Why Should I Be Moral?

Because of My Character!

Virtue Ethics

Aims of Today’s LessonTo deepen our understanding of what MacIntyre calls “a return to virtue”

To consider how Christianity has adopted Virtue Ethics through its valuing of moral saints and heroesTo identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of Virtue Ethics

Starter Exercise (15 Mins)

• To re-cap and build upon your learning from last lesson, you will be working together as a group to complete the time-line of Virtue on the front desk

• I’ll explain the task by doing an example

Aretology• Arete - Excellence, Strength, Virtue• Aretaic Ethics - Strength-Centered

Ethics• Emphasises Virtues (Strengths) and

Vices (Weaknesses) of Character• Not “What Should I Do?” but

“What Kind of Person Should I Be?”• BEINGNESS not DOINGNESS

Aristotle and the Goal of Human Existence (384-322

BCE)• Eudaimonia (p.g. 4)• Flourishing, Happiness • A Lifelong Pursuit,

accomplished– Rationally, through reason

and contemplation– Functionally, through practice

Two Types of Virtue (p.g. 4-5)

• Intellectual Virtues– E.g. Wisdom, Understanding, Prudence

(common sense)– Inborn but developed through instruction

• Moral Virtues– E.g. Justice, Courage, Temperance– The result of habit– Not natural or inborn but acquired through

practice – habit“Those strengths of character that enable us

to flourish”

The Doctrine of the Mean (p.g. 6)

• Proper position between two extremes– Vice of excess– Vice of deficiency

• Not an arithmetic average– Relative to us and not

the thing– Not the same for all of

us, or any of us, at various occasions

Aristotle therefore said:

"Everybody who understands his business avoids alike excess and

deficiency; he seeks and chooses the mean, not the absolute mean, but the mean considered relatively to

ourselves."

Examples of the mean

Cowardice Courage Foolhardiness

Stinginess Generosity Prodigality

Shamlessness Modesty Bashfulness

Maliciousness RighteousIndignation

Enviousness

Vice of Deficiency Virtue Vice of Excess

Virtues and Community• Aristotle said that virtues are

defined and lived in community thus making friendship essential (p.g. 8)

• Sharing a common identity and story

• Modeling the Virtues– Importance of Moral Exemplars

(Saints and Heroes)

Moral Heroes and Heroines

Mother Theresa of Calcutta• Not motivated by

pity or obligation.• Saw "the face of

Jesus" in the poor and dying.

• Her work and her daily religious practice were both a participation in the story of Jesus.

The Aretaic Turn in Moral Philosophy

• Alasdair MacIntyre (p.g. 11)• After Virtue (1981)

– Modern moral philosophy is bankrupt; it must recover the tradition of virtue

– Importance of Narrative as a “lived tradition”, telling the stories of our saints

Stanley Hauerwas• Resident Aliens (1989)

– Christianity has lost its soul. – Christians are not primarily

citizens of a liberal, democratic society - Preach as if you have enemies like

the first Christians did • Provocative, offensive, challenging

– “How Marriage is a Subversive Act” - fidelity– “Why Gays (As a Group) Are Morally Superior

to Christians (As a Group)” – they have conviction!

– Communitarian Ethics

Example of Virtue Ethics• Amish

communities– Anti-worldly

16th Century– Pacifist– Family– Story

The Taliban Vice and Virtue Department– Anti-western

– Community focus– Provocative– Challenging: behave

in Islamic ways– Story – what is our

identity as followers of Islam, what virtues shape that identity

Strengths of Virtue Ethics (p.g. 14f)

• Importance of the Person, Motive, Heart, Conscience – personal side of ethics

• Connection to Community • Realization that morality is not defined by

moments or rules but by a long-term process• Allowance for gray areas, varying contexts,

different levels of moral maturity and life contexts

• Attainable because works through examples of virtuous people

Weaknesses of Virtue Ethics

• How do we define virtue (Annas)• Robert Louden – is it practical, how does

a person know what a “good person” would do when faced with an issue like abortion – virtues conflict etc

