Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Eudaimonia
Flourishing, Happiness
A Lifelong Pursuit,
accomplished
◦ Rationally, through theoretical
wisdom and contemplation
◦ Functionally, through practical
wisdom and politics
The Goal of Human Existence & Eudaimonia
Aimed at the “perfect happiness”
which is the perfect activity
An excellence in any activity in
accordance with the nature of
that activity
Thus, “Human happiness is the
activity of the soul in accordance
with perfect virtue (excellence)”.
(I.8; Pojman, 394).
The Virtues
Intellectual Virtues
◦ Wisdom, Understanding, Prudence
◦ Taught through instruction
Moral Virtues
◦ Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance
◦ The result of habit
◦ Not natural or inborn but acquired through practice
◦ Habit or disposition of the soul (our fundamental
character) which involves both feeling and action
“Those strengths of character that enable us to flourish”
(Hinman)
The Virtues
Defined / understood in terms of
spheres of human experience
Fear of important Courage
damages
Bodily appetites and Moderation
their pleasures
Distribution of limited Justice
resources
Attitude to slights and Mildness of Temper
damages
Adapted from Martha C. Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues”
The Doctrine of the Mean
Proper position between two extremes
◦ Vice of excess
◦ Vice of deficiency
Not an arithmetic median
◦ Relative to us and not the thing
◦ Not the same for all of us, or
◦ Any of us, at various occasions
◦ “In this way, then, every knowledgeable person avoids
excess and deficiency, but looks for the mean and chooses
it” (II.6)
Virtues and the Mean
Defined through Reason
◦ Education, contemplation, reflection
Balanced with Other Virtues and applied using
phronesis:
◦ To have any single strength of character in full measure,
a person must have the other ones as well.*
Courage without good judgement is blind
Courage without perseverance is short-lived
Courage without a clear sense of your own abilities is
foolhardy
“The virtuous person has practical wisdom, the ability
to know when and how best to apply these various
moral perspectives.” (*Hinman)
Virtues and Community
Virtues are defined and lived in community
Sharing a common identity and story
Modelling the Virtues
◦ Importance of Moral Exemplars (Saints and Heroes)
Practicing the Virtues – Habit is Crucial!
“In a word, then, like activities produce like dispositions.
Hence we must give our activities a certain quality,
because it is their characteristics that determine the
resulting dispositions. So it is a matter of no little
importance what sort of habits we form from the earliest
age ̶ it makes a vast difference, or rather all the difference
in the world.” (II.i.) (Pojman, 396)
Reinforcing the Virtues
Other Virtue Ethicists
G.E.M. (Elizabeth)
Anscombe
Carol Gilligan
In a Different Voice (1982)
Developmental theories have been
built on observations and
assumptions about men’s lives and
thereby distort views of female
personality.
The kinds of virtues one honors
depend on the power brokers of
one’s society.
The Ethics of Care
Other Virtue Ethicists
Michael Slote
Develops the feminist ‘ethics of care,’
and links it to a virtue ethics inspired
more by Hume and Hutcheson’s moral
sentimentalism than by Aristotle.
Slote’s version of virtue ethics is agent-based (as opposed
to more Aristotelian forms which are said to be agent
focused) i.e. the moral rightness of acts is based on the
virtuous motives or characters of the agent. The motives
are all important.
Other Virtue Ethicists
Martha Nussbaum
She interprets Aristotle’s views as
absolutes… justice, temperance,
generosity etc. are essential to
human flourishing
in all societies and in all times.