Both teleological and deontological ethical theories are called deontic or action-based

theories of morality because they focus entirely upon the actions which a person
performs. Those theories focus on the question, "Which action should I choose?" Virtue
ethics, however, take a very different perspective.

Virtue-based ethical theories place less emphasis on which rules people should follow
and instead focus on helping people develop good character traits, such as kindness and
generosity. These character traits will, in turn, allow a person to make the correct
decisions later on in life. Virtue theorists also emphasize the need for people to learn how
to break bad habits of character, like greed or anger. These are called vices and stand in
the way of becoming a good person.

Recently virtue ethics has not been a very common topic for study, but it dates back to
the ancient Greek thinkers and is thus the oldest type of ethical theory in Western
philosophy. Plato discussed four key virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice.
The first systematic description of virtue ethics was written down by Aristotle in his
famous work Nichomachean Ethics. According to Aristotle, when people acquire good
habits of character, they are better able to regulate their emotions and their reason. This,
in turn, helps us reach morally correct decisions when we are faced with difficult choices.

One reason why virtue ethics can be popular and why they make an important
contribution to our understanding of morality is that they emphasize the central role
played by motives in moral questions. To act from virtue is to act from some particular
motivation; thus to say that certain virtues are necessary for correct moral decisions is to
say that correct moral decisions require correct motives.

Neither teleological nor deontological moral theories require motives to play a role in our
evaluation of moral decisions — but encouraging correct motivations is very often a key
component of the moral education of young people. We are taught that we should desire
certain outcomes and that we should want to accomplish certain goals by our actions.

Another reason why virtue theories are so attractive is that the other moral theories share
in common the difficulty in dealing with complicated moral calculations over what
actions to take or which moral duties to emphasize. Virtue theories promise that once we
are successful in creating the sort of person we want to be, arriving at the correct moral
decisions will come naturally.

Key questions which virtue ethical systems ask include:

• What sort of person do I want to be?

• What virtues are characteristic of the person I want to be?
• What actions will cultivate the virtues I want to possess?
• What actions will be characteristic of the sort of person I want to be?
Problems With Virtue Ethics

The reality of virtue ethics isn’t as neat and simple as some might imagine. Although
many common moral decisions may indeed come more easily to a person of the “right”
moral character, the fact of the matter is that many moral dilemmas require a great deal of
careful reasoning and thinking — simply having the right character cannot be enough to
even make the right decision likely, much less assured. The fact that rule based and duty
based ethical systems are complicated and difficult to employ does not make a person of
good character more likely to make the right choices.

Another problem with virtue-based ethical systems is the question of what the “right” sort
of character is which a person should have. Many, if not most, virtue theorists have
treated the answer to this question as self-evident, but it is anything but. One person’s
virtue may be another person’s vice and a vice in one set of circumstances may be a
virtue in another.

Some advocates of virtue ethics suggest that we determine the right virtues by asking a
virtuous person, but that is just an exercise in question begging. Others might suggest
asking a happy person, but that assumes that happiness and virtue always coincide — by
no means an obvious truth.

Perhaps a key to understanding virtue theories of ethics is to regard them as ways to

approach moral psychology but not moral epistemology. What this means is that virtue
theories should not be contrasted with theories about how to make moral choices, like the
teleological theory of John Stuart Mill or the deontological theory of Immanuel Kant.

Instead, virtue theories of ethics should be treated as ways to understand how we become
moral creatures, how we develop the means by which we make moral decisions, and the
process by which moral attitudes develop. More importantly, virtue theories may be able
to teach us how morals themselves should be taught, particularly in the earliest years
when the more complicated decision-making processes are not yet possible.

Virtue ethics
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Virtue ethics is an approach to ethics which emphasizes the character of the moral agent,
rather than rules or consequences, as the key element of ethical thinking. This contrasts
with consequentialism, which holds that the consequences of a particular act form the
basis for any valid moral judgment about that action, and deontology, which derives
rightness or wrongness from the character of the act itself rather than the outcomes. The
difference between these three approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way moral
dilemmas are approached than in the moral conclusions reached. For example, a
consequentialist may argue that lying is wrong because of the negative consequences
produced by lying — though a consequentialist may allow that certain foreseeable
consequences might make lying acceptable. A deontologist might argue that lying is
always wrong, regardless of any potential "good" that might come from lying. A virtue
ethicist, however, would focus less on lying in any particular instance and instead
consider what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie said about one's character and moral
behavior.

