1. VIRTUE ETHICS
And Feminist Ethics

2. Why Should I Be Moral?

3. Emphasizes Virtues (Strengths) and Vices (Weaknesses) of Character
Not “What Should I Do?” (both Deontology and Teleology) but
“What Kind of Person Should I Be?”

4. Aristotle’s Ethics 384-322 B.C. The Nicomachean Ethics
Two Kinds of Persons
Continent:
Do what is right, but not necessarily because they want to
Temperate:
Do what is right because they want to; the more holistic person

5. The Goal of Human Existence
Eudaimonia
Flourishing, Happiness
A Lifelong Pursuit, accomplished
Rationally, through theoretical wisdom and contemplation
Functionally, through practical wisdom and politics

6. The Goal of Human Existence & Eudaimonia
Goal is the flourishing through virtuous activity.
Human happiness is the activity of the soul (reasoning well) in accordance with perfect virtue (excellence).

7. The Virtues Intellectual Virtues Moral Virtues Wisdom, Understanding,
Taught through instruction
Moral Virtues
Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance
The result of habit
Not natural or inborn but acquired through practice
Habit or disposition of the soul (our fundamental character) which involves both feeling and action

8. Virtues Prudence Compassion Generosity Benevolence Wisdom Justice
Courage
Temperance

9. The Doctrine of the Mean
Proper position between two extremes
Vice of excess
Vice of deficiency
Not an arithmetic median
Relative to us and not the thing
Not the same for all of us, or
“In this way, then, every knowledgeable person avoids excess and deficiency, but looks for the mean and chooses it” (II.6)

10. Aristotle argued that moral virtues are means between two corresponding vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. For example: courage is a virtue found between the vices of cowardliness and rashness.
Rashness Courage Cowardliness |_______________|______________|

12. Other Virtue Ethicists
Elizabeth Anscombe
In 1958 she published an article
called Modern Moral Philosophy arguing
that we should return to the virtues,
as the idea of a law without a lawgiver
was incoherent.

13. Other Virtue Ethicists
Philippa Foot
Tries to modernise Aristotle.
Ethics should not be about dry
theorising, but about making the
world a better place (she was one of the founders of Oxfam)
Virtue contributes to the good life.

14. Other Virtue Ethicists
Rosalind Hursthouse
A neo-Aristotelian – Aristotle was wrong on women and slaves, and there is no need to be limited to his list of virtues.
We acquire virtues individually, and
so flourish, but we do so together
and not at each other’s expense.

15. Other Virtue Ethicists
Carol Gilligan
In a Different Voice (1982)
Developmental theories have been built on observations and assumptions about men’s lives and thereby distort views of female personality.
The kinds of virtues one honors depend on the power brokers of one’s society.
The Ethics of Care