I will attempt to lay forth a proposal to consider virtue ethics as a viable option for ethical discourse. I will first begin with stating the advantages of dominant ethical theories and what I find to be lacking in them. Consequentialism is strong because of its accessibility and calculations. It also aligns with many of our deepest convictions, it condemns slavery as immoral, offers protection to animals, doesn’t allow racism, xenophobia, or prejudice and promotes equal rights for male and female. Furthermore, one doesn’t have to look beyond herself to discover how to be moral, no pining away at the inscrutable mind of a god, or searching through religious text, but every person who has the ability to reason, feel, and discern can make ethical choices. Finally it’s all encompassing; the moral agent is neither neglected nor made special. Consequentialism is “on the ground” ethics so to speak.
Deontological ethical formulas such as the categorical imperative offer a no-loose-ends certainty to morals. Deontology doesn’t factor the consequences of the action; each person is accountable for his own actions, in as far as the correctly follow a moral rule discovered through logic and reason. It too is accessible, for humans are capable of reason and have the ability to understand explanations for why a think is wrong. Kant argued that duty originates from reason and even then one must do his duty from good will and know that they are acting out of good will. After all, it isn’t difficult to imagine that a man, who helps someone cross the street out of good will, is moral praise worthy. On the other hand, a man who secretly hopes that the person gets hit by a car as they help them across the street isn’t doing something morally praise worthy. What both ethical theories lack is an emphasis on character virtues, or they need to introduce character virtue in order to salvage their ethical theory.
There are three key components that are found in most virtue ethics: virtue (excellence), practical wisdom (prudence), and human flourishing (happiness). Aristotle taught that some good end is the aim of all human pursuit, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.” (266). But there are many goods, so what is the greatest good? Aristotle divides actions into goods as means to things not desired for their own sake and good “desirable in itself and never for the sake of another.” (ibid) Happiness, or eudaimonia is the chief good, because other goods instrumentally aim toward happiness. But Aristotle’s understanding of happiness is more robust than physically pleasurable sensations caused by a pottage of chemicals that involuntarily, gloss our eyes, flutter out hearts and showcase teeth. Happiness includes the good times as well as the bad, it is the winding road of human experience. Vritue ethics is also accessible. We all (or most of us) ask, what is the meaning of it all? What am I put here to do? What is my purpose? How do I secure a good life? Many explanations have been given, to serve and live with God, to make money, to indulge in pleasure, to be in relationships, to learn all you can, or to obey the state. While these explanations factor, as Aristotle would say, instrumentally, arguably they would not qualify as the chief good, or the good that is sought for its own sake. According to Aristotle happiness is the chief good.
This is relevant because it is accessible to all people. We all enjoy relationships, but we know people who are anti-social. Money is sought after, but people can do without it, some do without it, and others cannot achieve it. We anticipate pleasure to follow and precede actions we like, but would consider a person a scoundrel who committed horrible crimes while teeming with pleasure himself. People long for God; others do not. It’s reasonable to say that people do not long for their own misery intentionally. Only the mentally ill inflict harm on themselves, and no sane man wishes to be a brute over being a brain. Happiness appears to be a goal sought for its own sake. What most separates us from animals is our intellect; it makes us human, to be human is to exercise intellectual faculties with excellence and virtue. This would mean that we seek to improve our knowledge, behave prudently, live a balanced life, and achieve excellence in what we do; that is the heart of the good life.
Happiness is a vein that pumps blood into the human species. It is achievable by all who function as humans; no one is left out, that is its strength. Being honesty or telling the truth should make a person more truthful and be done by people who are honest; a person can tell the truth but not be honest and be honest but not always tell the truth. There is a distinction between being and doing. Suppose a man is a scoundrel, who lies for no reason and at all. He tips off the police about an innocent man’s wear about and doctors false information to implicate the innocent man. When ask the scoundrel, where does he live, and the scoundrel responds, 207 Waterbrook Dr, apt 7, this man, said a truthful thing, is not honest nor is what he did morally good. Truth is localized within a grid of truth-conducive activity that ought to be delimited throughout majority of speech and be derivative from the soul or intellect and character of the speaker.
Theoretically, neither deontology nor consequentialism requires virtue to fulfill the bare bones of their ethical requirements. This makes their ethical skeleton, the pudding of their system, insufficient. Neither do we want a scoundrel who is impetuous, racist, callous, and loves it so, acting only out of duty. He may lack good will because he hasn’t cultivated character to think about thing in Kantian framing, or his actions may form a cognitive dissonance—telling the police where the innocent victim is because he suddenly remembered for a flash that it is his duty to tell the truth. And what of consequentialism, potentially, if a scoundrel can maximize the net happiness and minimize pain, he will do it in a manipulative fashion. He would probably make a great consequentialist but a poor member of the moral community overall without virtue.
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