Virtue Ethics Flashcards
What is a virtue?
goodness or excellence of character
excellence of dispositions to notice, believe, feel, value, want, choose, etc.
what is character?
the deeply ingrained dispositions of an agent as agent
EX: what one is disposed to notice, believe, feel, value, want, choose, etc.
What distinction would a virtue ethicist draw between being honest and being an honest person?
being honest: telling the truth
being an honest person: being disposed to tell the truth, but disliking it when you have to lie
Eudemonist
the virtues are the traits that conduce to a person’s well-being, happiness, or (really) flourishing, to the excellence of their lives
we know what these virtues re, and what is virtuous
Non-Eudemonist:
there is no further explnaation for what makes a trait a virtue apart from the fact that it is good to have
we know what virtues are, and what is virtiuosu in a particular instance, by observing [virtuious people?]
Platonist
virtuous traits are those that allow their bearer to apprehend what is objectively true, and what is objectively truly good. The beliefs, selfishness, cowardliness, etc… lead us to subjectively distort the nature
What is practical wisdom?
the life experience, knowledge, situational understanding, and reasoning ability that allows one to have insight into, and correctly evaluate, possible courses of action
What are some ways in which a person might lack practical wisdom?
being a child:
they may not understand psychology including motives, feelings, etc.
they may be wrong about what is good for another person or themselves
they may not have an understanding of situations generally, and may not know the best means to their end
they may not understand consequences
How might practical wisdom be used to answer the objection that virtue ethics is not action guiding?
says that the virtues are action guiding for the person with practical wisdom, because moral life requires and understanding of the situational and the contextual
you take the rules, and if you have practical wisdom, then you will understand how to apply the rules, and then those rules will be action guiding
without partical wisdom, they’re not action guiding, but that’s a good thing—that’s how moral life works
they can guide others as exemplars
bike example: an olympian can’t give all that much instruction until you, a novice, can get on the bike. only another olympian is going to understand the things that the first olympian is saying
what is the insufficency of rules
moral life is much too rich for just rules. To know what rules are required, you have to know about the particularities of an agent’s situation, including theier personality and relationships and goals
what are V-Rules
“be honest” helps the agent organize their thinking about what to do in particular situations—they consider situations that worked and what didn’t and they look at similar behaviors. They’re not tightly tied to a specific behavior, but rather are a reflection of what did and didn’t work in the past
what are moral exemplars
give you a real world case in which you see how someone is talking in all the different information and putting it all together in the right (or wrong) way. How the whole package comes together
What is the relativism objection to virtue ethics?
hurtshouse says: rules must be supplemented by practical wisdom. And that is a virtue of virtue ethics, not a vice
Objection: but if there is no objective rule that describes right action, if practical wisdom entails that what is right depends on the local and situational, isn’t that to say that rightness depends on the particularities of each agent and their culture/context? Must virtue ethics collapse into relativism?
how does nussbaum respond to the relativism objection
by saying no, there are certain spheres/domains of huamn life that each life doesn’t have to have in order to flourish
within that domain there are certain ways to express excellence
what is aristotle’s empirical approach to knowledge of non-relative virtue
Stage 1: distinguish the sphere of choice, the type of distinctive experience that calls for a distinctive exercise of human agency
Stage 2: through experiential learning, practical wisdom, one cultivates an ever more refined understanding of the virtue, of whatever wil objectively lead to human flourishing within that sphere
what’s nussbaum’s central argument
P1: If human life is constituted from objective spheres of human experience and agency, and if there are objective ways of flourishing within each sphere then virtue is not relative
P2: Human life is constituted from objective spheres of human experience and agency, and there are objective ways of flourishing within each sphere
C: Virtue is not relative
