
her kind.)
 • Arete could be translated “excellence”, standard translation, however, is
“virtue”
• A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what is
honest or generous, nor is it to be helpfully specified as a "desirable" or
VIRTUE "morally valuable" character trait.

(ARETE) • A character trait —a disposition to be behave in certain way

• Virtue is not like a habit which is more specific, action oriented, and
related to something particular (habit of drinking tea)
• Virtue is more “general” in nature: it enables its possessor to evaluate
things in an appropriate way so that one has – as a result of this virtue -
right kinds of emotions, attitudes, desires, perceptions, expectations,
sensibilities.
• Virtue enables one to make right choices from the point
of view of eudaimonia (flourishing life).
 • Phronesis is something that the virtuous morally mature adult
has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack.
• Both have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to
mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know
PHRONESIS – in order to do what he intends.
AN IMPORTANT • Children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit
ELEMENT OF either because they do not know how to set about securing the
PRACTICAL benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of
REASON what is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken.
• Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and
frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults.
• Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless,
insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming
that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more
objective viewpoint.
 • There are natural criteria for judging whether
the act is leads to happiness (eudaimonia) to
misery
THE ANIMAL
• These criteria are defined by what the human
CALLED
”HUMAN being (as a species) is.
BEING” • By observing, what makes human being
happy (eudaimonia) and what make him
suffer, one can find out what kind of acts are
virtuous.
 • People who fail to achieve the goal, do
so because their soul are not in balance

FAILURE • The unbalanced soul strives for wrong

things in the wrong way in the
guidance of uncontrolled and distorted
desires.
 • The good life can only be achieved by
striving for the best things in the right way.
• The best things are truth, goodness, and
SUCCESS beauty.
• Only the virtuous soul can achieve happiness.
• To be happy, you need to be virtuous.
WHAT ARE
VIRTUES AND
WHAT VIRTUES
ARE THERE?
THE
ARISTOTELIAN • The virtuous (right) conduct as a mean between two
MEAN vices of excess.
THE GOLDEN
MEAN
 • Virtue is a “golden mean” between the
extremes of excess and deficiency
Courage, for example, is a mean regarding the
feeling of fear, between the deficiency of
VIRTUE rashness (too little fear) and the excess of
cowardice (too much fear).
Benevolence is a mean between giving to
people who don’t deserve it and not giving to
anyone at all.
 • The mean is “relative to ourselves,” indicating
that one person’s mean may be another person’s
extreme.
• Milo the wrestler, as Aristotle puts it, needs
PERSONAL
more gruel than a normal person, and his mean
DIFFERENCES
diet will vary accordingly.
• Similarly for the moral virtues. Aristotle
suggests that some people are born with weaker
wills than others; for these people, it may
actually be a mean to flee in battle (the extremes
being to get slaughtered or commit suicide).
 • No fundamental principles
Virtue ethics doesn’t provide fundamental
principles that would amount into decision
CRITICISM procedure for determining what to do.
AGAINST
VIRTUE ETHICS - Reply: it is not realistic to hope that there are
such principles
- Principles and logic are not enough to
determine what to do.
 • Different cultures embody different virtues, and hence
what is virtuous is relative to particular culture.
Therefore, one type can of action can be both right and
THE PROBLEM wrong depending on the culture.
OF CULTURAL *this is not helpful for anyone who wants to do what is
RELATIVISM right.
Reply: All other normative theories have the same
problem.
TWO KINDS OF VIRTUES

INTELLECTUAL MORAL VIRTUES

VIRTUES
 1. Theoretical intelligence (nous) is the human faculty
that apprehends fundamental principles such as the laws
of thinking and other fundamental truths.
• Intelligence Apprehends these truths directly and
TWO KINDS OF without demonstration or inference.
INTELLECTUAL *This is unique to humans and gods.
VIRTUES *Theoretical intelligence cannot be learned.
*All people have some theoretical intelligence, some
people have a lot of it.
 • This is the ability to make right judgment on practical
2. PRACTICAL issues.

WISDOM *it can be learned

*old people normally have more of it than the young.
2. MORAL VIRTUES
• A moral virtue is the ability to be reasonable in actions, desires and emotions.
For example, courage is the ability to deal with fear in a reasonable way.
*Courage is the reasonable mean between cowardice and foolhardiness or rashness.
• A virtue is the mean between two extremes, a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess.
In the case of courage, cowardice would be the vice of deficiency and foolhardiness would
be the vice of excess.
• Moral virtue is the outcome of habit.
• Virtues are not implanted on us by nature. This is because, we acquire virtues by
exercising them
 • All kind of good life is life in the guidance of
reason.
TWO KINDS OF The life devoted to study and thinking
GOOD LIFE
1. The good life in which the subject devotes
himself to abstract contemplation of
knowledge.
*This is truly the best way of life, but it is not
within the reach of all men.
 2. The other alternative is active life
in society which involves taking
ACTIVE LIFE IN part in all the activities that human
SOCIETY beings undertake to make their own
life and the life of their society
better.
PURSUE VIRTUE!
SEE YOU NEXT
CLASS!

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