Virtue Ethics Explained

Introducing Virtue Ethics

• Virtue ethics focuses on the importance of virtue, which are good habits of character
• Virtues are seen as moral characteristics vital for an individual's well-being
• Developing good habits, or virtues, and avoiding bad habits, also called vices, is essential
• Morality is determined by an individual's character and its influence on their actions
• Developing and maintaining virtues is not easy
• Virtues correct natural human deficiencies and benefit both individuals and society
• Virtues, along with good actions, require effort to manage
• Cardinal virtues serve as primary virtues, other virtues fall under them

Virtue Ethics in the Classical Period

• Plato's moral philosophy focuses on the understanding of the virtues
• Aristotle's moral philosophy, found in Eudeimian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics, highlights the cultivation of virtue (arete)
• The Cynics, Stoics, and Epicureans elaborate on living in accordance with nature and align with Virtue Ethics

Socrates-Plato Relation

• Socrates was known as the "wisest man in Greece”
• From Plato's Apology, Socrates is known for stating: "The unexamined life is not worth living"
• Socrates was convicted to death for "corrupting the youth of Athens"
• The Apology, or Apologia, is Greek for formal defense or justification of actions
• Knowledge and wisdom are the main objectives of a life, and virtue and moral excellence are core goals, guided by reason
• Socrates encountered individuals, such as Ion, Crito, and Glaucon, who were not living an examined life
• Plato's understanding of morality differs from writings in modern day
• Gorgias explores whether pleasure and pain provide an objective standard of right and wrong
• Euthypro questions if the idea of Good comes from the happiness of the gods, or the other way around

Plato's Dialogues Exploring Moral Philosophy

• Charmides explores moderation/temperance
• Laches explores courage
• Hippias Lesser explores lying and intentional wrongs
• Hippias Greater explores aesthetics and the definition of beauty
• Meno explores if virtue is innate and discusses the immortality of the soul
• Protagoras explores if virtues can be taught and notes that virtues are intertwined
• Crito presents Socrates refusing to escape prison, believing that one must never do wrong in return for a wrong
• Plato asserts that being bad is to be ignorant of the Good

Plato's Later Works

• Symposium elaborates on eros and its role in achieving virtue
• The Republic focuses on answering "What is Justice?"
• Plato defines justice as an internal activity—cultivating virtues towards one’s soul

Plato's Forms

• Forms, also called Ideas, are the perfect, stable models of ordinary objects
• The physical world is unreliable and prone to change
• The World of Ideas/Forms is perfect and the physical world resembles it
• Good is the highest form of moral predicates
• The Socratic Trinity (TRB) provides a glimpse of Good
• Comprehending the Good leads to good actions with the help of reason
• Virtue is knowledge that can be taught

Knowledge and Wisdom in Plato's Philosophy

• True knowledge can be obtained by comprehending the true reality behind everyday experience
• Cultivating knowledge and wisdom is key to removing illusions from the imperfect world
• Allegories presented by Plato in the Republic help understanding concept of forms
• The Allegory of the Cave elaborates that lack of education and ignorance are the primary issues of Athenian society

Plato's Justice

• Plato believed in morality rather than law
• Justice:
  • Thrasymachus: the interest of the stronger
  • Glaucon: a social contract
  • Adeimantus: questions innate goodness
• Justice is achieved by harmonizing the components of the soul for individuals
• Placing individuals in their proper classes enables societal harmony

Aristotle's Ethics

• Combines Virtue Ethics and Teleology and focuses on ultimate end (telos), in Greek, called eudaimonia
• Achieving happiness (eudaimonia) achieved by cultivating virtue (arete)
• The ultimate inclination of man is happiness, it ends the becoming of man
• Living well/happiness is considered the end for end-in-itself, the ultimate inclination of man in his becoming
• Living well/happiness is not a feeling, but an activity of human beings
• Ethics involves a study into the human good
• Becoming good enables attaining summum bonum (the greatest good) that is grounded in self-realization, self-sufficiency and attainability

Achieving Eudaimonia According to Aristotle

• Achieving eudaimonia involves satisfying material needs and cultivating moral and intellectual virtues
• Intellectual virtues like Practical Wisdom (phronesis), Theoretical Wisdom (theoria), Intuitive Thinking/Intuition (Nous), Natural Science (Episteme), and Craft Expertise (Techne) are important
• Moral (Cardinal) Virtues - Wisdom (Phronesis), Courage (Andreia), Temperance (Sophrosune) and Justice (Dikaiosune)
• Not exercising virtues properly leads to affecting the individual’s actions and leading to deficiency or an excess, hence being called a vice

Aristotle's Golden Mean

• The golden mean helps determine the appropriate moral virtue to be acted on
• Golden Mean is the middle ground between extremes
• Actions that bring enjoyment/happiness are welcome, and actions that bring agony are not
• Everything should be done in moderation
• Finding the mean involves fully understanding the present circumstances
• The mean between 10 pounds and 2 pounds of meat is not 6 pounds, but depends on if you are at a buffet, home, or a party

Virtues and Feelings

• Doing something excessively or lacking leads to difficulties because this does not create equilibrium towards the soul
• For Aristotle, feelings are okay as long as you don’t reach the point of no control to what you feel.
• Akrasia is a lack of virtue mastery and hinders individuals
• Pathos represents feeling/emotion/passion
• Individuals can't master a certain virtue due to akrasia
• Reason should be exercised so that an individual can master a certain virtue, though they are affected by some pathos
• Aristotle calls mastering something by acting in accordance to reason even though thoughts are affected by pathos enkrateia

