Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics considers the kind of characteristics, that is, qualities of mind and character, that would lead to living a happy and ethically justifiable life.  We shall consider the work of two philosophers in particular, Aristotle 384-322BC and Alasdair MacIntyre (still alive!).

Aristotle - I am grateful to www.historyforkids.org from which I gained this brief biography of Aristotle.

"Aristotle's father was Nicomachus, a doctor who lived near Macedon, in the north of Greece. So unlike Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was not originally from Athens. He was not from a rich family like Plato, though his father was not poor either.

When Aristotle was a young man, about 350 BC, he went to study at Plato's Academy. Plato was already pretty old then. Aristotle did very well at the Academy. But he never got to be among its leaders, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not chosen to lead the Academy after him. Soon afterwards, Aristotle left Athens and went to Macedon to be the tutor of the young prince Alexander, who grew up to be Alexander the Great. As far as we can tell, Alexander was not at all interested in learning anything from Aristotle, but they did become friends.

When Alexander grew up and became king, Aristotle went back to Athens and opened his own school there, the Lyceum (lie-SAY-um), in competition with Plato's Academy. Both schools were successful for hundreds of years.

Aristotle was more interested in science than Socrates or Plato, maybe because his father was a doctor. He wanted to use Socrates' logical methods to figure out how the real world worked; therefore Aristotle is really the father of today's scientific method. Aristotle was especially interested in biology, in classifying plants and animals in a way that would make sense. This is part of the Greek impulse to make order out of chaos: to take the chaotic natural world and impose a man-made order on it. When Alexander was travelling all over Western Asia, he had his messengers bring strange plants back to Aristotle for his studies. Aristotle also made efforts to create order in peoples' governments. He created a classification system of monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies, democracies and republics which we still use today.

When Alexander died in 323 BC, though, there were revolts against Macedonian rule in Athens. People accused Aristotle of being secretly on the side of the Macedonians (and maybe he was; he was certainly, like Plato, no democrat). He left town quickly, and spent the last years of his life back in the north again where he had been born."

Aristotle was concerned with how people could lead happy lives.  It is important to understand that by 'happy' , Aristotle did NOT mean doing whatever we liked to obtain whatever pleasures we wanted.  In this sense the English word 'happy' is misleading.  For Aristotle, 'happiness' consisted of (a) personal experience of satisfaction and (b) a lifestyle, or mode of behaviour stemming from a ones character, which led to personal satisfaction with life.  The greek word which he uses for this (which you should know, dears) is 'Eudaimonia'.  Perhaps this greek word could be better understood by using the English word 'wellbeing'.

For Aristotle, Eudaimonia is the fundamental goal of life, because it is the goal to which all other aspects or activities of life aspire.  We do and obtain things, he argued, in order to obtain eudaimonia.  It makes no sense to say that we seek eudaimonia or wellbeing in order to become rich, or to be brave.  

Aristotle identified three ways in which eudaimonia could be experienced and defined, which he considered were NOT of equivalent value.  They are:

1. Pleasure - by which Aristotle means wine, women (or men) and song
2. Honour - that is, a life given to service within the community.  Aristotle might well have seen the people on the various 'Honours' lists such as the New Year's Honours lists, as good examples of those who live for 'honour'.
3. Contemplation - a life devoted to the seeking of truth.  This is the highest form of pleasure, for what it seeks is, claims Aristotle, unchanging and unchangeable.  It is also exercising that faculty which raises human beings above animals, that is, the reason ( logos   Gk)  For Aristotle, the exercise of reason was the way in which humans raise any action from a neutral to a moral action.  Human reason, Aristotle argued, is the faculty which can distinguish between and choose, right and wrong, thus putting right (or wrong) into practice.  This disposition to choose to act in a certain (usually a right) way, Aristotle called 'virtue'.

Eudaimonia then, is achieved by virtuous people, that is, those people who use their Logos or reason, to choose right actions - actions which are morally justifiable.

But how can we distinguish what is a 'right' course of action?  One way, said Aristotle, was to attempt to distinguish what was the proper function (telos  Gk) or chosen end of an object or action.  On a grand scale, we might way that human choices which are directed towards the overall wellbeing of humankind (eudaimonia) are good choices.  So that a decision to contribute regularly to a charity which works towards relieving the misery of hunger, or educating those who would otherwise receive no education, is good because it will contribute towards the eudaimonia of the human race.

