Types of Virtue Ethics and My Personal Criticism of Them

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our most honorable course instructor Professor Dr. Mohammad Kamrul Ahsan for his consistent guideline and support throughout the semester. Without him it wouldn’t be possible for me to complete this project smoothly. His continuous monitoring, proper guidelines and valuable advice have made this task possible. I would like thank sir again for helping all the students in numerous ways. I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and hope it will be appreciated. A special acknowledgement goes to the North South University for providing us with resources that we got whenever needed.

Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics currently is one of the major ethics followed in normative ethics. Initially, it has been identified as one of the broad term theory that emphasizes on the role of moral character rather than following rules or duties (deontology) that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). The moral character talks about inclinations and intentions that dispose a person to act ethically.

Virtue ethics is more like person based rather than action. It looks at the virtue or moral character of the person carrying out an action, rather than the ethical duties and rules he is following or the consequences of his particular actions he is carrying. It just not only deals with the rightness or wrongness of individual actions it provides guidance to those characteristics and attitudes that a person will seek to achieve. So we can say, virtue ethics is more concerned about a person's life, rather than his particular actions. If we talk about examples our honesty, compassion, courage, generosity, integrity, fairness, fidelity, self-control, and prudence are the best ones the enlightens virtue ethics.

In my opinion, virtue theory teaches us:

• An action is only right when we are carrying that out that repeatedly no matter what is the circumstances.
• A virtuous person always has the attitude to act virtuously
• It enables us to pursue the ideals that we have adopted
• If a person 'possess and live the virtues' he/she would always act virtuously.
• Virtue is a moral characteristic that a person needs to acquire to live well.

The Three Questions

Alasdair MacIntyre – a modern philosopher raised three questions towards us as being at the heart of moral thinking:

• Who am I?
• Who ought I to become?
• How ought I to get there?

If we think deeply about three questions, we would see that he actually wanted to know what we really want in our life. We run day and night to achieve things, the more day passes the more we want more. Our need grows bigger and we run towards that to fulfill that but we never ask our soul what is it exactly that fulfill our wishes. Is it an illusion? We don’t know & we never want to. To achieve our ultimate goals, following the path of virtue can be one way or maybe the hardest. So As Alasdair asked we need to question our moral thinking – who we are, what we want & how we will reach there.

Different types of Virtual Ethics

We can divide virtual ethics into three types-

Individual Character Ethics

Individual character ethics is the identification and development of noble traits that helps to determine both the instrumental and intrinsic value of human ethical interactions. Noble traits that follows individual character ethics are understanding, self-discipline, gratitude, courage, wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, prudence etc.

Work Character Ethics

The identification and development of reflective noble traits are works such as honesty, creativity, honor, loyalty, trustworthiness, dependability, civility, empathy or shared work pride that determine the intrinsic and instrumental ethical quality of our work life.

For example, suppose, Mr. X is a manager who is facing global competition. He has huge productivity expectations which requires an effective teamwork. So, his work character behavior should be such that he will be considered as a role model for task accomplishment and for that he needs to have considerate relationship with others in the workplace.

Professional Character Ethics

Our professional character ethics holds self-regulation, loyalty, truthfulness, altruism, impartial judgment, public service which determine our intrinsic and instrumental ethical quality of an individual associated with our surrounding community.

For example, if a business manager of a hospital detects the double billing for the OT’s services, then his professional ethics will tempt his behavior to inform about this to the higher authority and get the problem solved. And even after notifying higher authorities if the problem still does not get solved then he will act as a whistleblower and inform about this to the public outside. He will not remain silent until the issue is rectified. A person with professional ethics will do this because of his loyalty towards the professional code of ethics.

My Criticism on Virtue Ethics

Although Virtue ethics looks like a flawless one, but there are some points that I would like to address that doesn’t make it perfect.

Self-Centeredness

Morality is all about our actions that affects other people. Moral praise and blame have been evaluated through our behavior towards others and the ways in that we exhibit, or fail to exhibit, a concern for the well-being of others. I believe, Virtue ethics, is more self-centered because its primary concern is with the agent's own character. Virtue ethics seems to be more interested in the self-flourishing and it does not care about other people much. Morality is not something that we should take get benefited from rather than it should be considered for other’s well-being. So, there is something wrong with the aiming of behaving compassionately. Self-centeredness should not make oneself happier.

Guidance

When we ask any virtue ethicist we should we do in any given situation they always refers us to do what a virtuous person would do. But my question is how do we identify an ideal virtuous person and upon whom we should model ourselves? For example, According to Christian tradition the ideal virtuous person would be “Jesus”. But there are non-Christians people as well who might disagree with this fact. Virtue ethics does not clarify how to resolve this issue. So, I would say virtue ethics doesn't provide any clear guidance on our moral dilemmas.

Choosing the right virtue

How should we identify the virtues that we aspire? One of the greatest philosopher of all time Aristotle proposed “the golden mean” that represents the middle between extremes. For example, we can find courage between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness, on the other. It may sound good but it is vague. Virtue ethics does not clarify exactly where the virtue courage reside along that spectrum.

