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| title | sort | section-id | description | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virtue Ethics | 130 | ethics | Aristotle's eudaimonia, the virtues, the doctrine of the mean, and contemporary neo-Aristotelian revival in moral philosophy. | en |
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics shifts the primary question of moral theory from "What should I do?" to "What kind of person should I be?" Rather than specifying rules or calculating consequences, virtue ethics focuses on the character traits — the virtues — that constitute human excellence and the good life.
Aristotle's Ethics
The foundational text is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BCE).^[Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Irwin, Hackett, 1999.] Aristotle begins with the observation that every action aims at some good. The highest good — the good for its own sake — he calls eudaimonia, usually translated as "happiness" but better rendered as flourishing or living well.
Eudaimonia is not a feeling but an activity: the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (arete). It is not a momentary state but characterises a complete life.
The Function Argument
Aristotle argues that just as a knife has a function (cutting) and a good knife fulfils its function excellently, human beings have a characteristic function. The human function, unique among animals, is rational activity. Eudaimonia is the excellent exercise of our rational capacities.^[NE I.7, 1097b24–1098a20.]
This ergon (function) argument has been criticised for assuming that humans have a single, discoverable function. Nonetheless, it provides the teleological framework within which the virtues are defined.
The Doctrine of the Mean
Virtues are stable dispositions of character that enable us to respond appropriately to situations. They are acquired through habituation: we become courageous by practising courageous acts. The virtuous person does not merely act rightly but does so with pleasure and without painful struggle — virtue has been fully internalised.
Each virtue is a mean (mesotes) between two extremes — excess and deficiency. Courage is the mean between cowardice (deficiency of boldness) and rashness (excess). Generosity lies between miserliness and prodigality. The mean is not arithmetically fixed but relative to us — what counts as appropriate depends on context and the individual.
| Excess | Virtue | Deficiency |
|---|---|---|
| Rashness | Courage | Cowardice |
| Prodigality | Generosity | Miserliness |
| Vanity | Magnanimity | Pusillanimity |
| Obsequiousness | Friendliness | Quarrelsomeness |
| Buffoonery | Wit | Boorishness |
Practical Wisdom: Phronesis
The master virtue in Aristotle's scheme is phronesis — practical wisdom. The person of practical wisdom perceives what a situation requires, deliberates well about how to act, and acts accordingly. Practical wisdom is not reducible to following rules; it requires experience, perception, and judgment.
This distinguishes virtue ethics from rule-based approaches: no finite set of rules can capture what the practically wise person knows. The virtuous person's perceptions and responses are constitutive of right action, not mere applications of antecedent principles.
The Unity of the Virtues
Aristotle holds that the virtues are unified: one cannot genuinely have any virtue without practical wisdom, and practical wisdom requires all the virtues. This unity thesis is controversial — it seems possible to be courageous but unjust. Defenders argue that only with the full integration of virtues does one have the "complete" versions; partial virtues are mere natural tendencies, not fully-fledged character traits.
The Neo-Aristotelian Revival
Virtue ethics experienced a significant revival in twentieth-century analytic philosophy, partly as a reaction to the perceived limitations of both consequentialism and deontology.
G.E.M. Anscombe (1958) argued that concepts like "moral obligation" and "duty" are residues of a divine-law framework that has been abandoned; without God, they are incoherent. We should return to Aristotelian concepts of virtue, human nature, and flourishing.^[Anscombe, G.E.M. (1958). "Modern Moral Philosophy." Philosophy, 33(124).]
Philippa Foot developed a naturalistic virtue ethics grounding virtues in what is good for humans as the kind of organisms we are. Natural goodness is a matter of the proper functioning of organisms of a particular natural kind.^[Foot, P. (2001). Natural Goodness. Oxford University Press.]
Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981) argued that contemporary moral discourse is fragmented and incoherent because we have lost the teleological framework within which virtue concepts made sense. The Enlightenment project of grounding morality in individual reason or sentiment was doomed to fail. We need to recover Aristotelian tradition — structured around practices, narrative, and community — to make ethics intelligible.^[MacIntyre, A. (1981). After Virtue. University of Notre Dame Press.]
Contemporary Virtue Ethics
Rosalind Hursthouse has developed a virtue-theoretic account of right action: an action is right if it is what a virtuous person would characteristically do in the circumstances.^[Hursthouse, R. (1999). On Virtue Ethics. Oxford University Press.] This need not be circular: virtuous persons are those with character traits that constitute human flourishing, and we can characterise flourishing independently.
Michael Slote defends agent-based virtue ethics, grounding moral evaluation entirely in the motivational states of agents rather than objective human flourishing.
Julia Annas argues that virtue ethics is best understood not as a rival to rule-following but as an account of how we internalise moral requirements through the development of character.
Objections to Virtue Ethics
Action Guidance
Critics allege that virtue ethics provides insufficient guidance: when I face a difficult choice, "act as a virtuous person would" tells me little unless I already know what virtue requires. The response is that moral life is not primarily about making hard decisions but about forming character — and character provides guidance of a richer kind than any algorithm.
Cultural Relativism
If virtues are defined relative to a human telos and that telos varies across cultures, different cultures will have different, potentially incompatible, lists of virtues. MacIntyre acknowledges this but argues that tradition-internal reasoning can achieve cross-traditional rational dialogue.
The Problem of the Selfish Gene
If we are products of natural selection, and selection favours genes that promote reproductive fitness, then "human nature" is not a stable, rationally accessible guide to flourishing. The naturalistic programme of Foot and Hursthouse faces this challenge.
Further Reading
- Annas, J. (2011). Intelligent Virtue. Oxford University Press.
- Crisp, R. and Slote, M. (eds.) (1997). Virtue Ethics. Oxford University Press.
- Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Fontana.