Necessity of Control According to Aristotle

• Releasing emotions when there is great harm is okay like war, but not committing heinous crimes
• A life lived well must include pleasure, and Aristotle disagrees with those who say it is bad
• The finest pleasures are experienced by those that are virtuous
• From Ethics Book VII, pleasure is an unimpeded activity in natural state
• Pleasure should not be endorsed to just oneself, but apply it to others
• Some situations should involve not choosing certain pleasures even if they are pleasurable because they are not worth it
• All living things imitate the contemplative activity of god that enjoys “single & simple pleasure”
• Pleasure is not a process and completes activity in the manner of adding an end
• pleasure is a good, but not the good, rather it is the contemplation of the good
• Activities involving goodness and badness differ, and those being being worth choosing, others worth avoiding, and others neither, the same is true of pleasures as well

Friendship

• Philia is the commonly used Greek term related to the context of relationships to others, especially with family and friends, and not exclusive to familial love
• Individuals like another person due to good character, usefulness, and being pleasant
• Those that are "imperfect" happen due to large moral gaps and when those grounded to pleasantness or usefulness only are unworthy to be friendships because they can easily be broken
• Genuine friendships are grounded on one liking the other
• Friendship is essential because it is inclined towards our political nature

Good Self-Love

• Too much self-love pursued with external goods results in undermining stability, conflict with others, and harming of political community
• Self-love that is praised makes admirable citizens
• The political community and individual is related in that the society comes before the citizen
• Each generation should receive the same education

Education and Conclusions

• Education at the time was mostly private and in the hands of sophists who teach techne
• Citizens belong to the city and the society must collectively provide decisions
• One’s actions not for himself, must be for the greater community for actions must be connected to interests of whole
• The best life is living a philosophical life
• Well-being of society needs politics to practice, to be able to show self-mastery of virtues, and to achieve happiness

Post-Socratic Philosophy

• Post-Socratic Philosophy brought four dominant schools of thought: Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Epicureanism
• Stoicism and Epicureanism heavily influenced with modifications from first two
• Greek Classical philosophy propagated until the Roman Empire period
• Schools closed due to decline, though practicioners remained, applying to other areas
• Latter virtue ethics in Greek society share the perspective of living in accordance with nature

Cynics

• A philosophical school in Athens is seen as unconventional because moral concepts come from way of living, not doctrine
• Antisthenes established Cynic philosophy, though Diogenes the Sinope was attributed as a Cynic
• Diogenes was famous for looking for an honest man, living in a wine jar, Diogenes Laertius, VI
• Lived in accordance to nature, ate/slept when it suited him, threw away his cup when he saw a child drink from his hand, condemned love for money
• Unlike others, Cynics have no teachings set in space and taught on the streets

Cynic Teaching

• Important to live in accordance to nature while rejecting convention
• Nature is what one can live well from and rejects social etiquette
• Emphasized acting freely, self-sufficiency through reason over passions, freedom of speech, constant training, and risks
• Askesis emphasized training of the body for the self
• Cosmopolitanism valued the world

Stoicism

• Stoics is derived from stoa poikile with thought beginning and discussed in painted porch
• Socrates heavily influenced Zeno of Citium because of tragic shipwreck, and the pursuit for a man like Socrates
• Stoicism influenced from Aristotelian, Cynic, and Platonic philosophies
• General Stoic answer to want of eliminating unfortunate life is finding happiness, tranquility, and virtuousness

Core Principles of Stoics

• Social animal, and is okay to survive alone as long as healthy
• Capable of reason, though not reasonable all the time
• Living well and happily and is borrowed from Aristotle’s Ethics
• Stoics emphasize living in accordance with nature
• Well-ordered systems say no room for luck/chance, so a master plan is soft determinism
• Theory of appropriation/oiekiosis: transformation in views as they mature

Self-Love and Relationships

• Self is initial for organisms, and pleasure has a by-product for “self-love”
• Man growing means man matured
• Social relations create members to identify with each other
• What is complete for rational beings is a perfection of virtue
• Reason has a perfection of virtue
• Use of virtues leads to happiness

Dichotomy of Control and Emotion

• Cannot control the event, though can control reaction
• Apathetic is not feeling, but not being psychologically subject to everything
• Stoics say that passions have false values and mistakes for assuming them
• Remember that you will die and connect it with Latin phrase carpe diem
• Live in accordance to nature and appreciate everyday

People to Note

• Zeno
• Seneca
• Epictetus
• Marcus Aurelius

Epicureanism

• atomic materialism to establish the school called “The Garden” with those for the art of rational thinking
• Seek the pleasure for ataraxia. Have no pain in the body aponia
• Virtue is a source achieve tranquility, is ground for individual happiness
• Pleasure pain is ground for satisfaction pleasure and motivation for man
• Higher: intellect/aesthetics
• Lower: physical like drinking and eating
• No positive thoughts instead absence of troubledness on friendship/knowledge
• Nature gives pleasure either with satisfaction or not.
• Desires such as sleeping for natural reasons, some are unnatural, and some cause bad energy like power and wealth. That can be avoided