Virtue Ethics

• Eudaimonia is best translated as flourishing, living well or living a good life
• Aristotle claimed this shows that living a good life is the goal (telos) of all human action
• The unique characteristic of human beings is our ability to reason. So, we are living well, living a good life – flourishing – when we are reasoning well; when we are guided by reason, when we have good reasons for our actions.
• Virtues are whatever enable a thing to perform its function well. The function of an axe is to chop, so its virtues would be things like sharpness and solidity. Our function is to reason well. The virtues for human beings which enable us to reason will be character traits, dispositions and habits.
• The doctrine of the mean is that virtues exist on a spectrum between the vice of excess and the vice of deficiency
• Courage would be the ‘golden mean’ between the excess of recklessness and the deficiency of cowardliness
• A virtuous person will have the practical wisdom to figure out the right action for the situation. This gives virtue ethics flexibility
•  It’s possible to take the situation into account while also providing more guidance than Aristotle manages to. Consequentialist theories like Situation ethics and Utilitarianism are also flexible and capable of taking the situation into account, but still also provide clear guidance
• An argument for and strength of virtue ethics is that it is rooted in universal human nature. All humans seek flourishing as our natural end (telos). Martha Nussbaum argues that there are universal types of human experience and that a list of virtues could be developed in reference to that. She points out that many virtues are universal, such as justice.
• Different cultures seem to value different virtues. There doesn’t seem to be a way to figure out which culture’s values are the ‘correct’ ones.
• A strength of Aristotle’s Virtue ethics is that it fits with the arguably most common intuition about animal ethics, that humans are more important because we have reason.
• “other animals are for the sake of human beings … If then nature makes nothing incomplete or pointless, it must have made all of them for the sake of human beings.” – Aristotle.
• Aristotle’s claim that the only good for human life is human flourishing is an anthropocentric view, meaning irrationally focused on human interests.
• Peter Singer accuses attitudes like Aristotle’s of ‘speciesism'
•  Peter Singer argues it was Aristotle’s hierarchy of souls doctrine that led to his acceptance of slavery. Aristotle said that some humans are as far below other humans as ‘beasts’ are from humans, so enslaving them was good for them.
• Virtue ethics could be reformulated so it isn’t anthroprocentric.

  Martha Nussbaum attempts that. Justice is a central virtue in Aristotelian virtue ethics. In her book “Justice for animals” Nussbaum argues that all sentient beings are capable of flourishing in their own way. Justice requires that they be allowed to pursue their flourishing. Humans must work towards the end of animal mistreatment if they are to cultivate the virtues of justice and compassion and thereby flourish themselves.
• Aristotle’s Virtue ethics fails because it equates human flourishing with rationality and yet, being speciesist, is irrational
• Slavery used to be considered acceptable. In fact even Aristotle himself supported it, seeing no conflict with his ‘justice’.
• only virtuous people have practical wisdom, therefore his theory gives no guidance to those who need it most.