Although concern for virtue appears in several philosophical traditions, in the West the
roots of the tradition lie in the work of Plato and Aristotle, and even today the tradition’s
key concepts derive from ancient Greek philosophy. These concepts include arete
(excellence or virtue), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom), and eudaimonia
(flourishing). In the West virtue ethics was the prevailing approach to ethical thinking in
the ancient and medieval periods. The tradition suffered an eclipse during the early
modern period, as Aristotelianism fell out of favour in the West. Virtue theory returned to
prominence in Western philosophical thought in the twentieth century, and is today one
of the three dominant approaches to normative theories (the other two being deontology
and consequentialism)[1]. Virtue theory is not actually in conflict with deontology or
teleology as those two viewpoints deal with which actions a person should take in any
given scenario, virtue theorists simply argue that developing morally desirable virtues for
their own sake will help aid moral actors when such decisions need to be made.

While virtue ethics was born with Plato and Aristotle, their forms of virtue ethics are by
no means the only ones. What virtue ethics refers to, rather, is a collection of normative
ethical philosophies that place an emphasis on being rather than doing. Another way to
say this is that in virtue ethics, morality stems from the identity and/or character of the
individual, rather than being a reflection of the actions (or consequences thereof) of the
individual. Today, there is a great amount of debate among various adherents of virtue
ethics about what specific virtues are morally praiseworthy. However, the one thing they
all agree upon is that morality comes as a result of intrinsic virtues—this is the common
link that unites the sometimes disparate normative philosophies into the field known as
virtue ethics.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Distinctions
• 2 Achieving eudaimonia
• 3 Historical origins and development
• 4 Contemporary usage
• 5 Non-Western tradition
• 6 Criticisms
• 7 Applications
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 Further reading

• 11 External links

[edit] Distinctions

Virtue ethics can be contrasted to deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics by an

examination of the other two (the three being together the most predominant
contemporary normative ethical theories). Deontological ethics, sometimes referred to as
duty ethics, places the emphasis on following rules, or doing one's "duty." Which rules to
follow is often a point of contention and criticism in deontological ethics. One of the
predominant rule schemes utilized by deontologists is the Divine Command Theory.
Deontology also depends, at least partially, upon meta-ethical realism, in that it postulates
the existence of moral absolutes that make an action moral. For more information on
deontological ethics refer to the work of Immanuel Kant. The next predominant school of
thought in normative ethics is consequentialism. While deontology places the emphasis
on doing one's duty, which is established by some kind of moral imperative (in other
words, the emphasis is on obedience to some higher moral absolute), consequentialism
bases the morality of an action upon the consequences of the outcome. Instead of saying
that one has a moral duty to abstain from murder, a consequentialist would say that we
should abstain from murder because it causes undesirable effects. The main contention
here is what outcomes should/can be identified as objectively desirable. The Greatest
Happiness Principle of John Stuart Mill is one of the most commonly adopted criteria.
Mill asserts that our determinant of the desirability of an action is the net amount of
happiness it brings, the number of people it brings it to, and the duration of the happiness.
He also tries to delineate classes of happiness, some being preferable to others, but there
is a great deal of difficulty in classifying such concepts. For a more complete outline of
the niceties of Mill's classification system see the page on utilitarianism or read Mill's
works Utilitarianism, Defense of Utilitarianism, and On Liberty. Examining the meta-
ethical theories of naturalism, upon which many consequentialist theories rely, may
provide further clarification. Having looked at the other two normative ethical theories
we come at last to virtue ethics.

