Furthermore it emphasises the need for people to break bad habits of character, as they prevent one from achieving full happiness and being a moral person. Such bad habits are greed and anger, and these are referred to as vices and in order to be a good person, we must stay away from these vices. The origins of this theory date at least back to Plato and Aristotle. Although modern virtue ethics does not have to take the form known as "neo-Aristotelian", almost any modern version still shows that its roots are in ancient Greek philosophy by the employment of three concepts derived from it. These are arete (excellence or virtue) phronesis (practical or moral wisdom) and eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness or flourishing.)
Aristotle draws a distinction between superior and subordinate aims, believing Eudaimonia' is the end goal or purpose behind everything we do as people, and is desired for its own sake and therefore a superior aim. Aristotle also developed the idea of moral and intellectual virtues. The moral values are; courage, temperance, big-heartedness, generosity, high-mindedness, right ambition, patience, truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, modesty, righteous indignation. The intellectual virtues are; practical skill, knowledge, common sense, intuition, wisdom; resourcefulness, understanding, judgement, cleverness. Aristotle then chose the four cardinal values from these lists, which are; temperance, courage, wisdom and justice.
While Ethical Naturalists believe it holds great importance as it can convey facts and help us to understand ethical theories, there are those who strongly disagree with this. For example Intuitionists, such as Moore, believe that our intuition is more useful when wanting to know how to act morally than knowing the definitions of ethical terms. Although Non-Cognitive theories disagree with the factual content of ethical statements, it is clear that they still see some significance in ethical language. However rather than seeing it as facts, they accept that morality is subjective and suggest that the importance of ethical language is provided by the emotions conveyed in the phrases used. Perhaps more so than Emotivists, Prescriptivists see ethical language as fairly meaningful.
Ethics Essay Wesley Hurt ETH/316 10/23/2013 Sherry Johnson Metz Ethics & Theory Ethics can be defined as the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, or class of people. Ethics also deals with the moral principles of an individual. Virtue theory, utilitarianism, and deontological ethics are the three main categories of theory dealing with ethics and the human decision making process. According to Boylan, “Virtue ethics is also sometimes called agent-based or character ethics. It takes the viewpoint that in living your life you should try to cultivate excellence in all that you do and all that others do.” (2009) Virtue ethics is driven by what is called absolute 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. 2) Quite importantly, Aristotle’s distinguishes between things which are good as means (for the sake of something else) and things which are good as ends (for their own sake only), Aristotle seeks for one final and overriding end of human action, one final good – eudaimonia (or final happiness). Philosophers of the 20th century brought about a revival of virtue ethics as many were concerned with the act-centered ethical theories. Virtue ethics is able to do something very different to other ethical theories – rather than focus on the act of a person, virtue ethics will focus on the person itself. The modern development of virtue ethics is often linked back to a paper by G. E. M. Anscombe entitled ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’.
Cognitivism is the view that we can have moral knowledge. People who hold cognitive theories about ethical language believe that ethical statements are about facts and can be proved true or false. Non-cognitivists make the distinction between facts and values. Therefore those that have cognitive theories of ethics will say that ethical language is not meaningless and there is something to learn from it, whereas those that follow non-cognitive theories will agree with the essay question saying that it cannot be verified. A.J.
May 21, 2014 ETH/216 Ethics Essay Virtue ethics emphasize the roles of a person characters and what they embody for determining their ethical behavior. Virtue ethics places an importance on developing good character traits, instead of focusing on a set of rules that one should follow. Through virtue ethics, a person can break bad habits that they have acquired over period of time. The virtue ethics theory allows a person to realize their motives behind their decisions, which in return helps them to correct things in terms of morality. The utilitarianism theory focuses on the proper action being taken in order to maximize the total benefit and reducing the possibility of negativity.
People also have the ability to think morally for themselves so morality is relative to someone’s point of view. The main point favoring the cultural relativism argument is that if there are no moral principles, then the principles can only be relative to culture. If someone were to express their opinion about the morals of a culture that they didn’t agree with, including what the culture already believed to be right, then that person would lose the argument without any question. This can be easily disproved because in one culture, not every person is going to have the same moral judgments about what is right or wrong and people can establish objective moral principles. A culture also can’t think of them as having the power to decide which is right and
Virtue ethics, character traits – or virtues and vices – are the components of moral analysis and the particular forms of human excellence. Virtues are familiar traits of one’s character such as kindness, truthfulness, compassion, and loyalty; and vices such as meanness, dishonesty and cruelty. Virtue ethics would be the best theory to apply to health care reform and insuring the uninsured. Everyone wants to live the “good life”, and if a person believes that doing good will bring good, then individuals need to join together to make sure all are being taking care, for the good of the people (the insured and
For utilitarian school of thought, an individual strives to do the most good, even at the expense of the minority. Utilitarianism and Kantianism find the basis of their differences in the idea that the ends justify the means. Utilitarian beliefs support this idea while Kantian philosophy rejects this. Modern ethics were devised from these two basic ethical beliefs in an attempt to combine the best aspects. Generally, the morally “right” action benefits the majority while affecting the fewest amount in a negative way.