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Ethics Week 6

Virtue Ethics is a moral philosophy rooted in the teachings of ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, emphasizing the importance of character and virtues in ethical decision-making. It defines a moral person as one who develops and consistently displays virtues, which are praised for their difficulty and societal benefits. Aristotle's contributions include the concept of the Golden Mean, where virtues lie between deficiencies and excesses, and the idea that happiness is achieved through self-realization and the habitual practice of moral virtues.

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Justine Nicole
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11 views15 pages

Ethics Week 6

Virtue Ethics is a moral philosophy rooted in the teachings of ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, emphasizing the importance of character and virtues in ethical decision-making. It defines a moral person as one who develops and consistently displays virtues, which are praised for their difficulty and societal benefits. Aristotle's contributions include the concept of the Golden Mean, where virtues lie between deficiencies and excesses, and the idea that happiness is achieved through self-realization and the habitual practice of moral virtues.

Uploaded by

Justine Nicole
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VIRTUE ETHICS

• Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are Greek


philosophers in the ancient period who
deeply affected Western philosophy.
• Though having political ambitions as a
young man, Plato eventually became a
student and disciple of Socrates, the most
admired and patronized Greek
philosophers at the time. Aristotle is a
philosopher and natural scientist who
eventually shared distinction of being the
most famous of ancient philosophers with
Socrates and Plato, his (Aristotle’s
teacher).
• The contemporary theory in
Ethics called Virtue Ethics is said
to have started with these three
great philosophers. In the
medieval era, the Italian
philosopher and theologian
Thomas Aquinas revived,
enhanced, and ‘Christianized’
the Greek Virtue Ethics.
Virtue Ethics Defined
• Virtue ethics is a moral philosophy that
teaches that an action is right if it is an
action that a virtuous person would
perform in the same situations.
• According to the theory, a virtuous person
is someone who acts virtuously and people
act virtuously if they possess and live the
virtues. A virtue is a moral characteristic
that an individual needs to live well.
• Virtue ethics outs emphasis on
developing good habits of character
traits or vices. It focuses on the
character of the agent and describes
right actions as those chosen and
performed by a suitably virtuous
person.
• Basically, the virtues are the freely
chosen character traits that people
praise in others.
• People praise them because:
they are difficult to develop;
they are corrective of natural
deficiencies (for instance,
industriousness is corrective of one’s
tendency to be lazy);
they are beneficial both to self and
society.
Virtue Ethics defines a moral person
as someone who develops the
virtues and unfailingly displays them
over time.
• The ancient Greeks list four
“cardinal virtues” namely,
wisdom, courage, moderation,
and justice. The Christian
teaching on other hand,
recommends faith, hope,
charity, love. Others suggest
virtues which are associated
with ‘humanity’ namely, grace,
mercy, forgiveness, honor,
restraint, reasonable, and
solidarity.
Socrates and Plato’s Moral
Philosophy
• In dialogue Gorgias written by
Plato, Socrates indicates that
pleasure and pain fail to provide an
objective standard for determining
moral from immoral since they do
not exist apart from one another,
while good and evil do.
• In Euthypro, Socrates asks
Euthypro whether something is
good because the gods love it, or
whether the gods love it because it
is good.
• Socrates point is that what is good has a certain
independence from the whims/ IDEA of the god’s
determination of the rightness of our actions and
mores.
• Socrates therefore believed in the existence of
objective ethical standards though he admitted that
it is not that easy to specify.
• Virtue therefore is regarded as knowledge and can
be taught. Knowledge of the Good is considered as
the source of guidance in moral decision making
that to know the good, it is argued, is to do the
good.
Aristotle’s Ethics
• At least two of Aristotle’s works
specifically concern morality, the
Eudemian Ethics and the
Nichomachean Ethics. But since
only a few have studied the former,
Nichomachean Ethics has been
regarded as the Ethics of Aristotle
since the beginning of the Christian
era.
• His ethical system may be termed
“self-realizationism”. In his
philosophy, when someone acts in
line with his nature or end and thus
realize his full potential, he does
• Like Plato’s and most of the other
ancient philosophers’ ethical
theories, Aristotle’s view is also of a
type known as eudaimonistic. As
such, it focuses on happiness
(eudaimonia), or the good for man,
and how to obtain it.
• Finally, his moral philosophy is
aretaic, or virtue-based. Whereas
act-oriented ethics is focused
mainly on what we should do, a
virtue ethics is interested basically
in what we should be, that is, the
character or the sort person we
should struggle to become.
• 3.1 Aristotle believes that the
essence or essential nature of beings,
including humans, lay not at their
cause (or beginning) but at their end
(telos).
• 3.2 Happiness and Virtues. Aristotle
believes that the ultimate human
goal is self-realization. This entails
achieving one’s natural purpose by
functioning or living consistently with
human nature.
• 3.3 Virtue as a habit. Aristotle’s idea
of happiness is also understood in the
sense of human flourishing attained
by the habitual practice of moral and
• 3.4. Virtues and the Golden
Mean. This just means that
virtue lies in the middle of the
vice of deficiency and the vice
of excess.
• Aristotle mentions four basic
moral virtues: courage,
temperance, justice and
prudence. For example, courage is the
golden mean between cowardice and
tactless rashness. The coward has too little
bravery, the reckless individual has too
much and the courageous shows just
proper amount of bravery.
• 3.5 Phronesis and Practice.
Aristotle teaches about an
intellectual virtue that plays a
significant role in ethics. The
phronesis, the intellectual virtue
of practical wisdom, is that kind
of moral knowledge which guides
us to what is appropriate in
conjuction with moral virtue.
Aristotle’s complete picture of a
morally virtuous man therefore is
someone who constantly and
habitually acts according to moral
virtue and practical wisdom.
THE END!!!!!

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