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Ethics: Theory and Practice
Jacques P. Thiroux
Keith W. Krasemann
Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter Four
Virtue Ethics
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Definition of Terms
• Virtue is moral excellence, righteousness,
responsibility, or other exemplary qualities
considered meritorious
• The emphasis is on the good or virtuous
character of human beings themselves, rather
than on their acts, consequences, feelings, or
rules
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Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
• Nichomachean Ethics are based on these
tenets:
– Reality and life are teleological in that they aim
toward some end or purpose
– The end of human life is happiness, and reason is
the basic activity of all humans; therefore, the aim
of human beings is to reason well so as to achieve
a complete life
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Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
• Tenets (cont’d):
– Begin with the moral judgments of
reasonable and virtuous human beings and
then formulate general principles
– Human beings have a capacity for goodness
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Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
• Tenets (cont’d):
– What is virtue and how does it relate to
vice?
• Virtue is a mean, relative to use, between
the excess and deficiency
• In shame, modesty is the mean between an
excess of bashfulness and a defect of
shamelessness
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Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation
• The Chinese term de, “virtue,” is the inherent
power or tendency to affect others in a
positive, dramatic, and powerful way for good
• In a Confucian world, one’s identity is at all
times tied to the group and one’s relationships
within the social order
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The Five Confucian Cardinal
Relationships
• All Confucian virtues are carried out within the
five cardinal relationships governed by
reciprocity
– Ruler and subject
– Father and son
– Husband and wife
– Elder brother and younger brother
– Friend and friend
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Confucian Harmony
• Ren, which means “human heartedness,”
“benevolence,” “goodness,” or “humaneness,”
is the chief Confucian virtue
• It highlights and enhances the natural
relationships between the individual and the
community
– “one being with others”
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Confucian Harmony
• Li, “ritual propriety,” is the Confucian virtue
that must be cultivated if one is to be a full
participant in the community
• Li makes it possible for an individual to exhibit
appropriate conduct in specific situations
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Idealist and Realist Conceptions of
Confucianism
• Mengzi, or “Mencuius”
– Held that human beings have a natural
disposition toward goodness, and virtue is
cultivated, metaphorically, as the watering
of “sprouts”
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Idealist and Realist Conceptions of
Confucianism
• Xunzi
– Taught that humans are not naturally
disposed toward goodness, but human
nature is evil and must be overcome in the
manner one straightens crooked wood or
sharpens metal on a grinder
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Confucian Role Ethics
• Xiao, “family reverence” or “family feeling,” is
the root of consummate conduct
• Confucian “role ethics” is a new type of ethical
theory
– Along with, but distinct from, traditional
consequentialist, nonconsequentialist, and virtue
ethics theories
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Confucian Role Ethics
• There is no equivalent ethical theory in the
Western tradition, and this, Confucian role
ethics must be understood on its own terms
• Confucian role ethics, in practice, produces a
robust ethic of responsibility to particular
persons in a matrix of role relationships to
others
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Contemporary Analysis of Virtue Ethics
• Contemporary theories of virtue ethics are
primarily a reaction against moral theories
that attempt to fit our moral experience into a
prior system of rules or preestablished ideals,
specifically, consequentialism and Kantianism
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Alasdair MacIntyre’s Analysis of
Virtue Ethics
• Alasdair MacIntyre provides a
contemporary analysis of virtue ethics
– The virtues are dispositions both to act and
to feel in particular ways, and one must
create virtuous feelings within oneself, not
merely act virtuously
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Alasdair MacIntyre’s Analysis of
Virtue Ethics
– One must then decided what the practically
wise and virtuous human being would do in
any situation and then do the virtuous act
that such a person would do
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Advantages of Virtue Ethics
• It strives to create the good human being, not
merely good acts or rules
• It attempts to unify reason and emotion
• It emphasizes moderation, a quality prized by
many ethicists
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Disadvantages or Problems
• Do human beings have an end or purpose? If
so what is it, and how can we prove any of
this?
• Are morals naturally implanted, or are they
learned through experience?
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Disadvantages or Problems
• What is virtue, and what constitutes the
virtues?
– There seems to be a wide variety of opinions on
this, so how can we decided what virtue really is
and which virtues are really virtues?
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Disadvantages or Problems
• Who is the ideal virtuous human being, and
how are we to determine or prove this?
– Wouldn’t we all come up with different people
who are the models of our individual ideas about
virtue?
– We could all agree on some kind of composite
ethical person, but it would be difficult
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Vice and Virtue
• Vices are undesirable characteristics that
become imbedded in an individual’s life
through the indulgence of degrading
appetites, lack of self-discipline and
education, and the habitual practice of
immoral conduct
– For example, cowardice, jealousy, envy, greed,
gluttony, and spite
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Vice and Virtue
• The vicious person is ruled not be reason but
by impulse and lives a life tormented by inner
tension and chaos
• Virtues are “human excellence” and consist of
those traits of character that should be
fostered in human beings:
– Honesty, loyalty, courage, wisdom, moderation,
civility, compassion, tolerance, and reverence
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St. Augustine’s Vice
• St. Augustine fashioned an anatomy of evil by
listing a number of vices and their
manifestations
• Examples:
– Pride imitates loftiness of mind
– What does ambition seek except honor and glory
– Sloth… seeks rest…
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Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues
• Benjamin Franklin presents a method for
mastering the virtues
• He selects thirteen virtues and to each
annexes a precept that is both action guiding
and expressive of the extent of the meaning
assigned to the virtue
• Example:
– Temperance  Eat not to dullness; drink not to
elevation
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