Moral Confusion

In a morally confused situation virtue ethics might bring conflict about what to do. It does confuse people because they believe in moral action and yet it might appear harmful for their own self. For example, what would a virtuous woman, who is both honest and compassionate, do when a murderer asks her about the friend she just invited in her house is hiding? Should she tell him about her save herself or she should stick to his moral values? Virtue ethics creates dilemma in this kind of situation.

Moral Luck

There is a gossip that tells us that virtue ethics leaves us hostage to luck. Morality is all about responsibility and the adequate way getting praise and blame. However, we only praise and blame others for actions taken under conscious choice. The path of virtue is laborious where we can’t keep everything under control. Proper education, sound habits, good influences can promote the development of virtue on the other hand the wrong influencing factors can promote viciousness. Some people receive the help and encouragement of others to attain moral maturity and they are lucky but everyone is not. If the development of virtue is all about having luck, is it fair to praise the virtuous and blame the vicious for something that was outside of their control? Many people are dependent on the availability of external goods. Friendship with other virtuous agents is too much centralized in Aristotelian virtue. A life devoid of virtuous friendship lacks eudaimonia. However, we have no control over the availability of the right friends. So, praising the virtuous and blaming the vicious is not fair as their development related to respective virtue and vice were not under their control.

Criticism of Virtue Ethicists on Action-based Models

Like we criticized virtue ethics, virtue ethicists do criticize action-based ethical model in a number of ways:

• According to them, action-based models focus on formulating models but they fail to inspire people to be moral.
• Ethics should help us become good people rather than emphasizing good rules.
• It’s not enough if we do the right thing out of a sense of duty. Our actions should speak about our heart and it should take pleasure in being good.
• Action-based ethics sets a minimal moral-standards related to our actions, but does not assures the lifelong responsibility. So, we need to develop ourselves morally on a consistant basis.
• People learn and are inspired to be moral by observing others who lead a virtuous life, not by just learning rules.

Based on the facts virtue ethicists always keeps virtue above action-based models.

Bringing Action and Virtue Together

Contemporary ethicists have agreed on the fact that it is really important to have character development role in well-developed ethical theory. However, action-based ethicists and virtue ethicists still differ on its proper place. Action-based ethicists see virtues or character development as a means to encourage moral actions that only promotes “the good” human well-being. Character or virtue is instrumentally good – it always comes down to this one point and Virtue ethicists do agree with it. Having good character and living a life of virtue is a necessary part of “the Good” and human wellbeing. To Flourish as human being requires us not just that we do good, but that we be good.

Virtue in Deontology and Consequentialism

Virtue ethics refers a different ideology towards deontology and consequentialism. So far Virtue ethics has influenced modern moral a lot philosophy by developing a full-fledged account of virtue. It also made consequentialists and deontologists re-examine their own theories by taking advantages towards the insights of virtue.

For so many years Deontologists relied mainly on the Groundwork of Kant's moral theory. It basically talks about the Metaphysics of Morals. But the emergence of virtue ethics changed many things and it caused many writers to re-examine Kant's other works. From Metaphysics of Morals, or Anthropology from a Pragmatic

Point of View - to a lesser extent, theories like Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone have become the prime sources of inspiration for the role of virtue in deontology. Kantian virtue is quite similar to Aristotelian virtue in many aspects.. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant have mentioned about the importance of education, habituation, and gradual development. Late Kant’s ideas have been used by modern deontologists to illustrate the common sense plausibility of the theory. The main role of virtue and appropriate character development includes a virtuous character that helps one to formulate appropriate maxims for testing. So Kantian virtue remains rather dissimilar from other conceptions of virtue.

But there are differences as well, on at least three ideas:

First, Kantian virtue is emotionless where one thinks the emotions should be eliminated. Kant thinks moral worth comes from the duty of motive and motive struggles against inclination which is quite different from the Aristotelian picture of harmony between reason and desire.

Second, Kant has no place for weakness of will, which in the Aristotelian sense reflects distinction between continence and incontinence.

Finally, Kant believes we need to have an account of relationship between virtue as it is happening in the empirical world. Consequentialists have found that role of virtue always tends to promote good consequences. Virtue is valuable because of the the good consequences it brings to others. Virtuous dispositions tend to maximize utility and we should count on that. Aristotelian form virtue has quite different view. Some consequentialists even addressed that we don’t need to have knowledge go practice virtue.

Conclusion

'Virtues' are attitude or character traits that enable us develop our potential and act according to that. They help us to pursue the ideals we have adopted. Honesty, self-control, courage, fidelity, compassion, generosity, integrity, fairness, and prudence are attitudes that we develop from virtue. We learn to judge what’s wrong and what’s right. Virtue ethics helps us to decide which version of human bring we want to be. These ethical norms can only be learned and developed through practice. As philosopher Aristotle said, we can only develop a good character by practicing self-discipline, while a corrupted one can earned by repeated self-indulgence.

Though Virtue ethics has it’s own restrictions, it is something that makes an impact in our personal and professional life. As the ability to run on a marathon can be developed training and practice, our capacity to be fair, to be courageous, or to be compassionate can be developed too by practicing habits. Once we acquire them, they become a permanent characteristic of a person. For example, someone who has acquired the virtue of generosity is often referred to as a generous person because of his/her behavioral circumstances in all kind of situation. Moreover, a person who has developed virtue ethics will always be consistent with his moral principles. They always remain virtuous which makes them an ethical person.