As stated before, deontology focuses on following rules, while consequentialism focuses

on the outcomes (consequences) of actions. Here virtue ethics differs in that the focus is
instead upon being rather than doing. A virtue ethics philosopher will identify virtues,
desirable characteristics, which the moral or virtuous person embodies. Possessing these
virtues, in virtue ethics, is what makes one moral, and one's actions are a mere reflection
of one's inner morality. To the virtue philosopher, action cannot be used as a demarcation
of morality, because a virtue encompasses more than just a simple selection of action.
Instead, it is about a way of being that would cause the person exhibiting the virtue to
make a certain "virtuous" choice consistently in each situation. There is a great deal of
disagreement within virtue ethics over what are virtues and what are not. There are also
difficulties in identifying what is the "virtuous" action to take in all circumstances, and
how does one define a virtue?

Consequentialist and deontological theories often still employ the term 'virtue', but in a
restricted sense, namely as a tendency or disposition to adhere to the system's principles
or rules. These very different senses of what constitutes virtue, hidden behind the same
word, are a potential source of confusion. This disagreement over the meaning of virtue
points to a larger conflict between virtue theory and its philosophical rivals. A system of
virtue theory is only intelligible if it is teleological: that is, if it includes an account of the
purpose (telos) of human life, or in popular language, the meaning of life. Obviously,
strong claims about the purpose of human life, or of what the good life for human beings
is, will be highly controversial. Virtue theory's necessary commitment to a teleological
account of human life thus puts the tradition in sharp tension with other dominant
approaches to normative ethics, which, because they focus on actions, do not bear this
burden.
[edit] Achieving eudaimonia

Eudaimonia (Ευδαιμονια) is a state variously translated from Greek as 'well-being',

'happiness', 'blessedness', and in the context of virtue ethics, 'human flourishing'[2]
Eudaimonia in this sense is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the
well-lived life, irrespective of the emotional state of the person experiencing it.
According to Aristotle, the most prominent exponent of eudaimonia in the Western
philosophical tradition, eudaimonia is the proper goal of human life. It consists of
exercising the characteristic human quality -- reason -- as the soul's most proper and
nourishing activity. Aristotle, like Plato before him, argued that the pursuit of
eudaimonia was an activity that could only properly be exercised in the characteristic
human community—the polis or city-state.

Although eudaimonia was first popularized by Aristotle, it now belongs to the tradition of
virtue theories generally. For the virtue theorist, eudaimonia describes that state achieved
by the person who lives the proper human life, an outcome which can be reached by
practicing the virtues. A virtue is a habit or quality that allows the bearer to succeed at
his, her, or its purpose. The virtue of a knife, for example, is sharpness; among the virtues
of a racehorse is speed. Thus to identify the virtues for human beings, one must have an
account of what the human purpose is. There is, and always has been, sharp disagreement
on this question: thus, as Alasdair MacIntyre observed in After Virtue, though thinkers as
diverse as Homer, Aristotle, the authors of the New Testament, Thomas Aquinas, and
Benjamin Franklin have all proposed lists, and sometimes theories of the interrelation, of
the virtues which do not always overlap. ['citation needed']

Aristotle categorized the virtues as moral and intellectual. Aristotle identified nine
intellectual virtues, the most important of which was wisdom; sophia (theoretical
wisdom) and phronesis (practical wisdom). The other eight moral virtues included
prudence, justice, fortitude, courage, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, and
temperance. Aristotle argued that each of the moral virtues was a mean (see Golden
Mean) between two corresponding vices.

