Philosophy: Aristotle's Virtue Ethics

Human Acts

• A person assumes full responsibility and accountability for their actions
• Examples of human acts include studying, working, and eating healthy foods

Acts of Man

• Involuntary actions, not within the control of the will
• Examples include biological and physiological movements, such as breathing, digestion, circulation of air, heartbeat, and sleepwalking

Impediments to Human Acts

• Ignorance: absence of knowledge in a subject capable of having knowledge
  • Vincible ignorance: can be removed
  • Invincible ignorance: cannot be removed
• Passion: powerful emotions springing from a perceived good or evil, diminishing free will
• Fear: emotional reaction to impending danger, destroying voluntariness
• Violence: external physical force exerted on a person
• Habit: acquired through frequent repetition, can be good (virtues) or bad (vices)
• Temperament: the culmination of an individual's innate tendencies

Reason and Impartiality

• Reason: the ability of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments through logic
• Impartiality: associated with justice and commitment to equality in politics, but can lead to selfishness in personal matters

Proper Functioning and Virtue

• Everything has a function, and is good or bad to the extent that it fulfills or doesn't fulfill that function
• Aristotle's Golden Mean: the desirable middle between two extremes or vices
• Virtue: a skill, way of living, and learned through experience, involving doing right at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, towards the right people
• Eudaimonia: human flourishing or a life well-lived, involves facing disappointments and failure

Moral Exemplars and Aquinas

• Moral Exemplars: people who demonstrate outstanding moral conduct in difficult circumstances
• Aquinas: virtue is the path to happiness, and morality is about seeking what leads to our flourishing and success
• False candidates of happiness: money, honor, power, fame, and pleasure
• Final Happiness: consists in beatitude or supernatural union with God

Cardinal Virtues

• Prudence: concerned with intellect, allows us to judge correctly what is right and wrong in any given situation
• Justice: concerned with the will, involves giving everyone their rightful due
• Fortitude: allows us to overcome fears and remain steady in the face of obstacles
• Temperance: the restraint of our desires or passions, involves balancing legitimate goods against our inordinate desires

Other Philosophers

• Socrates: unexamined life is not worth living, evil is the result of ignorance
• Friedrich Nietzsche: the ideal superior man of the future could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose their own values
• Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another
• Ahisma: respect for all living things and avoidance of violence towards others
• Groupism: the tendency to conform to the general thinking and behavior of a group
• Wager Argument: an argument for the existence of God, based on the potential consequences of belief or disbelief