Slide 1

Ethics and Moral Reasoning:

Virtue Ethics - Part 1
AUTHORS:
ANDRES LUCO
PRESTON GREENE
GRACE BOEY
CHRISTINA CHUANG
SHEN-YI LIAO

Notes: NA
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There is no happiness in having or in getting but only in giving.

Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pictoquotes/11061673833.

Notes: Studies on the link between happiness and giving:

Aknin, Lara et al (2010). "Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a
Psychological Universal", Harvard Business School Working Paper 11-038. URL:
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/11-038.pdf
Dunn, Elizabeth et al (2008). "Spending Money on Others Promotes
Happiness", Science 319. URL: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5870/1687
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Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

Explain the basic tenets of virtue ethics.
Explain the attractions which make virtue ethics plausible
as an ethical theory.

Notes: NA
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Virtue Ethics

According to virtue ethics, an action is morally right if and only if it is

an action that a virtuous person would do in the situation.

Fundamental questions posed by different ethical theories:

Utilitarianism and Kants deontology:

What should I do?
Virtue ethics:
What sort of person should I be?

One main historical inspiration of virtue ethics is a treatise by

Aristotle Aristotle called Nichomachean Ethics.
(384 322 BCE)

Notes: Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher, physicist, biologist and logician who
studied under Plato. He was a personal tutor to Alexander the
Great, and Darwin called him the greatest biologist of all time.
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Moral Exemplars and Moral Virtues

A moral exemplar is a person who is an ideally virtuous role

model. Such a person is worthy of imitation because of the
virtues he or she exhibits.

According to virtue ethics, to make the right moral decision,

we must ask:

In this situation, what would ____ do?

In this question, the ___ is to be replaced by the name of a

moral exemplar.

A moral exemplar does not have to exemplify all virtues

perfectly. He or she may even have some vices.

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Moral Exemplars and Moral Virtues

A moral exemplar does not have to exemplify all virtues perfectly and
should be imitated only in situations where the virtue he or she
exemplifies is relevant. He or she may even have some vices.

For example: One should imitate Martin Luther King when faced with
bigotry and injustice, but not when writing an academic paper (since
King plagiarised substantial parts of his PhD dissertation).

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Moral Exemplars and Moral Virtues

To identify moral exemplars, we need a theory of moral virtues.
But what are the moral virtues? Let us consider a few examples:

Benevolence Industriousness
Compassion Justice
Courage Loyalty
Dependability Kindness
Patience Conscientiousness
Friendliness Self-discipline
Generosity Civility
Honesty Tolerance

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Eudaimonia/Flourishing

According to Aristotle, moral virtues are character traits

necessary for a good human life.

By a good life, Aristotle means an active condition of

being well-off.

Aristotle used the Greek word eudaimonia to designate

a good life. The word translates into English as
happiness or flourishing.

Eudaimonia is a state of being supremely well-off.

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Eudaimonia/Flourishing

Aristotles Theory of Human Flourishing

Aristotles theory of eudaimonia (hereafter,

flourishing), can be summed up as follows
(cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b22-
1098a20):

Human flourishing requires the successful

exercise of reason.

Notes: NA
Slide 10

Eudaimonia/Flourishing

Present-day students of Aristotle have also made

arguments to support his claim that flourishing involves
the successful exercise of reason.

For example, the philosopher Richard Kraut posed

this thought experiment:

Imagine what your life would be like if, one day, you
permanently lost your ability to reason...

Notes: For example, the philosopher Richard Kraut posed this thought experiment:

Imagine what your life would be like if, one day, you permanently lost your ability to reason.
You would no longer be able to deliberate about what to think and do; and you could not
understand why the world is the way it is. If that happened, you would be at the mental
level of a baby or animal. If you were in such a condition, would your life be going well? Or
rather, would the loss of your ability to reason cause the remainder of your life to go poorly?
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Eudaimonia/Flourishing

Kraut expects that you would regard

losing reason as an event that was
devastating to your well-being.

