Virtue Ethics

THREE AREAS

Metaethics

Normative ethics

Applied Ethics

1) Metaethics: where our ethical principles come from (for example, Social construction? Will of God?) and what they mean

Meta…=“beyond”

Meta ethics is the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts.

It deals with the question where our ethical principles come from

Will of God? Law, religion, tradition, dominant group, movies?

1.Objectivism – moral values are absolute, eternal; they never change; they apply to all rational creatures around the world and throughout the time

2. Relativism

• Relativism denies the objective status of moral values

• Individuals create their own moral standards

Moral values are context specific (culture)

2) Normative Ethics: propose moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct (for example, What are our duties? Are consequences important?)

Normative ethics is about moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct/behavior (What are our duties? Are consequences important?)

For ex. The Golden Rule: we should not do to others what we would not want others to do to us

• 1) Virtue theories

Virtue theories: development of good habits of character

Virtue is a trait of character manifested in habitual action, that it is good for anyone to have (Rachels 2012, p.159)

Aristotle: virtues are midpoints between extremes- the one of excess and the other of deficiency

Plato: wisdom, courage, self-respect, and justice

The importance of moral education and reason

• 2) Deontological theories

Deontology derives from the Greek words for duty (deon) and science (or study) of (logos)

Deontological Theories are about what we ought to do; our duties

The morality of an action is grounded by some form of authority independent of the consequences that such actions generate. (For example, God)

Emmanuel Kant

• 3) Consequentialist theories

Consequentialist or Teleological theories:

‘ Telos ’ = Greek word for end or purpose

Actions are evaluated as moral or immoral depending on whether they help or hinder in the achievement of the chosen end.

An action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable

The correct moral conduct is determined solely by a cost-benefit analysis of an action’s consequences

Examples of Teleological Theories: (Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus)

- Ethical Egoism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable only to the agent performing the action. (The ultimate end - happiness and pleasure).

- Ethical Altruism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent.

- Utilitarianism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone. (General good or well-being of human kind)

3) Applied Ethics: examining specific areas (for example, business ethics) and specific controversial issues (for example, abortion, capital punishment)

Different areas and specific problems:

- Business Ethics

- Media Ethics

- Political Ethics

- Legal Ethics

- Medical Ethics

- Computer Ethics

- War Ethics

Ethics and religion

• All religions have certain moral prescriptions
• Religion is one of the oldest human institutions and served (serves) as a way for providing a moral code sanctioning people’s immoral behavior. Those sanctions were (are) even more powerful than any human being can possibly administer (for example, going to Hell)

Problems with basing morality entirely on religion

Difficulty of proving Supernatural Existence

Religious people can be immoral.

Non-religious people can be moral

Different religions promote different ethical systems.

Objectivism, Absolutism and Cultural Relativism

Relativism:

• The truth or falsity of moral judgments, or their justification, is not absolute or universal, but is relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of a group of persons
• Moral values seem to be different in different societies

Cultural Ethical Relativism

1. Different cultures have different moral codes
2. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society
3. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one society’s code as better than another’s
4. The moral code of our own society has no special status
5. It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures. We should always be tolerant of them

Why do some ethicists support Cultural Relativism?

1) The diversity of moral values and cultures

2) Moral uncertainty: sometimes we don’t know what is the most important thing to do

3) Situational differences: people and cultures differ in significant ways across times and spaces

What follows from Cultural Relativism

1) We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own

Example: The killing of students on the Tiananmen Square is not wrong because China has a long history of repressing a political dissent;

2) We could no longer criticize the moral code of our won society

Example: bride kidnapping in KG and KZ, or cast system in India

3) The idea of moral progress is called into doubt

Example: The status of women in society

Absolutism

• There are some moral rules that all societies must embrace, because those rules are necessary for society to exist.

• Moral rules or principles have no exceptions and are context independent.

• Similar moral principles exist in all societies such as the preservation of human life,

• People in all cultures have similar needs, such as the need to survive, to eat and drink.

• There are many cultural similarities

CULTURAL ABSOLUTISM

• For example, stealing is wrong even if a person is starving to death à an objectivist who is not an absolutist may argue that there are exceptions to the rule that stealing is wrong when more important values - like the preservation of life - are involved.

Sound argument:

• Appeal to logic and reason rather than emotion
• Appeal to facts
• Fallacies – arguments that are not sound because of various errors in reasoning. They are often persuasive because they usually appeal to our emotions and prejudices

Friedrich Nietzsche(1844-1900)

• He glorified the individual self
• Life is governed by primal force - the will to power – ‘the will to grow, spread, seize, become predominant”
• The will to power finds its expression in desire to control others and impose our values on them
• Thus the ultimate moral good – to realize individual’s will to power to the fullest extent

These ideas were opposite to the Christian and Judeo-Christian morality of his time

• Why? Because these virtues were the product of conspiracy of the weak design to constrain the strong and powerful individuals
• Instead of encouragement to fulfill the potential through expression of will to power, this code forces people to serve others
• Human beings are destined to develop to the highest form of being - superman

Two moralities

• 1) Master Moralities
• 2) Slave Moralities

Master moralities:

