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Leading an objectively rational good life will produce a subjectively happy life of the kind appropriate to being human.
When Islam spread across Egypt, the Levant, and Persia in the seventh century, libraries of old Greek writings were found, including works of Aristotle lost to the Latin-speaking world. Those Islamic works were discovered by Christians when they conquered central Islamic Spain in the mid-twelfth century.
Like their Islamic counterparts a few centuries earlier, Christian scholars knew what they had in the Islamic libraries. Works by Aristotle who the Christian scholars knew from his logic books were eagerly translated into Latin and distributed widely. Enter Thomas Aquinas , who wrote the Summa Theologia The Sum of Theological Knowledge , creating a system that could, as advertised, provide answers to all questions.
Like Aristotle, Aquinas based ethics on the pursuit of our proper human end. Unlike Aristotle, Aquinas believed that our proper human end of eud ai monia is not found in this world. For Aquinas, every event occurs because there is some end toward which things are directed, and we humans, like everything else in the universe, have our own ends.
Unlike everything else, we as humans can consciously choose which ends we pursue, and ethics concerns which ends are worth our efforts to pursue. Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed that ethical understanding comes through virtue and that virtue is a skill that must be developed.
By rationally reflecting on what is in accord with nature and our own natural inclinations, we can understand the ethical virtues. He held that sin affects our moral life but not our rational life, clearing the way for the use of our human intellect to learn ethical truths.
He borrowed from Islamic philosophers the conception that intellect is both passive and active. Intellect passively takes in sense experience and ideas but actively processes them to abstract universal truths. The universals abstracted by the mind from multiple individuals e.
Put simply, we use our intellect to understand the world God has created. It is an orderly and purposeful world, with all of the objects in it receiving their purpose from God. To be rational, which is central to our human ends, requires intellectual discipline, but it is the way to virtue. Through self-discipline and reflecting on the natural law, we learn and develop as ingrained habits the four cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, prudence, and justice.
Virtuous persons practice the four cardinal virtues in their daily lives, and from those virtues flow ethical behaviors in all situations.
There are many schools of Buddhist thought in many countries, from monasteries devoted to religious ritual devotion to solitary practitioners of meditative practices.
A common thread among most Buddhist schools of thought is an emphasis on a virtue ethical system that teaches the art of becoming balanced and harmonious through humility, with the goal of being free from dukkha , or suffering or anguish. The emphasis in Buddhism is on what is suitable and unsuitable rather than on the Western sense of right and wrong or good and evil.
A life of virtue is outlined by the eightfold path: suitable view, intention, mindfulness, concentration, effort, speech, bodily conduct, and livelihood. The idea of karma is that it is a natural phenomenon that we can think of similarly to how we think of the laws of physics. The law of karma says that thoughts and actions that intend to harm others will eventually cause harm to ourselves and that thoughts and actions that intend to benefit others will eventually benefit us.
Karma is not a strict determinism in that we still have free will and can mitigate the consequences of karma through our virtuous thoughts and actions. To avoid future suffering in this life or future lives, a Buddhist focuses on developing inner virtue to be able to think and act suitably in order to avoid negative karma, and to generate positive karma.
Having made a commitment to follow the eightfold path as a way of life, you are disposed to follow those rules. For more than two millennia, Chinese philosophy has been dominated by two great traditions, Confucianism and Daoism Taoism , that have influenced China throughout its history and are important to Chinese culture still to this day. The Dao cannot be described completely in words but can be sensed as the source of all things and the rhythm of Being.
All things come from Dao, and all things have their own Dao, or essence, which comes from the Cosmic Dao. Both Confucianist and Daoist ethical systems teach that a community flourishes when its members are in harmony with the Dao, and that the state flourishes when its leaders are in harmony with the Dao. However, Confucianism and Daoism are in disagreement about how communities and governments can keep in harmony with the Dao and, thus, promulgate different ideas about how to attain virtue.
Confucianism is the social and ethical system set down by Kongzi Master Kong c. Kongzi saw the virtuous person as an artistic creation achieved through the diligent practice of ethical excellence by way of strict ritual practice. Just as a craftsperson uses tools to fashion wood or stone, a person uses ritual behaviors to carve and polish his or her character. Li extends to all aspects of life; Kongzi taught that our every action affects our character and our environment, so every activity needs to be performed with the proper respect and procedures.