Hence, flourishing requires the successful

exercise of reason.

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Moral Virtues and Flourishing

Aristotles virtue ethics claims that virtue (in Greek: arete) is

necessarythough not sufficientfor any human being to flourish.

To say that the moral virtues are necessary to flourishing means that
anyone who lacks the moral virtues cannot flourish.

However, Aristotle was careful to note that having the moral virtues
is not sufficient for human flourishing.

Consider, the example of Father Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe was

virtuous, but the Nazis prevented him from flourishing.

Notes: In 1941 Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Christian Polish friar from Warsaw, was arrested
for publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to the Nazi concentration camp at
Auschwitz. There he was whipped and beaten by prison guards. One day, after another
prisoner escaped, the prison guards applied the prescribed punishment of selecting ten
other prisoners to die by starvation. Ten prisoners were pulled out of line. One of them was
a Polish worker with a wife and children who were dependent upon him. Fr. Kolbe broke out
from the crowd, begging the commander to be allowed to take this mans place. Im an old
man sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose, the 45-year-old priest pleaded.
He was taken, thrown down the stairs into a dark basement with the other nine prisoners,
and left to starve. Usually, prisoners punished in this manner would spend their last days
howling, attacking each other, and clawing at the walls. But this time, the Nazi guards were
astounded to see the men they were killing by starvation at peace with themselves, quietly
singing hymns. A few weeks later, several SS troopers, along with a doctor and a prisoner
who survived to report the incident, entered the basement to remove the bodies. They
found Fr. Kolbe, a living skeleton, propped against the wall. He had a smile on his lips and his
eyes were wide open with a faraway gaze. The doctor injected a poison-filled needle into Fr.
Kolbes arm, and in a moment he was dead (Pojman & Fieser 2012, pp. 149 150).

Fr. Kolbe was starved to death by the Nazis, but not before he had saved the life of another
man and helped the nine other starving prisoners to face their own deaths. In 1982, Fr.
Kolbe was declared a martyr and a saint by Pope John Paul II.
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Moral Virtues and Flourishing

Is it true that the moral virtues are necessary to
flourishing? We can try to clarify this matter by examining
the three virtues in particular.

Courage is steadfastness in the face of adversity.

Courage is not just a military virtue; rather, having courage

is necessary for anyone to have a good life.

Everyone must face danger and adversity in life. Courage is

necessary to overcome danger and adversity.
So, courage is a virtue.

Notes: NA
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Moral Virtues and Flourishing

Loyalty to friends and family involves the willingness to

make sacrifices for the sake of your friends and family.

It also involves partiality in the form of committing to

prioritise the interests of friends and family over the well-
being of other people.

Notes: NA
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Moral Virtues and Flourishing

Aristotle wrote eloquently about how loyalty to friends is

necessary to a good human life (similar comments also apply to
family):

How could prosperity be safeguarded and preserved without

friends? The greater our prosperity is, the greater are the risks it
brings with it. Also, in poverty and all other kinds of misfortune
men believe that their only refuge consists in their friends.
Friends help young men avoid error; to older people they give the
care and help needed to supplement the failing powers of action
which infirmity brings
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8).

Notes: Aristotles point in the passage is that having friends is necessary for people to
flourish. Aristotle adds that in order to make good friends and keep them, you need to be
loyal to your friends. Hence, the virtue of loyalty to friends is necessary for people to
flourish.

A similar argument could be given to show that loyalty to family is necessary for people to
flourish.
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Moral Virtues and Flourishing

Benevolence is the willingness to expend ones resources to help others.

How is benevolence necessary to a good human life?

Aristotle emphasised that human beings are social animals.

To flourish as a human being, one must live in a harmonious

society.

If no one helped anyone else, society would become unstable.

To help maintain a harmonious society, one must be benevolent.

