202206050755 Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics defines ethical behavior as that which facilitates the fulfillment of a person’s telos of 202206050810 Eudaimonia through the attainment and proportioning of different virtues.

202206050754 Aristotle is the father of virtue ethics and developed the subject in his work Nichomachean Ethics.

More simply put, in order to explain what makes a person good, Aristotle defines

1. Which qualities a good person ought to have
2. In which amounts
3. Whether every person has the capacity for those qualities
4. How we acquire them
5. What it will look (or feel) like when we actually have them¹

Virtue ethics differs from 202206051530 Deontology by guiding us to try and be a specific type of person while deontological ethics guide us on which actions and choices we should make.

Virtue ethics also differs from 202206051524 Consequentialism by having less concern for the ends and more concern for the means than a pure consequentialist ethic would.

Virtue ethics [...] emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism).²