Kongzi issued hundreds of rites in sayings covering many aspects of human life, how youth should behave toward their parents, what colors of clothing one should wear and when, how one should greet another person, protocols that should be observed at the court of the ruler, and so on—all to be strictly observed in order to cultivate the comprehensive ethical virtue known as Ren.
Ancient Chinese society was highly stratified, and Kongzi thought that maintaining the social hierarchy was essential to social order. Filial piety was more than respecting your family elders dead or alive; it was the fundamental building block of social harmony and justice. The more one practiced the rites, the more one developed virtue, most importantly the virtue of Ren or benevolence. Ren should be understood not as acts of kindness but as acts of propriety that create virtue in oneself and society.
Practicing the rites virtuously brings each person and society in harmony with the Dao and leads to a good life for all. The philosophy of Daoism has long provided a strong counterpoint to Confucianism. An agent-based approach will "derive its evaluations of human actions-whether aretaic or deontic-from independent and fundamental aretaic characterizations of the inner traits or motives of individuals" p.
It is essential that the agent be guided by the right motives and traits for the action to be right. The inner life of the agent-their motives and inner traits-is the basis for evaluating actions.
Different varieties of agentbased virtue ethics will have different accounts of what traits an agent must innately express in order for right action. Slote touches on several varieties. For example, one version may appeal to the notion of inner strength. This account would treat strength "as an ultimately admirable way of existing" p.
There would be something innately admirable about being strong inside. Other accounts may treat morality as beneficence. It would say that an agent performs right action if they acted out of beneficence p. The action is right because the trait is being expressed from within the agent, and the trait is motivating the agent in the right way. An individual cannot simply copy the actions of the virtuous person; they must act out of the right motivations. There are two objections against virtue ethics.
Consider the charge Simon Keller makes that virtue ethics is self-effacing. A moral theory is self-effacing when "the considerations that it posits in telling that story sometimes should not serve as motives for action, according to the theory itself" p.
Recall Stocker's moral schizophrenia, where he claimed most moral theories cannot allow for harmony between motives and reasons. Moral theories facing this problem are selfeffacing because people would intuitively agree that the considerations they propose should not act as motives in every situation.
Keller identifies two things wrong with selfeffacing theories. First, they do not properly tell people what should motivate them, "so they fail to perform a function that an ethical theory should perform" p. Secondly, they do not allow for a "psychologically harmonious life" because they do not allow the agent to be motivated by what is important to them p. Keller asserts that "if the virtue ethicist is to avoid self-effacement then she must make the following claim: it is never undesirable for an agent to be moved to action by the thought that her act is in accordance with the virtues, or by the thought that she is acting as the fully virtuous person would" p.
Virtue ethics would have to allow one's motivations to be acting like the virtuous person, not acting out of the good of a virtue. Keller says that virtue ethics cannot commit to such a statement.
Normative Virtue Ethics. Essays on the Virtues. Oxford University Press, Keller, Simon. Virtue Ethics is Self Effacing. Slote, Michael, Virtue Ethics.
Baron, P. Pettit, and M. Stocker, Michael. The Schizophrenia of Modem Ethical Theories. The Journal of Philosophy , 73 Print, pp. Sakellariouv, A. Sakellariouv, Alexandra M. Discussions [Online], JournalQuest is a free program to help academic student publications increase online readership and distribution. If you are interested in enrolling a journal at your school, please visit the JournalQuest website. The newsletter highlights recent selections from the journal and useful tips from our blog.
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Forgot password? Reset your password ». From Discussions VOL. By Alexandra M. Sakellariouv Discussions , Vol. Cite References Print. Abstract There has been a modern revival of interest in virtue ethics as a plausible moral theory. Next ». Hursthouse, Rosalind. Print Keller, Simon. Oakley, Justin. Varieties of Virtue Ethics. Blackwell Publishing, N. Timmons, Mark. Moral Theory: An Introduction. Example: In our class we see how much God loves us because He has given us the gift of Baptism, by which we become His children.
We want to develop good habits and we call good habits the virtues. Today, we are also going to talk about prudence. Please take the time to help the catechists to use the Virtue Program. The Virtue Program is now on-line. Please print the copies for your catechists from the Website as the page with the practices to foster each virtue have been greatly expanded since May, making it even easier to use.
The arduous task of growing in virtue is worth it because a virtuous person is a person whose life is characterized by a sense of vitality, purpose and joy regardless of circumstances. Importance of the Virtue Program Why do we need to develop the virtues?
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