Aristotelian virtue ethics - high school philosophy

1. Aristotle is considered to be the
most important virtue ethicist.

2. SPA
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
• n
Aristotle was
Plato’s student,
and Plato was
Socrates
student.

3. Plato: The Three Souls
Intellectual soul whose virtue is
wisdom, the most important virtue.
Intellectual soul should rule over the
other parts of the souls.
The will-soul whose virtue is courage
which is the second most important
virtue.
Desire-soul whose virtue is
moderation which is the third most
important virtue.
Plato was a virtue ethicist too.

4. The parts of the soul of the
virtuous (arete) person are in
harmony and in right order
Such person can live a good life
(eudaimonia)

5. Plato: The virtuous human and state
Reason
Will
Desire
Rulers
(philosophe
rs)
Soldiers
Workers
The parts of human soul The classes of a state
Wisdom
Courage
Moderation

6. How to live a
flourishing life?

7. Aristotelian philosophy and
the place of virtue ethics in it
 Aristotle attempts to identify what are
the characteristics of human being
that differentiate it from other species.
 Every species has its own role in the
universe.
 It is the fulfilling its role well that
defines what is the ultimate good of
that thing or animal.

8. Happiness
 When one does what one is supposed to
do, one feels fulfillment.
 In other words, when one is what one is
supposed to be, one is happy.
 Happiness / satisfaction is considered to
be a good thing.
 In fact happiness is the ONLY really
good thing in the sense that we don’t
want it for the sake of another thing (as a
tool) but for its own sake.

9. The animal called ”human
being”
 There are natural criteria for judging
whether the act is leads to happiness
(eudaimonia) to misery
 These criteria are defined by what the
human being (as a species) is.
 By observing, what makes human
being happy (eudaimonia) and what
make him suffer, one can find out
what kind of acts are virtuous.

10. Key concepts of Aristotelian
virtue ethics
 ergon (function)
 eudaimonia (flourishing)
 arête (excellence or virtue)
 phronesis (practical or moral wisdom)

11. 1. Ergon (function)

12. What is the function of
human being?
 Aristotle asks what is the ergon (“function,” “task,”
“work”) of a human being is, and argues that it
consists in activity of the rational part of the soul in
accordance with virtue.
 One important component of this argument is
expressed in terms of distinctions he makes in his
psychological and biological works.
 The soul is analyzed into a connected series of
capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for
growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul for
motion, the perceptive soul for perception, and so
on.

13. What is the function of
human being? (cont)
 Human beings are the only species that has not only
these lower capacities but a rational soul as well.
 The good of a human being must have something to do
with being human; and what sets humanity off from other
species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our
capacity to guide ourselves by using reason.
 If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or,
to be more precise, using reason well over the course of
a full life is what happiness consists in.
 Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and
therefore living well consists in activities caused by the
rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.

14. Three different kinds of
souls
1. Plant soul – capacity for nourishment
and reproduction
2. Animal soul –capacities of
perception and self-motion
3. Intellectual soul – capacity to reason
 Plants have 1
 Animals have 1,2
 Human beings have 1,2,3

15. Aristotle: types of souls

16. Aristotle’s division of the soul
Non-rational element Rational elements
Nutrition/growth Theoretical reason
Practical reasonDesire/emotion

17.  n

18.  n

19. flourishing life

21. Eudaimonia – differend
translations of the term
 Eudaimonia is standardly translated as "happiness" or
"flourishing" and occasionally as "well-being.“
 Each translation has its disadvantages.
 "flourishing" - animals and even plants can flourish but
eudaimonia is possibly only for rational beings.
 "happiness“ – in modern understanding it connotes
something which is subjectively determined. It is for me,
not for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy. But
according to classical thinkers I may have wrong idea
about what eudaimonia is and therefore think that I am
have eudaimon but I fact I don’t.
 comparison: I might think that I am healthy but am not

22. Eudaimonia – the true
happiness
 Eudaimonia is a moralised, or "value-laden"
concept of happiness, something like "true"
or "real" happiness or "the sort of happiness
worth seeking or having.“
 Thereby virtue ethicists claim that a human
life devoted to physical pleasure or the
acquisition of wealth is not eudaimon, but a
wasted life
 All standard versions of virtue ethics agree
that living a life in accordance with virtue is
necessary for eudaimonia.
 Eudaimonia involves virtuous life – virtues
are goals in themselves, not instruments for
achieving eudaimonia.

