9 Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics: Definition
• It is the ethical framework that is concerned with understanding the good as a

matter of developing the virtuous character of a person.
• It focuses on the formation of one’s character brought about by determining
and doing virtuous acts.
• The two major thinkers of ancient Greece: Plato and Aristotle, discourses
concerning virtue.
Why Study Virtue?

• It provides new insights into moral education
-Approach moral learning as a skill.
-Involves the whole self: attitudes, knowledge, skill, emotion.
• It reorients moral theory toward excellence
-Utilitarianism and Deontology tends to focus on the moral minimum-what is the
least we should be doing.
-Virtue ethics focuses on different kinds of excellences.
• It reorients moral thought from the actions we perform to ourselves as agents
-Not, is this action right or wrong, good or bad
-Can this action be integrated into the moral career of a good, virtuous, person?
But Virtue Ethics Requires Rethinking Basic Ideas
In what follows, we will rework basic concepts associated with action around
virtue or excellence:
• Eudaimonia (Happiness)
• Arete (Virtue or Excellence)
-Mean between extremes of excess and detect
• Ethos (Character)
• Aisthesis of the Phronimos (Perception of the wise or good human)
• Bouleusis (Deliberation)
• Akrasia (Incontinence or Weakness of Will)
• Logos (Reasoning)
ARISTOTLE (384-322 CE)

• He was born in Macedonia and studied philosophy under Plato in Athens.
• He was considered to be the brightest among Plato’s students in the former’s
school, the Academy.
• He later founded his own school, Lyceum, where he became a very productive
intellectual, having written numerous works on different topics such as the
theoretical and practical sciences and logic.
• He was also known to be the tutor of Alexander the Great who tried to conquer
the world.
• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is his major work in moral philosophy.
Differences between Aristotle and Plato Theory

ARISTOTLE’S THEORY
 He discourse of ethics departs from the Platonic understanding of reality and
conception of the good.
 The real is found within our everyday encounter with objects in the world.
PLATO’S THEORY
 The real is outside the realm of any human sensory experience but can
somehow be grasped by one’s intellect.
 The truth and ultimately, the good are in the sphere of forms or ideas
transcending daily human condition.
Therefore, the truth and the good cannot exist apart from the object and are not
independent of our experience.
HAPPINESS AND ULTIMATE PURPOSE (EUDAIMONIA)

• Aristotle begins his discussion of ethics by showing that every act that a person
does is directed towards particular purpose, aim or what the Greeks called telos.
• There is a purpose why one does something, and for Aristotle, a person’s action
manifests a good that he aspires for.
• Every pursuit of a person hopes to achieve a good. One eats for the purpose of
the good, that it gives sustenance to the body.
• A person pursues a chosen career, aiming for a good, that is to provide a better
future for her family.
• A person will not do anything which is not beneficial to her.
• In other words, the different goods that one pursues form a hierarchy of teloi
(plural form of telos).
Aristotle’s General Criteria in Order for One to Recognize the Highest Good of
Man
1. The highest good of a person must be final- It is no longer utilized for the sake
of arriving at a much higher end.
2. The ultimate telos of a person must be self-sufficient- Satisfaction of life is
arrived a once this highest good is attained. Nothing else is sought after and
desired, once this self- sufficient goal is achieved, since this is already considered
as the best possible good in life.
VIRTUE AS AN EXCELLENCE (ARETE)

• ARETE is the Greek word translated into virtue. But it really conveys as
excellence.
• The happy life is the one devoted to moral and intellectual excellence.
• Aristotle says that excellence is an activity of the human soul and therefore, one
needs to understand the very structure of a person’s soul by which must be
directed by her rational activity in an excellent way.
• The human is divided into two parts: Irrational Element and Rational Faculty.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IRRATIONAL ELEMENT AND RATIONAL FACULTY

IRRATIONAL ELEMENT
• Consists of the vegetative and appetitive aspects.
• Vegetative aspect functions as giving nutrition and providing the activity of
physical growth in a person.
• Appetitive aspect works as a desiring faculty of man.
RATIONAL FACULTY
• It is exercised excellence in him.
• One can rightly or wrongly apply the use of reason this part.
• There are divided into two aspects:
• Moral which concerns the act of doing
• Intellectual which the act of knowing.
ARETE: LIFE DEVOTED TO EXCELLENCE

• Cultivation of knowledge, skill, habits, perceptual modes, and emotions that
consistently hit upon excellence.
• Focus is on one’s deeds throughout life- a career of excellence.
• Arete does not always entail heroic sacrifice or super-human accomplishment.
• Aristotle characterizes arête as a settled disposition to choose the mean
between the extremes of excess and defect, all relative to person and situation.
MORAL VIRTUES AND MESOTES
• As stated by Aristotle, developing a practical wisdom involves learning from
experiences.
• Knowledge is not an inherent to a person. Knowing the right thing to do when
one is confronted by a choice is not easy.
• One needs to develop this knowledge by exercising the faculty of practical
reason in her daily life.
• This is why when it comes to life choices, one can seek the advice of elders in
the community, those who gained rich life experiences and practical wisdom,
because they would be able to assist someone’s moral deliberation.
MEANING OF MESOTES
• Mesotes determines whether the act applied is not excessive nor deficient.
• It is an individual cannot be good at doing something haphazardly but reason
demands a continuous habituation of a skill to perfect an act.
• Targeting the middle entails being immersed in a moral circumstance,
understanding the experience, and eventually, developing the knowledge of
identifying the proper way or the mean to address a particular situation.
THE CONDITIONS OF MESOTES

1. The condition arrived at by a person who has a character identified out of her
habitual exercise of particular actions.
2. The action done normally manifests feelings and passions is chosen because it
is the middle.
3. The rational faculty that serves as a guide for the proper identification of the
middle is practical wisdom.
THE VIRTUES AND THEIR VICES

EXCESS
Impulsiveness
Recklessly
Prodigality
MIDDLE
Self-control
Courage
Liberality
DEFICIENCY
Indecisiveness
Cowardice
Meanness

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Virtue Ethics: Definition

• It is the ethical framework that is concerned with understanding the good as a

Why Study Virtue?

ARISTOTLE (384-322 CE)

Differences between Aristotle and Plato Theory

HAPPINESS AND ULTIMATE PURPOSE (EUDAIMONIA)

VIRTUE AS AN EXCELLENCE (ARETE)

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IRRATIONAL ELEMENT AND RATIONAL FACULTY

ARETE: LIFE DEVOTED TO EXCELLENCE

THE CONDITIONS OF MESOTES

THE VIRTUES AND THEIR VICES

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