Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Issues for Aristotelian Virtue Ethics (Possibility of circularity involved…
Issues for Aristotelian Virtue Ethics
Guidance on how to act
Utilitarianism offers us the principle of maximising happiness and Kant offers us the test of the Categorical Imperative
Doctrine of the mean
Not much help
Too much or too little are not quantities
List of right time etc are much more complicated than that
No help with understanding how often we should behave a certain way
Response
Unlikely to be intended in this way
We have practical wisdom
Requires virtues of character and lots of experience
Does practical wisdom provide guidance?
Knowing the right action is what a virtuous person would do does not help me
Response
Aristotle admits as much
Without good character, I cannot understand what is truly good
Knowledge of the good is not in everyone's reach
Provides no guidance
Wrong because we are all sufficiently rational
Response
Too simple
People can improve their knowledge of what is good
Conflicts between virtues
Aristotle denies that conflicts between virtues ever take place
Aristotle explicitly rejects the claim morality needs to be universal or absolute
Virtues provide us with various means to achieve eudaimonia
Possibility of circularity involved in defining virtuous acts and virtuous people in terms of each other
An act is virtuous if it is an act that would be done by a virtuous person in this situation
A virtuous person is a person who is disposed to doing virtuous acts
Nothing to clarify what is virtuous
Circular definition
Response
Pay closer attention
Know what they are doing and choose the act for its own sake
Eudaimonia is defined not in terms of virtuous actions but in terms of activities
1 is correct but 2 is too simple
We cannot tell whether an act is virtuous without knowing whether a virtuous person would do it
Response
Criterion for an act being virtuous is that it is an act that a virtuous person would do
We have a good idea of what a virtuous person is without being able to name particular individuals as virtuous or not
Reply
We infer that someone is virtuous from what they do
Virtue is expressed in emotional response and pleasure
No circularity in establishing whether an act or a person is virtuous
Virtue and eudaimonia
Christine Swanton
Medic working in a foreign country
Morally good but not flourishing
Wrong to think virtues are traits that contribute to ones eudaimonia
Response
Misunderstand the concept of eudaimonia