Virtue Ethics - Quotes

Question 1

Virtue is not a one-time event but rather a consistent pattern of behaviour

Answer 1

‘For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day’
- Nicomachean Ethics

Question 2

There is some final end to which all activities are directed

Answer 2

‘every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good.’
- Nicomachean Ethics

Question 3

eudaimonia

Answer 3

‘an activity of the soul in accord with virtue’
- Nicomachean Ethics

'’Thus the good life is… that in which we exercise reason well’
- Prior, William J

Question 4

doctrine of the mean

Answer 4

‘virtue is also a mean with respect to two vices, the one vice related to excess, the other to deficiency’

‘if ten is many and two is few, six is the intermediate’

‘a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate’

‘the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us’

• Nichomachean Ethics

Question 5

moral virtue

Answer 5

‘Moral virtue… is concerned with passions [emotions] and actions’
- NIcomachean Ethics

Question 6

justice

Answer 6

‘… every virtue is summed up.’
- Nicomachean Ethics

Question 7

friendship

Answer 7

‘friendship holds cities together’

‘friendship is not only necessary but also noble’

‘an abundance of friends is held to be a noble thing’

‘people suppose good men and their friends to be one and the same’

• Nicomachean Ethics

Question 8

Peter Vardy

Answer 8

‘we should focus less on specific actions and more on character traits’

Question 9

How to develop character

Answer 9

‘we are constituted by nature to receive [moral virtues], but their full development in us is due to habit’

‘virtue, then is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean’

• Nicomachean Ethics