virtue ethics also called virtue-based ethics and agent-based ethics, conceptions or theories of morality in which virtues play a central or independent role. Thus, it is more than simply the account of the virtues offered by a given theory. Some take the principal claim of virtue ethics to be about the moral subject – that, in living her life, she should focus her attention on the cultivation of her (or others’) virtues. Others take the principal claim to be about the moral theorist – that, in mapping the structure of our moral thought, she should concentrate on the virtues. This latter view can be construed weakly as holding that the moral virtues are no less basic than other moral concepts. In this type of virtue ethics, virtues are independent of other moral concepts in that claims about morally virtuous character or action are, in the main, neither reducible to nor justified on the basis of underlying claims about moral duty or rights, or about what is impersonally valuable. It can also be construed strongly as holding that the moral virtues are more basic than other moral concepts. In such a virtue ethics, virtues are fundamental, i.e., claims about other moral concepts are either reducible to underlying claims about moral virtues or justified on their basis.
Forms of virtue ethics predominated in Western philosophy before the Renaissance, most notably in Aristotle, but also in Plato and Aquinas. Several ancient and medieval philosophers endorsed strong versions of virtue ethics. These views focused on character rather than on discrete behavior, identifying illicit behavior with vicious behavior, i.e., conduct that would be seriously out of character for a virtuous person. A virtuous person, in turn, was defined as one with dispositions relevantly linked to human flourishing. On these views, while a person of good character, or someone who carefully observes her, may be able to articulate certain principles or rules by which she guides her conduct (or to which, at least, it outwardly conforms), the principles are not an ultimate source of moral justification. On the contrary, they are justified only insofar as the conduct they endorse would be in character for a virtuous person. For Aristotle, the connection between flourishing and virtue seems conceptual. (He conceived moral virtues as dispositions to choose under the proper guidance of reason, and defined a flourishing life as one lived in accordance with these virtues.) While most accounts of the virtues link them to the flourishing of the virtuous person, there are other possibilities. In principle, the flourishing to which virtue is tied (whether causally or conceptually) may be either that of the virtuous subject herself, or that of some patient who is a recipient of her virtuous behavior, or that of some larger affected group – the agent’s community, perhaps, or all humanity, or even sentient life in general. For the philosophers of ancient Greece, it was human nature, usually conceived teleologically, that fixed the content of this flourishing. Medieval Christian writers reinterpreted this, stipulating both that the flourishing life to which the virtues lead extends past death, and that human flourishing is not merely the fulfillment of capacities and tendencies inherent in human nature, but is the realization of a divine plan. In late twentieth-century versions of virtue ethics, some theorists have suggested that it is neither to a teleology inherent in human nature nor to the divine will that we should look in determining the content of that flourishing to which the virtues lead. They understand flourishing more as a matter of a person’s living a life that meets the standards of her cultural, historical tradition. In his most general characterization, Aristotle called a thing’s virtues those features of it that made it and its operation good. The moral virtues were what made people live well. This use of ‘making’ is ambiguous. Where he and other premodern thinkers thought the connection between virtues and living well to be conceptual, moral theorists of the modernist era have usually understood it causally. They commonly maintain that a virtue is a character trait that disposes a person to do what can be independently identified as morally required or to effect what is best (best for herself, according to some theories; best for others, according to different ones). Benjamin Franklin, e.g., deemed it virtuous for a person to be frugal, because he thought frugality was likely to result in her having a less troubled life. On views of this sort, a lively concern for the welfare of others has moral importance only inasmuch as it tends to motivate people actually to perform helpful actions. In short, benevolence is a virtue because it conduces to beneficent conduct; veracity, because it conduces to truth telling; fidelity, because it conduces to promise keeping; and so on. Reacting to this aspect of modernist philosophy, recent proponents of virtue ethics deny that moral virtues derive from prior determinations of what actions are right or of what states of affairs are best. Some, especially certain theorists of liberalism, assign virtues to what they see as one compartment of moral thought and duties to a separate, and only loosely connected compartment. For them, the life (and theory) of virtue is autonomous. They hold that virtues and duties have independent sources of justification, with virtues chiefly concerned with the individual’s personal ‘ideals,’ self-image, or conception of her life goals, while duties and rights are thought to derive from social rules regulating interpersonal dealings.
Proponents of virtue ethics maintain that it has certain advantages over more modern alternatives. They argue that virtue ethics is properly concrete, because it grounds morality in facts about human nature or about the concrete development of particular cultural traditions, in contrast with modernist attempts to ground morality in subjective preference or in abstract principles of reason. They also claim that virtue ethics is truer to human psychology in concentrating on the less conscious aspects of motivation – on relatively stable dispositions, habits, and long-term goals, for example – where modern ethics focuses on decision making directed by principles and rules. Virtue ethics, some say, offers a more unified and comprehensive conception of moral life, one that extends beyond actions to comprise wants, goals, likes and dislikes, and, in general, what sort of person one is and aims to be. Proponents of virtue ethics also contend that, without the sensitivity and appreciation of their situation and its opportunities that only virtues consistently make available, agents cannot properly apply the rules that modernist ethical theories offer to guide their actions. Nor, in their view, will the agent follow those rules unless her virtues offer her sufficient clarity of purpose and perseverance against temptation. Several objections have been raised against virtue ethics in its most recent forms. Critics contend that it is antiquarian, because it relies on conceptions of human nature whose teleology renders them obsolete; circular, because it allegedly defines right action in terms of virtues while defining virtues in terms of right action; arbitrary and irrelevant to modern society, since there is today no accepted standard either of what constitutes human flourishing or of which dispositions lead to it; of no practical use, because it offers no guidance when virtues seem to conflict; egoistic, in that it ultimately directs the subject’s moral attention to herself rather than to others; and fatalistic, in allowing the morality of one’s behavior to hinge finally on luck in one’s constitution, upbringing, and opportunities. There may be versions of virtue ethics that escape the force of all or most of the objections, but not every form of virtue ethics can claim for itself all the advantages mentioned above. See also AQUINAS, ARISTOTLE , ETHICS, PLAT. J.L.A.G.