23. Is something else than virtues
needed in order to achieve
eudaimonia?
 Aristotle says that virtue is necessary
but not sufficient — what is also
needed are external goods that are (to
an extent) a matter of luck:
 Health
 Wealth
 Friends
 Functional society

24. Happiness and friendship
 Friendship is one of the most important
virtues in achieving the goal of
eudaimonia (happiness).
 While there are different kinds of
friendship, the highest is one that is
based on virtue (arête).
 This type of friendship is based on a
person wishing the best for their friends
regardless of utility or pleasure.
 Aristotle calls it a “… complete sort of
friendship between people who are good
and alike in virtue …”

25. The supreme value of
friendship
 Friendship based on virtue is long lasting and tough to obtain because these
types of people are hard to come by and it takes a lot of work to have a
complete, virtuous friendship.
 Aristotle notes that one cannot have a large number of friends because of
the amount of time and care that a virtuous friendship requires.
 Aristotle values friendship so highly that he argues friendship supersedes
justice and honor.
 First of all, friendship seems to be so valued by people that no one would
choose to live without friends.
 People who value honor will likely seek out either flattery or those who have
more power than they do, in order that they may obtain personal gain
through these relationships.
 Aristotle believes that the love of friendship is greater than this because it
can be enjoyed as it is. “Being loved, however, people enjoy for its own sake,
and for this reason it would seem it is something better than being honoured
and that friendship is chosen for its own sake”.
 The emphasis on enjoyment here is noteworthy: a virtuous friendship is one
that is most enjoyable since it combines pleasure and virtue together, thus
fulfilling our emotional and intellectual natures.

26. 3. Virtue (arete)

27. What makes virtue a virtue
that promotes eudaimonia?
1. Eudaimonism - the virtues are what enable a human
being to be eudaimon because the virtues just are those
character traits that benefit their possessor in that way,
barring bad luck.
2. Pluralism - the good life is the morally meritorious life, the
morally meritorious life is one that is responsive to the
demands of the world. The virtues just are those
character traits in virtue of which their possessor is thus
responsive.
3. Perfectionism or naturalism - the good life is the life
characteristically lived by someone who is good qua
human being, and the virtues enable their possessor to
live such a life because the virtues just are those
character traits that make their possessor good qua
human being (an excellent specimen of her kind.)

28. 3. Virtue (arete)
 Arete could be translated “excellence”, standard
translation, however, is “virtue”
 A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a
tendency to do what is honest or generous, nor is it to
be helpfully specified as a "desirable" or "morally
valuable" character trait.
 A character trait —a disposition to be behave in certain
way
 Virtue is not like a habit which is more specific, action
oriented, and related to something particular (habit of
drinking tea)
 Virtue is more “general” in nature: it enables its
possessor to evaluate things in an appropriate way so
that one has – as a result of this virtue - right kinds of
emotions, attitudes, desires, perceptions, expectations,
sensibilities.
 Virtue enables one to make right choices from the point
of view of eudaimonia (flourishing life).

29. 4. Phronesis – an important
element of practical reason
 Phronesis is something that the virtuous morally mature adult
has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack.
 Both have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to
mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know
in order to do what he intends.
 Children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit
either because they do not know how to set about securing the
benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of what
is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken.
 Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and
frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults.
 Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless,
insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming
that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more
objective viewpoint.

30. The animal called ”human
being”
 There are natural criteria for judging
whether the act is leads to happiness
(eudaimonia) to misery
 These criteria are defined by what the
human being (as a species) is.
 By observing, what makes human being
happy (eudaimonia) and what make him
suffer, one can find out what kind of acts
are virtuous.

31. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and allegedly
EVERYBODY agree on that
• Everybody wants to have good
(eudaimonia) life.

32. Human being is a Goal-directed
system
• As the human being wants to have good
(eudaimonia) life, she is a goal-directed
system.

33. Failure and success
• The person who achieves eudaimonia,
achieves the goal of the human being.
• The person who does not, fails to achieve
the goal of the human being.

34. Failures
• People who fail to achieve the goal, do so
because their soul are not in balance.
• The unbalanced soul strives for wrong
things in the wrong way in the guidance of
uncontrolled and distorted desires.

35. Success
• The good life can only be achieved by
striving for the best things in the right way.
• The best things are truth, goodness, and
beauty.
• Only the virtuous soul can achieve
happiness.
• TO BE HAPPY, YOU NEED TO
VIRTUOUS!