Notice that benevolence, unlike loyalty, is a virtue that involves a

general concern for the welfare of everyone, including strangers. A
person of great benevolence is disposed to help just about anyone
who needs itnot only her friends and family.

Notes: NA
Slide 17

Attractions of VE: Complexity

What are the considerations that make virtue

ethics a plausible ethical theory?

One advantage of virtue ethics is that it is

consistent with our experience of the complexity
of morality.

Virtue ethicists insist that there is no single rule or

procedure that could tell us precisely what the
right thing to do is in every situation. Moral
problems are much too complex for that.

Notes: NA
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Attractions of VE: Complexity

To handle moral complexity, virtue ethicists advise us to:

Rely on virtue-based moral rules (for example be

generous), while recognising that these rules do not
apply uniformly to every single case. Virtue-based
moral rules are not absolute.

Cultivate the wisdom needed to judge the right thing

to do on a case-by-case basis.

Notes: NA
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Attractions of VE: Balance

Virtue ethics also seems to strike a balance

between virtues that demand a narrow
concern for specific people (for example,
loyalty to family), and virtues that demand a
more general concern for others
(for example, benevolence).

Notes: NA
Slide 20

Attractions of VE: Balance

Let us consider these examples to illustrate this point.

Example 1
The story of Andrew and Belle shows how loyalty sometimes trumps benevolence.

Example 2
The (true) story of Ted and David Kaczynski shows how benevolence sometimes trumps loyalty.

Benevolence
Loyalty

Notes:
First example: How loyalty sometimes trumps benevolence.
Andrew and Belle are parents caring for their children. They are very poor, but spend 95% of
their meager earnings on charity for others, leaving their own children hungry and
uneducated.
Here, it seems like Andrew and Belle are doing something wrong. They are being excessively
benevolent toward strangers, and are not sufficiently loyal to their own children.

Second example: A true story showing how benevolence sometimes trumps loyalty.
David Kaczynski informed police that he suspected his brother, Ted, of being the Unabomber.
The Unabomber was a domestic terrorist who, over a period of seventeen years, mailed out
a series of package bombs that killed three people and injured twenty-three others. Davids
suspicion was confirmed: Ted Kaczynski was arrested and, in exchange for a sentence of life
in prison without parole, he pled guilty to three counts of murder.

Here, it seems David struck the right balance between benevolence and loyalty. Although
Ted was Davids brother, it seems that David was right not to ignore the very real possibility
that his brother was murdering innocent people. After Teds arrest, David actively worked to
ensure that his brother would not be given the death penalty. In the end, prosecutors
accepted a guilty plea from Ted in exchange for a life sentence.
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Attractions of VE: Balance

How do we know when one virtue should trump another?

Virtue ethicists:
If you are virtuous, and you rationally reflect on
the case at hand, you will be able to judge
correctly when a particular virtue should take
priority over another.

Notes: NA
Slide 22

Summary
Here are the key takeaways from this lesson:
The basic claim of virtue ethics is that the morally right action is whatever a
virtuous agent (moral exemplar) would do in the situation.
A virtue is a character trait that manifests as a commitment to think, act, and
feel in certain ways.
According to virtue ethicists, having the moral virtues is necessary for
flourishing is an ideal state of well-being.
Attractions of virtue ethics:
o Seems well-suited to handle the complexity of morality
o Balances different virtues against one another

Notes: NA
Slide 23

Bibliography

Aristotle (2000), Nicomachean Ethics, translated and edited by Roger Crisp. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
De Palma, Anthony (1990), Plagiarism Seen by Scholars in Kings Ph.D. Dissertation, New
York Times, 10 November 1990.
Kraut, Richard (2002), Aristotle: Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pojman, Louis P. and James Fieser (2012), Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 7th edition.
Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Rachels, James and Stuart Rachels (2012). The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 7th edition.
McGraw-Hill.
Sandel, Michael (2009), Justice: Whats the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux.
Shafer-Landau, Russ (2012). The Fundamentals of Ethics, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Notes: NA