Module 8 Virtue Ethics

VIRTUE
ETHICS
At the end of this module, you should
be able to:
1. Defend virtuous life as a way to
happiness.
2. Summarize how virtue is acquired.
3. Explain how to act virtuously.
The Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City - Rome
The School of Athens (Italian: Scuola di Atene) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance
artist Raphael (1483 -1520, aged 37). It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part
of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in
the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
Plato
(428/427 BCE -
348/347)
Aristotle
384 BC – 322
BC
Students in flower-themed costumes perform during the street dancing competition of the 2019 Panagbenga
celebration on Session Road in Baguio City yesterday. The grand float parade of the month-long flower festival
takes place today.
Andy Zapata Jr.
Flourish
• positive emotions
ing
• positive psychological functioning
positive social functioning
• living "within an optimal range of
human functioning.”
• positive mental health and overall
life well-being
• components and concepts,
such as cultivating strengths,
subjective well-being, "goodness,
generativity, growth, and resilience”
• Flourishing is the opposite of both
pathology and languishing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, last edited on 25

August 2020, at 14:18 (UTC)
eu ('good, well')
daimōn ('spirit’)
Wikipedia, 21 September 2020, at 16:05 (UTC)

Eudaimonia is almost always translated as
‘happiness’, but this translation can easily give a
misleading impression. ‘Happiness’ in English
suggests a feeling of one kind or another, perhaps a
feeling of contentment, or delight, or pleasure.
Aristotle makes it quite clear that he does not have
any such feeling in mind at all. He says that
eudaimonia is achieving one’s full potential; and
that surely is not simply a matter of feeling, even if
to do so would be very satisfying. It is much more
closely connected with what one has made of
oneself and one’s life.
Gerard J. Hughes, The Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, 2013, p.20
well-bein
g describe what is non-instrumentally or ultimately
Well-being is most commonly used in philosophy to
good for a person. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/
flourishing
According to Aristotle, there is an end of all of the
actions that we perform which we desire for itself.
This is what is known as eudaimonia, flourishing, or
happiness, which is desired for its own sake with all
other things being desired on its account.
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/031122-11.htm
HAPPINESS
❖ the highest goal that a person can
pursue
❖ employs one’s rationality that sets us
apart from the ordinary creatures
❖ Happiness is its own reward.
“Happiness, on the other hand, no one
choses for the sake of these, nor, in
general, for anything other than itself.”
Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Kitchener:
Batoche Books, 10.
What is the path
to happiness?
The way to
happiness is
the practice of
VIRTUE .
What is
VIRTUE?
Virtue is a “mean”
between two
extremes.
Excess
vice
MEAN
virtue
Deficiency
vice
Cardinal Virtues
Hughes explains that the word ‘cardinal’
from the Latin word for a hinge, since it
was thought that all the other virtues
hinged upon, or were dependent upon
these four.
See Hughes, Gerard J. 2013. The Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 56.
COURAGE JUSTICE TEMPERANCE PIETY

Virtue Acquisition
Through practice; a social
process
Imitating those who

are successful in our
society
Criticisms of Virtue
Ethics
Self-Centeredness
Virtue ethics, according to this objection, is
self-centered because its primary concern is
with the agent's own character. Virtue ethics
seems to be essentially interested in the
acquisition of the virtues as part of the
agent's own well-being and flourishing.
Reply Being just or honest to oneself also
involves justice and honesty to others.
Action-Guiding
Virtue ethics, it is objected, with its
emphasis on the imprecise nature of ethics,
fails to give us any help with the
practicalities of how we should behave.
Reply
If virtue consists of the right reason and the right
desire, virtue ethics will be action-guiding when we
can perceive the right reason and have successfully
habituated our desires to affirm its commands.
Moral Luck
Some people will be lucky and receive the
help and encouragement they need to attain
moral maturity, but others will not.
Reply
We have no control over the availability of the
right friends. How can we then praise the virtuous
and blame the vicious if their development and
respective virtue and vice were not under their
control?
Conclusion
❖ Virtue Ethics is a universalist theory.
❖ Virtue is a good thing for anyone to
pursue or imbibe.
❖ Happiness does not signify a momentary
disposition.
❖ Happiness is an enduring sense
of well being.
❖ The virtuous person knows how
to conduct himself/herself
in any given situation.
❖ Virtue Ethics is self empowering.
❖ In virtue ethics, it is not a question
of what is the right thing to do in
a given situation. Instead, it is a
question of what I must do as a
human person.
❖ It is not the emotions or what
happens to us that determine
our well-being but rather our
judgment that we make about
it. It is our response to emotion
whether we stagnate or
flourish.
Brezinsky, Michael B. 2014 . Virtue Ethics Part I and II at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnLM5XsCClk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-a61rKhLM

Module 8 Virtue Ethics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Module 8 Virtue Ethics

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Module 8 Virtue Ethics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

VIRTUE

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, last edited on 25

Wikipedia, 21 September 2020, at 16:05 (UTC)

good for a person. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/

COURAGE JUSTICE TEMPERANCE PIETY

Imitating those who

Brezinsky, Michael B. 2014 . Virtue Ethics Part I and II at

You might also like