Virtue ethics is agent-centred ethics rather than act-centred. Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and believed that everyone wants to live a full and happy life, this is known as eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is the idea of ideal happiness and it is the highest good, because we desire it for its own sake and not as a means to an end. In his book, Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle stated that we want to be good, and there is a difference to things that are good as means, and things that are good as ends. A good life is something inherently worth having, unlike justice which is worth having because it leads to a good life.
Virtue theory has its origins with Plato and Aristotle. Plato suggested that happiness could be attained through the pursuit of virtues and that certain virtues are central: prudence, justice, courage and temperance. These later become known as the ‘Cardinal Virtues’. (Cardinal translates to fundamental.) Aristotle develops this and distinguishes between things that are good as means (for the sake of something else) and things that are good as ends (for their own sake only).
According to Kant, right actions are not done by following inclinations, impulses or obeying the principle of greatest happiness but are done simply and purely from the sense of duty. Kessler says that some ethical truths and norms are appropriate to everyone in the society, and therefore, people should always act morally irrespective of the outcome for their morals. In deontology ethics, actions are done for the sake of duty. The intrinsic moral feature determines the rightness or wrongness of the act taken by individuals. The duty should always be done by taking the right.
I think that to a large extent the conflict is misunderstood, but it is also illustrative of some larger, more glaring issues in philosophy. Aristotle describes the virtuous person as one whose passions and deliberation are aligned. The person takes pleasure in, or is not, at any rate, disinclined toward, doing what he thinks is best. The virtuous person, according to Aristotle, is superior to the continent person, in whom deviant passions are in conflict with prudent deliberation, and in whom deliberation manages to defeat the passions for the control of immediacy of action. Yet it is the continent person whom Kant calls virtuous and to whom Kant ascribes moral worth.
Socrates believed that people should evaluate their lives and become ethically responsible. He often considered people should not seek money or power but to become morale correct in society. One of Machiavelli’s famous quote: “It is better to be feared than loved.” He believed that leaders should do anything necessary to gain and maintain power. How can two people with opposite moral have the same ethical beliefs? Socrates and Machiavelli were both humanist philosophers.
Explain the theory of duty in Kantian Ethics (25 marks) Kantian ethics is an absolutist theory as Kant claimed what is morally ‘good’ is constant and unchanging. Because of this, it can be a universal concept applied in different societies and cultures with the idea that an action should only be performed for duty’s sake. His approach was deontological because the idea of right or wrong was based on the action rather than the consequence, he believed that this was the only rational basis for morality and could be proven objectively, independent from emotion and opinion. As humans we have the innate ability to reason, something which we gained prior to any sensory experience in this world. This is an idea which is absolute and according to Kant, the way we decide the morality of an action.
The Distinction of Virtue Ethics from other normative ethical theories In this essay, I will focus on a particular trait of Virtue ethics, which is “it has No Rules, or Too General Rules”. I will argue that this trait is the one of the main distinctions among other theories, and that this feature is an advantage to the theory. Virtue ethics is a normative theory where in the west, has its roots from the ancient work of Aristotle. The theory puts a strong emphasis on virtues and/or moral character, explaining that ethical behavior of a person is strongly related to the role and virtues of his/her character, in contrast the ways of deontology and consequentialism. Where in deontology the emphasis is on duties or rules, and in consequentialism it focuses on the concequences of one’s actions.
This is in direct violation with David Hume’s stance on morality. Hume writes that it is desire rather than reason that governs human behavior and that, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” Kant’s conception of duty is based on the notion that all good ought to be done because they are intrinsically good. Duty for Kant is a basis of moral law. For example, one ought to preserve their own life or help feed the homeless because it is their societal duty to do so, not because they want to or that doing so makes them feel good. In fact, according to Kant, a person who hates helping others but does so anyways because they see it as their societal duty is a good moral agent.
It focus less in any particular instance and instead ruminate what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie said about one's character and moral behavior. As such, lying would be made in a case-by-case basis that would be based on factors such as personal benefit, group benefit, and intentions. Virtue-based ethical theory is not actually in conflict with deontology or teleology: those two viewpoints deal with which actions a person should take in any given scenario, whereas virtue theorists simply argue that developing morally desirable virtues for their own sake will help aid moral actions when such decisions need to be made. Aristotle categorized the virtues as moral and intellectual. Aristotle identified some intellectual virtues, the most important of which was wisdom; Sophia (theoretical wisdom) and phronesis (practical wisdom).
In “Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals” by Immanuel Kant, a general framework is laid out for this idea that the discussion of metaphysics in philosophy has been led astray; that even the common man has a better understanding than most philosophers. Kant reasoned that the morality of an action lies solely in the cause and not in the effect; that is, in order to call an action morally good or bad, one must first analyze the motives for carrying out said action, making sure the action itself is from duty and not just coinciding with it. He also gave the groundwork for understanding how to determine if an action is morally good or bad by use of what he calls the “categorical imperative”, where you take a principle in a given situation (such as lying) and imagine a world where every person lied all the time. That would raise a contradiction and paradox in itself, because in order for lies to exist, there must be the existence of truth; this contradiction, Kant claims, is the reason why it cannot, under any circumstances, be morally permissible. However, the