One well known, and rather more controversial application of this principle of telos is the way in which the Roman Catholic Church (via dear old St Thomas Aquinas and Natural Law) applies it to matters of um, sex.  They argue thus.  The natural end of sex is obviously reproduction. (that's babies, dears.  Of course, it couldn't possibly have a function of pair bonding between partners through intense pleasure, now could it???  The Webmistress)  Therefore, in order for sexual intercourse between humans to be morally justifiable, it must be an act 'open to the creation of human life'.  That is, if a couple have intercourse and do something which is aimed at preventing the conception of human life (like contraception - are you getting there??) then the telos of the act is being deliberately thwarted and the act becomes morally unjustifiable.

(A brief rant.  Why should intercourse be justifiable or not justifiable at all?  It seems to me that the act itself is necessary on at least two levels, mentioned above.  It is clearly a natural function.  The circumstances in which it happens might well be open to moral question - what of rape, for example.  But the application of natural law here refers NOT so much to the circumstances as to the function of the act itself.  Comments from outraged Catholics er, welcome-ish.  The Webmistress)

 It's important to understand that the aim of Aristotle's ethics was not 'goodness for its own sake' (like the deontologist Kant's categorical imperative, for example).  Aristotle wanted people to know how to 'live well'.  This was the 'a priori', or the assumption of his thinking.  The means to achieve this end was the subject of his discussions.

Aristotelian Virtues

Among the virtues identified by Aristotle were:  Courage, temperance (self restraint), gentleness, liberality, wittiness, generosity, and urbanity (social skills).  These enabled the subject to live a fulfilled and fulfilling life within society.  But note that the telos was the benefit of the individual, not the society in which that individual lived.

Aristotle claimed that some virtues can only be cultivated.  That is, they could only be acquired through reason and habit. Courage and temperance are examples of such virtues.  Other virtues must be developed through instruction - wisdom and judgement, for example.

Criticisms of Aristotle

• The system of thought is ultimately self-seeking.  Altruism (goodness for its own sake, not for the gain of the individual) appears to have no place in his scheme of things.  This could lead to a certain
• Smugness.  One book suggested that Aristotle, when describing his ideal man, was describing ...... Aristotle!
• Virtue, as Aristotle describes it, could be described as elitist.  Certainly, within the society in which Aristotle existed, many people were necessary to service the type of conditions in which a man could develop the virtues he deemed necessary for eudaimonia.  Such people (slaves, women, people working for very little) had profoundly limited opportunities to develop eudaimonia.
• Sexism.  I have used the term 'man' in respect of achieving eudaimonia on purpose!
• Racist.  Aristotle accepted the assumptions of his day that Greek civilisation was superior to other barbarian cultures.  Ironically, as a Macedonian, he eventually fell foul of Athenian contempt for all who were not born Greek.
• Denial of 'soul' to animals (could this be where Roman Catholic teaching on animals comes from?)  Animals are exempt from experiencing eudaimonia, because they cannot exercise reason.  (Is this really so?  The obvious happiness of my cat as he rushes to meet me when I return from anywhere, and the look of bliss on his face as he settles on my lap for a good tickle-under-the-chin sesh seems to me to deny this.  The Webmistress)  Many people, religious or not, would wish to question the implications for the interdependence of the natural world, and the sense of responsibility for animal life taught by so many of the world's faith, that Aristotle's view implies.

 Peter Vardy suggests that such criticism is unfair because Aristotle was writing against the cultural norms and assumptions of his day, and therefore cannot be expected to take into account the cultural assumptions and norms of today.  Fair point.  However, as Aristotle himself would have said that the pursuit of truth and virtue is the highest source of eudaimonia precisely because the pursuit of these things is the pursuit of what is eternal and unchanging, I think it's not unreasonable for those of us coming from a different perspective to make judgements about the worth of his method and conclusions.

Useful link: Ethics Update site has links to lots of useful sites, including several on Aristotle.

Return to Ethics Base Page