• Aristocrats/nobles – brave; belief in yourself
• Pride in yourself
• Hostility and irony towards “selflessness”
• The role of master - superman - to create values not to conform to slave morality;
• Its up to human beings, not God, to create a moral code and meaning in life
• Will to power

Slave moralities:

• Self-sacrifice
• Humility
• A denial of self
• Dependency
• A good person should be harmless
• Pity
• Altruistic behavior
• Slave morality is a morality of utility
• He denies slave morality; virtue is weakness

Subjectivism

Rejects Cultural Relativism

The morality is a matter of sentiment rather than fact (Hume)

Advocates moral freedom

Value judgments are based on feelings, emotions

Moral truth are relative to the individual

Values exist only in the preference of individual people

You have your preferences, I have mine

No preferences are objectively correct or incorrect

Subjectivism implies that we are always right because our judgments are based on feelings

But this is not a good argument

What is a good and sound argument

Sound argument:

• Appeal to logic and reason rather than emotion
• Appeal to facts
• Fallacies – arguments that are not sound because of various errors in reasoning. They are often persuasive because they usually appeal to our emotions and prejudices

Cynics

n Cynic is translated as doglike

n Diogen of Sinope, an individual known for dog-like behavior. Other cynics – Zeno, Crates

n Cynicism is a way of living. They barked at those who displeased them, spurned Athenian etiquette, and lived from nature.

n Cynics neglect or even ridicule speculative philosophy (Plato, Aristotle)

n Virtue is a life lived in accord with nature.

n Nature replaces convention as the standard for judgment

n it is through nature that one can live well and not through conventional means such as etiquette or religion

N Three forms of freedom

1. Freedom/Liberty (eleutheria)
2. Self-sufficiency (autarkeia)
3. Freedom of speech or parrhēsia

n the Cynic trains the body for the sake of the soul, not for the Olympic Games or battlefield

n free oneself from convention, promote self-sufficiency, and live in accord with nature

Stoicism

n Stoicism comes from the Greek word “stoa,” referring to a colonnade

n The Stoic doctrine is divided into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics.

n A coherent universe governed by a divine reason

n The idea of pantheism: God is everywhere, in everything

n a life in accordance with nature and controlled by virtue.

n The stoics taught indifference (apathea) to everything external

n Hence, pain and pleasure, poverty and riches, sickness and health, were supposed to be equally unimportant.

N God is absolute reason

The world is governed by reason, since God is reason and is everything

Two things follow:

1) There is purpose in the world, and therefore, order, harmony, beauty, and design.

2) Since reason is law as opposed to the lawless, it means that the universe is subject to the absolute law and it is governed by the rigorous necessity of cause and effect.

Ethics: “Live according to nature.”

1) the universe is governed by absolute law, which admits of no exceptions;

2) the essential nature of humans is reason

n Virtue is the life according to reason (=Plato and Aristotle)

n Morality is simply rational action. It is the universal reason which is to govern our lives, not the caprice and self-will of the individual.

Cyrenaics

n Name of the city, Cyrenaica

n Founder of the school was Aristippus

n Pleasure is aim and value, not virtue or self control

n Following nature is enjoying and getting positive sensations

n Pleasure for mind and for body, Socratic dichotomy

n Some pleasures can bring pain, so virtue is control over pleasures

n Social obligations and friendship as some kind of psychological pleasure

Epicurus

Born 341 B.C.

The goal of philosophy is to help men in the search of happiness à ATARAXIA or Tranquility: a radical independence from fear and pleasures.

Two main obstacles: the fear of gods and the fear of death

Happiness is the goal in life

1) To free men from the fear of gods (because gods do not care about human things)

2) To free men from the fear of death Showing how it is simple to get pleasure

3) Showing that pain is a transient condition

Happiness is the highest good

Pleasure is good and pain is bad

BUT not all pleasures are choiceworthy or all pains to be avoided

1) natural and necessary desires (food): easy to satisfy, natural and limited

2) natural but non-necessary desires (luxury food): ok if they happen to be available, but they lead to unhappiness if you become dependent on such goods

3) "vain and empty" desires (power): difficult to satisfy, inculcated by society and they should be eliminated

So in order to reach ATARAXIA:

- Sometimes smaller pleasures should be given up in order to get higher level pleasures

- Simple pleasures should be preferred

Luxurious pleasures are not forbidden as long as they are fortuitous and not sought

Virtue Ethics

Socrates, Plato but mainly Aristotle: What traits of character make someone a good person?

In contrast, modern philosophers ask the question: What is the right thing to do? (Ethical Egoism, Utilitarianism, The Social Contract Theory, Kant’s theory)

Virtue is a trait of character manifested in habitual action, that it is good for anyone to have (Rechels, p.159)

The word virtue is translated from the Greek word areté. Its connotation is “to be the best at something one can be.”

In Aristotle’s ethics (arete) is “excellences of various types.”

Character is a combination of virtues

Plato

Main virtues and their association with the different classes

Temperance is associated with the farmers and craftsmen. It is determined by the animal appetites, to whom no special virtue was assigned;

Fortitude and courage are the virtues for the warriors and corresponds to spirit;

Prudence or wisdom is mainly for the rulers and corresponds to reason.

Justice is for all and defines relationship between them

Three classes compose an ideal state

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