[edit] Historical origins and development

Like much of the Western tradition, virtue theory seems to have originated in ancient
Greek philosophy . Discussion of what were known as the Four Cardinal Virtues -
wisdom, justice, fortitude and temperance - can be found in Plato's Republic. The virtues
also figure prominently in Aristotle's moral theory (see below). Virtue theory was
inserted into the study of history by moralistic historians such as Livy, Plutarch, and
Tacitus. The Greek idea of the virtues was passed on in Roman philosophy through
Cicero and later incorporated into Christian moral theology by St. Ambrose of Milan.
During the scholastic period, the most comprehensive consideration of the virtues from a
theological perspective was provided by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae
and his Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics.
The tradition was eclipsed in the Renaissance, and throughout the early modern period,
when the Aristotelian synthesis of ethics and metaphysics fell into disfavour. Though the
tradition receded into the background of European philosophical thought in these
centuries, the term "virtue" remained current during this period, and in fact appears
prominently in the tradition of classical republicanism or classical liberalism. This
tradition was prominent in the intellectual life of sixteenth-century Italy, as well as
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and America; indeed the term "virtue"
appears frequently in the work of Niccolò Machiavelli, David Hume, the republicans of
the English Civil War period, the eighteenth-century English Whigs, and the prominent
figures among the Scottish Enlightenment and the American Founding Fathers. Despite
this common term, classical republicanism should not be conflated with virtue theory, as
the two philosophical traditions draw from different sources and often address different
concerns. Where virtue theory traces its roots to Aristotle, classical republicanism draws
primarily on Tacitus.

Virtue theory emphasizes Aristotle's belief in the polis as the acme of political
organization, and the role of the virtues in enabling human beings to flourish in that
environment. Classical republicanism in contrast emphasizes Tacitus's concern that
power and luxury can corrupt individuals and destroy liberty, as Tacitus perceived in the
transformation of the Roman republic into an empire; virtue for classical republicans is a
shield against this sort of corruption and a means to preserve the good life one has, rather
than a means by which to achieve the good life one does not yet have. Another way to put
the distinction between the two traditions is that virtue ethics relies on Aristotle's
fundamental distinction between the human-being-as-he-is from the human-being-as-he-
should-be, while classical republicanism relies on the Tacitean distinction of the human-
being-as-he-is from the human-being-as-he-is-at-risk-of-becoming.[3]

[edit] Contemporary usage

Although some Enlightenment philosophers (e.g. Hume) continued to emphasize the

virtues, with the ascendancy of utilitarianism and deontology, virtue theory moved to the
margins of Western philosophy. The contemporary revival of virtue theory is frequently
traced to the philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe's 1958 essay, 'Modern Moral Philosophy'
and to Philippa Foot, who published a collection of essays in 1978 entitled Virtues and
Vices. Since the 1980s, in works like After Virtue and Three Rival Versions of Moral
Enquiry, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has made an effort to reconstruct a virtue-based
theory in dialogue with the problems of modern and postmodern thought.

In French philosophy, Paul Ricoeur has accorded an important place to Aristotelian

teleological ethics in his hermeneutical phenomenology of the subject, most notably in
his book Oneself as Another. Following MacIntyre, American Methodist theologian
Stanley Hauerwas has also found the language of virtue quite helpful in his own project.
More recently, Rosalind Hursthouse has published On Virtue Ethics and Roger Crisp and
Michael Slote have edited a collection of important essays titled Virtue Ethics, while
Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen have employed virtue theory in theorizing the
capability approach to international development.
[edit] Non-Western tradition

Non-Western moral and religious philosophies, such as Confucianism, also incorporate

ideas that may appear similar to those developed by the ancient Greeks. Like ancient
Greek ethics, Chinese ethical thought makes an explicit connection between virtue and
statecraft. However, where the Greeks focused on the interior orientation of the soul,
Confucianism's definition of virtue emphasizes interpersonal relations. Normally when
the term virtue theory is used, it is in reference to the western conception of virtue theory,
rather than any of the schools of East Asian ethical thought.

Nick Gier in Buddhist Ethics as Virtue Ethics compares Buddha's ethical teachings to
Aristotle's: "Like Greek virtue ethics, Buddhist ethics is also humanistic and thoroughly
personalist."

Damien Keown devotes a great deal of his work to debunking claims that Buddhism is
Utilitarian in nature. His work then goes on to examine the structure of Buddhist Ethics,
focusing specifically on morality (Pali: siila). His conclusion is that Buddhist Ethics most
closely resembles the ancient Greek virtue ethics found in Aristotle.

James Whitehill in Buddhist Ethics in Western Context: The Virtues Approach says:
"Buddhism's legitimation in the West can be partially met by demonstrating that Buddhist
morality is a virtue-oriented, character-based, community-focused ethics, commensurate
with the Western 'ethics of virtue' tradition."