36. What are virtues and what
virtues are there?

37. The Aristotelian Mean
also called the Golden Mean
The virtuous (right) conduct as a
mean between two vices of
excess

38. Virtue is a “golden mean” between the
extremes of excess and deficiency
• Courage, for example, is a mean
regarding the feeling of fear, between the
deficiency of rashness (too little fear) and
the excess of cowardice (too much fear).
• Benevolence is a mean between giving to
people who don’t deserve it and not giving
to anyone at all.

39. Situation Vice of Deficiency Virtue (Mean) Vice of Excess
Danger Cowardice Courage Foolhardiness
Satisfaction of
appetites
Inhibition Temperance Overindulgence
Giving gifts Miserliness Generosity Extravagance
Pursuit of goals Unambitiousness Proper ambition Excess Ambition
Self appraisal Feelings of
inferiority
Proper pride Vanity
Response to insults Apathy Patience Irascibility
Social conduct Rudeness Friendliness Obsequiousness
Awareness of one’s
flaws
Shamelessness Modesty Shyness
Conversation Boorishness Wittiness Buffoonery

40. Personal differences
• The mean is “relative to ourselves,” indicating
that one person’s mean may be another
person’s extreme.
• Milo the wrestler, as Aristotle puts it, needs
more gruel than a normal person, and his
mean diet will vary accordingly.
• Similarly for the moral virtues. Aristotle
suggests that some people are born with
weaker wills than others; for these people, it
may actually be a mean to flee in battle (the
extremes being to get slaughtered or commit
suicide).

41. Criticism against virtue ethics

42. No fundamental principles
• Virtue ethics doesn’t provide fundamental
principles that would amount into decision
procedure for determining what to do.
– Reply:
• Is it not realistic to hope that there are such principles
• Principles and logic are not enough to determine what to do

43. The problem of cultural
relativism
• Different cultures embody different virtues, and
hence what is virtuous is relative to particular
culture. Therefore, one type can of action can be
both right and wrong depending on the culture.
This is not helpful for anyone who wants to do
what is right.
– Reply: All other normative theories have the same
problem

44. For discussion?
Is abstaining from murder a mean of some
continuum?

45. The weak, the strong, and the virtuous
• Weak is the one who is not able to resist her wicked
desires.
• Strong is the one who can resist them.
• What is common for them is the wicked desires.
• There is fight going on in the souls of both and,
therefore, neither one of them is really happy.
• Happy is the one who through upringing and practice
has learned to want those things that the reason tries to
achieve.
• The kind of person who is capable of this is virtuous
(therefore: virtue ethics).

46. For discussion
Is it possible for all to learn to want the
right things in the right way?
If not then to whom it is not possible?
If yes, how?
Or do you think that there is no problem
at all. People always want right things
in the right way?

47. Two kinds of virtues
There are two kinds of virtues:
1) Intellectual virtues
2) Moral virtues

48. Two kinds of Intellectual virtues
There are two kinds of intellectual virtues.
a) Theoretical intelligence (nous) is the human faculty that
apprehends fundamental principles such as the laws of thinking
and other fundamental truths. Intelligence apprehends these
truths directly and without demonstration or inference.
• This is unique to humans and gods.
• Theoretical intelligence cannot be learned.
• All people have some theoretical intelligence, some people have
a lot of it.
b) The other kind of intellectual virtue is practical wisdom.
• The practical wisdom is the ability to make right judgement on
practical issues.
• It can be learned.
• Old people normally have more of it than the young.

49. 2) Moral virtues
• A moral virtue is the ability to be reasonable in actions, desires
and emotions.
• For example, courage is the ability to deal with fear in a
reasonable way.
• Courage is the reasonable mean between cowardice and
foolhardiness or rashness.
• A virtue is the mean between two extremes, a vice of deficiency
and a vice of excess.
• In the case of courage, cowardice would be the vice of deficiency
and foolhardiness would be the vice of excess.
• Moral virtue is the outcome of habit.
• Virtues are not implanted on us by nature.
• We acquire virtues by exercising them.

50. Two kinds of good life
• All kind of good life is life in the
guidance of reason.
• There is, however, two kinds of
good life.

51. The life devoted to study
and thinking
• 1. The good life in which the
subject devotes himself to
abstract contemplation of
knowledge.
• This is truly the best way of life,
but it is not within the reach of all
men.

52. Active life in society
2. The other alternative is active
life in society which involves
taking part in all the activities
that human beings undertake to
make their own life and the life of
their society better.