Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics is a philosophical approach that treats virtue and character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role.
Virtue ethics is usually contrasted with two other major approaches in ethics, consequentialism and deontology, which make the goodness of outcomes of an action and the concept of moral duty central. While virtue ethics does not necessarily deny the importance to ethics of goodness of states of affairs or of moral duties, it emphasizes virtue and sometimes other concepts, like, to an extent that other ethics theories do not.

Key concepts

Virtue and vice

In virtue ethics, a virtue is a characteristic disposition to think, feel, and act well in some domain of life. In contrast, a vice is a characteristic disposition to think, feel, and act poorly in some domain of life. Virtues are not everyday habits; they are character traits, in the sense that they are central to someone’s personality and what they are like as a person.
In early versions and some modern versions of virtue ethics, a virtue is defined as a character trait that promotes or exhibits human "flourishing and well being" in the person who exhibits it. Some modern versions of virtue ethics do not define virtues in terms of well being or flourishing, and some go so far as to define virtues as traits that tend to promote some other good that is defined independently of the virtues, thereby subsuming virtue ethics under consequentialist ethics.
To Aristotle, a virtue was not a skill that made you better able to achieve eudaimonia but was itself an expression of eudaimonia.

Virtue and emotion

In ancient Greek and modern eudaimonic virtue ethics, virtues and vices are complex dispositions that involve both affective and intellectual components. That is, they are dispositions that involve both being able to reason well about the right thing to do, and also to engage emotions and feelings correctly.
For example, a generous person can reason well about when and how to help people, and such a person also helps people with pleasure and without conflict. In this, virtuous people are contrasted not only with vicious people and with the incontinent, but also with the merely continent.
According to Rosalind Hursthouse, in Aristotelian virtue ethics, the emotions have moral significance because "virtues are all dispositions not only to act, but to feel emotions, as reactions as well as impulses to action... In the person with the virtues, these emotions will be felt on the right occasions, toward the right people or objects, for the right reasons, where 'right' means 'correct'..."

and

is an acquired trait that enables its possessor to identify the best thing to do in any given situation. Unlike theoretical wisdom, practical reason results in action or decision. As John McDowell puts it, practical wisdom involves a "perceptual sensitivity" to what a situation requires.
is a state variously translated from Greek as 'well-being', 'happiness', 'blessedness', and in the context of virtue ethics, 'human flourishing'. in this sense is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the well-lived life.
According to Aristotle, the most prominent exponent of in the Western philosophical tradition, defines the goal of human life. It consists of exercising the characteristic human quality—reason—as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, like Plato before him, argued that the pursuit of is an "activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue", which further could only properly be exercised in the characteristic human community—the or city-state.
Although was first popularized by Aristotle, it now belongs to the tradition of virtue theories generally. For the virtue theorist, describes that state achieved by the person who lives the proper human life, an outcome that can be reached by practicing the virtues. A virtue is a habit or quality that allows the bearer to succeed at his, her, or its purpose. The virtue of a knife, for example, is sharpness; among the virtues of a racehorse is speed. Thus, to identify the virtues for human beings, one must have an account of what is the human purpose.
Not all modern virtue ethics theories are eudaimonic; some propose another end in place of, while others are non-teleological: that is, they do not account for virtues in terms of the results that the practice of the virtues produce or tend to produce.

History of virtue

Like much of the Western tradition, virtue theory originated in ancient Greek philosophy.
Virtue ethics began with Socrates, and was subsequently developed further by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Virtue ethics concentrates on the character of the individual, rather than the acts of the individual. There is debate among adherents of virtue ethics concerning what specific virtues are praiseworthy. However, most theorists agree that ethics is demonstrated by the practice of virtues.
Plato and Aristotle's treatments of virtues are not the same. Plato believes virtue is effectively an end to be sought, for which a friend might be a useful means. Aristotle states that the virtues function more as means to safeguard human relations, particularly authentic friendship, without which one's quest for happiness is frustrated.
Discussion of what were known as the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance—can be found in Plato's Republic. The virtues also figure prominently in Aristotle's ethical theory found in Nicomachean Ethics.
Virtue theory was inserted into the study of history by moralistic historians such as Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus. The Greek idea of the virtues was passed on in Roman philosophy through Cicero and later incorporated into Christian moral theology by Ambrose of Milan. During the scholastic period, the most comprehensive consideration of the virtues from a theological perspective was provided by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae and his Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics.
After the Reformation, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics continued to be the main authority for the discipline of ethics at Protestant universities until the late seventeenth century, with over fifty Protestant commentaries published on the Nicomachean Ethics before 1682.
Though the tradition receded into the background of European philosophical thought in the next few centuries, the term "virtue" remained current during this period, and in fact appears prominently in the tradition of classical republicanism or classical liberalism. This tradition was prominent in the intellectual life of 16th-century Italy, as well as 17th- and 18th-century Britain and America. The term "virtue" appears frequently in the work of Tomás Fernández de Medrano, Niccolò Machiavelli, David Hume, the republicans of the English Civil War period, the 18th-century English Whigs, and the prominent figures among the Scottish Enlightenment and the American Founding Fathers.

Contemporary "aretaic turn"

Although some Enlightenment philosophers continued to emphasise the virtues, with the ascendancy of utilitarianism and deontological ethics, virtue theory moved to the margins of Western philosophy. The contemporary revival of virtue theory is frequently traced to the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay "Modern Moral Philosophy". Following this:

In the 1976 paper "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories", Michael Stocker summarises the main aretaic criticisms of deontological and consequentialist ethics.
Philosopher, psychologist, and encyclopedist Mortimer Adler appealed to Aristotelian ethics, and the virtue theory of happiness or throughout his published work.
Philippa Foot published a collection of essays in 1978 entitled Virtues and Vices.
Alasdair MacIntyre made an effort to reconstruct a virtue-based theory in dialogue with the problems of modern and postmodern thought; his works include After Virtue, where he recommends Aristotle's account of the virtues, and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, where he recommends Thomism.
Paul Ricoeur accorded an important place to Aristotelian teleological ethics in his hermeneutical phenomenology of the subject, most notably in his book Oneself as Another.
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas found the language of virtue helpful in his own project.
Richard Clyde Taylor argues for the restoration of classical virtues as the basis for morality in Virtue Ethics An Introduction
Roger Crisp and Michael Slote edited a collection of important essays titled Virtue Ethics.
Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen employed virtue theory in theorising the capability approach to international development.
Julia Annas wrote The Morality of Happiness.
Lawrence C. Becker identified current virtue theory with Greek Stoicism in A New Stoicism..
Rosalind Hursthouse published On Virtue Ethics.
Psychologist Martin Seligman drew on classical virtue ethics in conceptualizing positive psychology.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman opens his book on Emotional Intelligence with a challenge from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
Michael Sandel discusses Aristotelian ethics to support his ethical theory of justice in his book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

The aretaic turn in moral philosophy is paralleled by analogous developments in other philosophical disciplines. One of these is epistemology, where a distinctive virtue epistemology was developed by Linda Zagzebski and others. In political theory, there has been discussion of "virtue politics", and in legal theory, there is a small but growing body of literature on virtue jurisprudence. The aretaic turn also exists in American constitutional theory, where proponents argue for an emphasis.
Aretaic approaches to morality, epistemology, and jurisprudence have been the subject of intense debates. One criticism focuses on the problem of guidance; one opponent, Robert Louden in his article "Some Vices of Virtue Ethics", questions whether the idea of a virtuous moral actor, believer, or judge can provide the guidance necessary for action, belief formation, or the resolution of legal disputes.