[edit] Criticisms

Some criticise the theory in relation to the difficulty involved with establishing the nature
of the virtues. Different people, cultures and societies often have vastly different opinions
on what constitutes a virtue. For example, many would have once considered a virtuous
woman to be quiet, servile, and industrious. This conception of female virtue no longer
holds true in many modern societies (see also cultural relativism). Proponents of virtue
theory sometimes respond to this objection by arguing that a central feature of a virtue is
its universal applicability. In other words, any character trait defined as a virtue must
reasonably be universally regarded as a virtue for all sentient beings. According to this
view, it is inconsistent to claim for example servility as a female virtue, while at the same
time not proposing it as a male one.

Other proponents of virtue theory, notably Alasdair MacIntyre, respond to this objection
by arguing that any account of the virtues must indeed be generated out of the community
in which those virtues are to be practiced: the very word 'ethics' implies 'ethos'. That is to
say that the virtues are, and necessarily must be, grounded in a particular time and place.
What counts as virtue in fourth-century Athens would be a ludicrous guide to proper
behaviour in twenty-first-century Toronto, and vice-versa. To take this view does not
necessarily commit one to the argument that accounts of the virtues must therefore be
static: moral activity—that is, attempts to contemplate and practice the virtues—can
provide the cultural resources that allow people to change, albeit slowly, the ethos of their
own societies. MacIntyre appears to take this position in his seminal work on virtue
ethics, After Virtue. One might cite (though MacIntyre does not) the rapid emergence of
abolitionist thought in the slave-holding societies of the eighteenth-century Atlantic
world as an example of this sort of change: over a relatively short period of time, perhaps
1760 to 1800, in Britain, France, and British America, slave-holding, previously thought
to be morally neutral or even virtuous, rapidly became seen as vicious among wide
swathes of society. While the emergence of abolitionist thought derived from many
sources, the work of David Brion Davis, among others, has established that one source
was the rapid, internal evolution of moral theory among certain sectors of these societies,
notably the Quakers.

Another objection to virtue theory is that the school does not focus on what sorts of
actions are morally permitted and which ones are not, but rather on what sort of qualities
someone ought to foster in order to become a good person. In other words, while some
virtue theorists may not condemn, for example, murder as an inherently immoral or
impermissible sort of action, they may argue that someone who commits a murder is
severely lacking in several important virtues, such as compassion and fairness. Still,
antagonists of the theory often object that this particular feature of the theory makes
virtue ethics useless as a universal norm of acceptable conduct suitable as a base for
legislation. Some virtue theorists concede this point, but respond by opposing the very
notion of legitimate legislative authority instead, effectively advocating some form of
anarchism as the political ideal. Others argue that laws should be made by virtuous
legislators. Still others argue that it is possible to base a judicial system on the moral
notion of virtues rather than rules.

Some virtue theorists might respond to this overall objection with the notion of a "bad
act" also being an act characteristic of vice[citation needed]. That is to say that those acts which
do not aim at virtue, or stray from virtue, would constitute our conception of "bad
behavior". Although not all virtue ethicists agree to this notion, this is one way the virtue
ethicist can re-introduce the concept of the "morally impermissible". One could raise
objection with Foot that she is committing an argument from ignorance by postulating
that what is not virtuous is unvirtuous. In other words, just because an action or person
'lacks of evidence' for virtue does not, all else constant, imply that said action or person is
unvirtuous.

[edit] Applications

Virtue ethics has a number of applications. For instance, within the field of social ethics,
Deirdre McCloskey [4] argues that virtue ethics can provide a basis for a balanced
approach to understanding capitalism and capitalist societies. Within the field of
philosophy of education, James Page [5] argues that virtue ethics can provide a rationale
and foundation for peace education. Thomas Alured Faunce has argued that
whistleblowing in the healthcare setting would be more respected within clinical
governance pathways if it had a firmer academic foundation in virtue ethics.[6][7] He has
argued that whistleblowing should have been expressly supported in the UNESCO
Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.[8]
[edit]