'The weaknesses of Virtue Ethics outweigh its strengths.' Discuss. Virtue ethics derives from Plato and Aristotle and does not focus on actions being right or wrong, but instead of how to be a good person and the character of a person. It looks at what makes a person good and the qualities (or virtues) that make a person good. Virtue ethics is agent-centred ethics rather than act-centred; it asks ‘What sort of person ought I to be?’ rather than ‘How ought I to act?’ The Aristotelian approach shows to give an account of the structure of morality and explained that the point of enrolling in ethics is to become good: ‘For we are enquiring not in order to know what virtue is but in order to become good since otherwise our enquiry would be of no use.’ (Nichomachean Ethics, Book 1, ch.
These impulses are perceived as unjustified temptations in natural law because “true happiness is not found in … wellbeing … but in God alone, the source of every good and of all love” (CCC 1723). However, Aquinas recognises that fulfilling the transcendent will of God – true happiness and divine perfection - is unfeasible in the presence of earthly distractions, and thus, a human can merely approach pure goodness asymptotically by achieving
The other type of love Pausanias talks about is vulgar, common love. This love is considered bad because as Pausanias states its main focus is “to the body more than to the soul.” The main purpose of this love is simply to satisfy one’s sexual needs. Common love could both involve younger boys or female of any level of intelligence without the intentions of passing on virtue. He highly disapproves of vulgar love that he recommend laws be placed to prevent such acts. Pausanias believes love is only good when it is used for virtue and to increase one’s development and anything else is considered bad.
The first and most obvious place to look for Aristotle’s view on relativism is Metaphysics I’. Here, Aristotle is mostly concerned with the law of non-contradiction and those who deny it. He includes Protagoras with such thinkers based on his relativistic notions that x and not-x can both be true for different people. A consequence of the law of non-contradiction (Met I’3) is that, if x is contrary to not-x,
The issue here is whether a deontological ethical system is the only one which is defensible, i.e. whether it can be defended and accepted philosophically when teleology cannot. This statement is claiming that it is, at the same time implying that teleology is not a defensible ethical system. People may agree with this, as one reason that philosophers might give for saying that a deontological ethical system is the only one that is defensible is because although humans are motivated by their happiness, the problem with this is that it can seem selfish to only think of ones own happiness and it could be argued that being moral involves more than happiness, and more satisfaction can be gained long term from doing something moral than doing something for your own happiness. However, other people may disagree with this and believe that a deontological ethical system is not defensible because it cannot encourage human beings to act morally, as they will not gain enough satisfaction out of doing so, as they would in a teleological ethical system where the ultimate end or goal is human happiness.
In the beginning of Book I, Socrates convinces Cephelus and Polemarchus that justice is not only doing good to friends and wrong to enemies nor is it only useful in certain aspects of life. Rather, justice is something that should be in every aspect of your life. But when Thracymachus questions this theory by saying justice only benefits some, Socrates (and Plato) is forced to clarify. He goes on to explain why justice is beneficial to every type of person. He explains that the strong can only be powerful when they make just choices, otherwise they will be overthrown by a united majority.
Actions are then just if they sustain or are consonant with such harmony. Such a conception of individual justice is virtue ethical because it ties justice (acting justly) to an internal state of the person rather than to (adherence to) social norms or to good consequences; but Plato's view is also quite radical because it at least initially leaves it an open question whether the just individual refrains from such socially proscribed actions as lying, killing, and stealing. Plato eventually seeks to show that someone with a healthy, harmonious soul wouldn't lie, kill, or steal, but most commentators consider his argument to that effect to be highly deficient. Aristotle is generally regarded as a virtue ethicist par excellence, but his account of justice as a virtue is less purely virtue ethical than Plato's because it anchors individual justice in situational factors that are largely external to the just individual. Situations and communities are just, according to Aristotle, when individuals receive benefits according to their merits, or virtue: those most
Yet, if we observe that pleasure is good, we should be able to ask is good pleasure. However if an individual gains pleasure through inflicting harm can we conclude that good and pleasure are one and the same thing? In short ethical naturalism is unable to define good, yet continues to claim that ethical language is based on objective truth. Non Cognitive approaches to meta ethics such as emotivism and prescriptivism argue that ethical language is subjective. A. J. Ayer claims that ethical language
Of the remaining criteria we might consider, only sentience―the capacity of a being to experience things like pleasure and pain―is a plausible criterion of moral importance. Singer argues for this in two ways. First, he argues, by example, that the other criteria are bad, because (again) they will exclude people who we think ought not be excluded. For instance, we don't really think that it would be permissible to disregard the well-being of someone who has much lower intelligence than average, so we can't possibly think that intelligence is a suitable criterion for moral consideration. Second, he argues that it is only by virtue of something being sentient that it can be said to have interests at all, so this places sentience in a different category than the other criteria: "The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way" (175).
Robert Louden stated that as virtue ethics is focused on the individual, it neither resolves nor attempts to resolve big moral dilemmas. It may help the moral agent virtuous but it does not give any answerers relating to an ethical crisis. Scholars such as Aristotle, however, would disagree with this point saying that each individual has to habitually do what is right for a period of time as a result of habitually doing what is right we naturally do what is good. In time, this leads to the growth and well-being of everyone in society. Because of this I would say that this weakness isn’t strong enough to say