• Over dependence on strong communities• Culture dependent• Susan Wolf - boring• Can be turned into a self-centred

Conclusions• Utilitarianism and Deontology are

helpful• But they demand some kind of larger

criteria or grounding, some larger view

• Virtue ethics seems to provide this, and

• Seems to reflect Christian ethics best

Today’s Aims Met?To deepen our understanding of what MacIntyre calls “a return to virtue”

To consider how Christianity has adopted Virtue Ethics through its valuing of moral saints and heroesTo identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of Virtue Ethics

Aristotle

(384 – 322 BCE)

Plato

(428–347 BCE)

Homer

(disagreement – just a very long

time a go!)

Ambrose (338 – 397 CE)

Augustine (354 – 430 CE)

Gregory (540 – 604 CE)

This thinker stressed the concept of Eudaemonia (well being). The

thinker spoke in terms of Moral and Intellectual Virtues and said that

human beings flourished when they struck the mean between excess

and deficiency in any of the virtues.For this thinker the ethical life was the life of virtue whereby a person learnt to be good even though ‘the

good’ was not absolute

This thinker believed in an ideal world of “good” and

“virtue”. Yes a person can be good, this thinker said,

but their goodness was really a poor reflection of

the “perfect good” that lay in what was called “the

world of Forms or ideas”. This thinker said that this world of ideal good and

perfect virtue was like life outside of a cave. What we

call “good” is just a pale reflection of that life

Well it all began with this person. Said to be the

author of two epic poems set against the backdrop of Troy, this apparently blind poet speaks of courage,

physical strength, cunning and friendship. Whilst

betrayal and deceit were seen as the opposite of friendship, friendship during war made life

bearable and was therefore prized. This poet prized

honour and virtue above all else.

These thinkers translated the Greek Tradition of Virtue into

an approach to ethics that Christianity could accept.

One of them stressed the need for sexual virtue (on account of a little problem he had with his libido). For 1400 years these two thinkers set the stage for

Christian ethics and made sure that Virtue lay at its heart

Aquinas

(1225 – 1274 CE)

Søren Kierkegaard

(1813 – 1855 CE)

Stanley Hauerwas

(b. 1940 CE)

G. E. Anscombe

‘Modern Moral Philosophy’

1958

Alasdair MacIntyre

‘After Virtue’

1981This thinker wrote a book in

this year called “After Virtue”. In it the thinker argued for

practical ethics rooted in the “real world” and pleaded for human communities to be at the centre of ethical life. The thinker claimed that stories (and telling stories) has the

power to create communities of virtue – where good is

celebrated and bad frowned upon.

This thinker is one we have yet to study. He’s a Christian

Theologian who wrote a book in this year called “Resident

Aliens”. Basically, this ethicist believes that Christians should live as if they were in heaven.

Those around them should notice how different they are from the rest of the crowd. Christians, living by strong

virtues like faithfulness, should be like resident aliens -

radically different.

This thinker was very extreme in the way that they went

about thinking about ethics. The person spoke of ethics

involving a “leap of faith” at a time when other philosophers were talking about reason and rationality. For this person, the

most ethical person was Abraham – who listened to

God, ignored reason, and took a leap of faith into the dark. This thinker is known as an

existentialist.

This thinker was one of the first Christian Theologians to really reflect on virtue from a Christian standpoint. To the cardinal virtues of courage,

justice, temperance and wisdom, this thinker added three theological virtues:

Faith, HopeAnd Charity

Like St. Paul, he stressed that Love was the greatest virtue

of all

These thinker wrote an article in this year that really

set moral philosophers thinking about virtue once

more. The thinker said that moral philosophy since the enlightenment had thrown the baby out with the bath water and had become too obsessed with reason. The thinker pleaded for a return to Aristotle and the Virtue

tradition.