Virtue ethics

1. Aristotle and ancient virtue ethics

Modern virtue ethicists often claim Aristotle as an ancestor. Aristotle, however, was himself working through an agenda laid down by Plato and Socrates. Socrates asked the question at the heart of Greek ethics: ‘How should one live?’ All three of these philosophers believed that the answer to this question is, ‘Virtuously’ (see Virtues and vices §§1–3).

The ancient philosophical task was to show how living virtuously would be best for the virtuous person. Plato’s Republic attempts to answer Thrasymachus’ challenge that rational people will aim to get the most pleasure, honour and power for themselves. His argument is that justice, broadly construed, is to be identified with a rational ordering of one’s soul. Once one sees that one identifies oneself with one’s reason, one will realize that being just is in fact best for oneself. Thrasymachus, of course, might respond that he identifies himself with his desires.

Aristotle continued the same project, aiming to show that human eudaimonia, happiness, consists in the exercise (not the mere possession of) the virtues (see Eudaimonia; Happiness). The linchpin of his case is his ‘function’ argument that human nature is perfected through virtue, a standard objection to which is that it confuses the notions of a good man and the good for man. Ultimately, Aristotle’s method is similar to Plato’s. Much of Nicomachean Ethics is taken up with portraits of the virtuous man intended to attract one to a life such as his.

For Aristotle, all of the ‘practical’ virtues will be possessed by the truly virtuous person, the man of ‘practical wisdom’ (Aristotle’s central ‘intellectual’ virtue). Socrates believed that virtue was a unity, that it consisted in knowledge alone. Aristotle’s position is one of reciprocity: the possession of one virtue implies the possession of all. At this point he joined Socrates and Plato in their opposition to Greek ‘common sense’. This opposition to common sense is not something that characterizes modern virtue ethics.