Aristotle is considered to be the

most important virtue ethicist.

SPASocrates, Plato, Aristotle

• n

Aristotle was

Plato’s student,

and Plato was

Socrates

student.

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.

Plato was a virtue ethicist too.

The parts of the soul of the

virtuous (arete) person are in

harmony and in right order

Such person can live a good life

(eudaimonia)

Plato: The virtuous human and state

Reason

Will

Desire

Rulers

(philosophe

rs)

Soldiers

Workers

The parts of human soul The classes of a state

Wisdom

Courage

Moderation

How to live a

flourishing life?

Aristotelian philosophy and

the place of virtue ethics in it

Aristotle attempts to identify what are

the characteristics of human being

that differentiate it from other species.

Every species has its own role in the

universe.

It is the fulfilling its role well that

defines what is the ultimate good of

that thing or animal.

Happiness

When one does what one is supposed to do, one feels fulfillment.

In other words, when one is what one is supposed to be, one is happy.

Happiness / satisfaction is considered to be a good thing.

In fact happiness is the ONLY really good thing in the sense that we don’t want it for the sake of another thing (as a tool) but for its own sake.

The animal called ”human

being”

There are natural criteria for judgingwhether the act is leads to happiness(eudaimonia) to misery

These criteria are defined by what the human being (as a species) is.

By observing, what makes humanbeing happy (eudaimonia) and whatmake him suffer, one can find out what kind of acts are virtuous.

Key concepts of Aristotelian

virtue ethics

ergon (function)

eudaimonia (flourishing)

arête (excellence or virtue)

phronesis (practical or moral wisdom)

1. Ergon (function)

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 expressed in terms of distinctions he makes in 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.

What is the function of

human being? (cont)

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 with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason.

If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; 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.

Three different kinds of

souls

1. Plant soul – capacity for nourishment and reproduction

2. Animal soul –capacities of perception and self-motion

3. Intellectual soul – capacity to reason

Plants have 1

Animals have 1,2

Human beings have 1,2,3

Aristotle: types of souls

Aristotle’s division of the soul

Non-rational element Rational elements

Nutrition/growth Theoretical reason

Practical reasonDesire/emotion

n

n

flourishing life

Eudaimonia – differend

translations of the term

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 eudaimonia is possibly only for rational beings.

"happiness“ – in modern understanding it connotes something which is subjectively determined. It is for 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 – the true

happiness

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 acquisition of wealth is not eudaimon, but a wasted life

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 else than virtues

needed in order to achieve

eudaimonia?

Aristotle says that virtue is necessary

but not sufficient — what is also

needed are external goods that are (to

an extent) a matter of luck:

Health

Wealth

Friends

Functional society

Happiness and friendship

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 (arête).

This type of friendship is based on a person 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 …”

The supreme value of

friendship

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 to have a complete, virtuous friendship.

Aristotle notes that one cannot have a large 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 honouredand 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.

3. Virtue (arete)

What makes virtue a virtue

that promotes eudaimonia?

1. Eudaimonism - the virtues are what enable a human being to be eudaimon because the virtues just are those character traits that benefit their possessor in that way, barring bad luck.

2. Pluralism - the good life is the morally meritorious life, the morally 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 responsive.

3. 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.)

3. Virtue (arete)

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 "morally valuable" character trait.

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 pointof view of eudaimonia (flourishing life).

4. Phronesis – an important

element of practical reason 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 in order to do what he intends.

Children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set about securing the benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of 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.

The animal called ”human

being”

There are natural criteria for judgingwhether the act is leads to happiness(eudaimonia) to misery

These criteria are defined by what the human being (as a species) is.

By observing, what makes human beinghappy (eudaimonia) and what make himsuffer, one can find out what kind of actsare virtuous.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and allegedly

EVERYBODY agree on that

• Everybody wants to have good

(eudaimonia) life.

Human being is a Goal-directed

system

• As the human being wants to have good

(eudaimonia) life, she is a goal-directed

system.

Failure and success

• The person who achieves eudaimonia,

achieves the goal of the human being.

• The person who does not, fails to achieve

the goal of the human being.

Failures

• People who fail to achieve the goal, do so

because their soul are not in balance.

• The unbalanced soul strives for wrong

things in the wrong way in the guidance of

uncontrolled and distorted desires.

Success

• The good life can only be achieved by

striving for the best things in the right way.

• The best things are truth, goodness, and

beauty.

• Only the virtuous soul can achieve

happiness.

• TO BE HAPPY, YOU NEED TO

VIRTUOUS!

What are virtues and what

virtues are there?

The Aristotelian Mean

also called the Golden Mean

The virtuous (right) conduct as a

mean between two vices of

excess

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 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.

Situation Vice of Deficiency Virtue (Mean) Vice of Excess

Danger Cowardice Courage Foolhardiness

Satisfaction of

appetites

Inhibition Temperance Overindulgence

Giving gifts Miserliness Generosity Extravagance

Pursuit of goals Unambitiousness Proper ambition Excess Ambition

Self appraisal Feelings of

inferiority

Proper pride Vanity

Response to insults Apathy Patience Irascibility

Social conduct Rudeness Friendliness Obsequiousness

Awareness of one’s

flaws

Shamelessness Modesty Shyness

Conversation Boorishness Wittiness Buffoonery

Personal differences

• 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 more gruel than a normal person, and his mean 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).

Criticism against virtue ethics

No fundamental principles

• Virtue ethics doesn’t provide fundamentalprinciples that would amount into decisionprocedure for determining what to do.– Reply:

• Is it not realistic to hope that there are such principles

• Principles and logic are not enough to determine what to do

The problem of cultural

relativism• 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 wrong depending on the culture. This is not helpful for anyone who wants to do what is right. – Reply: All other normative theories have the same

problem

For discussion?

Is abstaining from murder a mean of some

continuum?

The weak, the strong, and the virtuous

• Weak is the one who is not able to resist her wickeddesires.

• Strong is the one who can resist them.

• What is common for them is the wicked desires.

• There is fight going on in the souls of both and, therefore, neither one of them is really happy.

• Happy is the one who through upringing and practicehas learned to want those things that the reason tries to achieve.

• The kind of person who is capable of this is virtuous(therefore: virtue ethics).

For discussion

Is it possible for all to learn to want the right things in the right way?

If not then to whom it is not possible?

If yes, how?

Or do you think that there is no problem at all. People always want right things in the right way?

Two kinds of virtues

There are two kinds of virtues:

1) Intellectual virtues

2) Moral virtues

Two kinds of Intellectual virtues

There are two kinds of intellectual virtues.

a) 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 without demonstration or inference.

• This is unique to humans and gods.

• Theoretical intelligence cannot be learned.

• All people have some theoretical intelligence, some people have a lot of it.

b) The other kind of intellectual virtue is practical wisdom.

• The practical wisdom is the ability to make right judgement on practical issues.

• 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.

• We acquire virtues by exercising them.

Two kinds of good life

• All kind of good life is life in the

guidance of reason.

• There is, however, two kinds of

good life.

The life devoted to study

and thinking

• 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.

Active life in society

2. The other alternative is active

life in society which involves

taking part in all the activities

that human beings undertake to

make their own life and the life of

their society better.