Virtue ethics

While most modern ethical systems ask "What should I do?", virtue ethics asks "Who should I be?" It contrasts sharply with deontology (which focuses on duty and rules) and consequentialism (which focuses on outcomes). In this framework, morality isn't about following a checklist of "thou shalt nots"; it is about cultivating a stable, lifelong disposition to act excellently.

A virtue is more than a habit; it is a "characteristic disposition" that defines a person’s personality. In the eyes of a virtue theorist, a person who does the right thing because they are forced to by a law is less "moral" than a person who does the right thing because it is an expression of their settled character.

A virtuous person doesn't just "know" the right thing to do; they feel the right way about doing it. Ancient and modern theorists distinguish the truly virtuous person from the "merely continent" person—the one who does the right thing but has to fight their own desires to do it. The virtuous person experiences no such internal conflict; their emotions and reason are in total harmony.

The engine of this harmony is phronesis, or practical wisdom. This isn't book-learning or theoretical intelligence; it is a "perceptual sensitivity" that allows a person to look at a messy, complex situation and instinctively identify the best course of action. It is the difference between knowing the definition of "courage" and knowing exactly when to stand your ground in a specific, high-stakes meeting.

For virtue theorists, the "point" of being good is to achieve eudaimonia. Often translated as happiness or blessedness, it is better understood as "human flourishing." Unlike our modern concept of happiness, which is a fleeting emotion, eudaimonia is an objective state of being. It is the result of living a life that fulfills the specific purpose of a human being: the exercise of reason.

To understand this, Aristotle used the analogy of tools. The "virtue" of a knife is sharpness, because sharpness allows the knife to fulfill its purpose of cutting. Since the unique function of a human being is the ability to reason, a human "flourishes" only when they exercise that reason in accordance with virtue. You don't "attain" eudaimonia as a prize; it is the activity of the virtuous life itself.

Aristotle famously argued that every moral virtue sits at a "Golden Mean" between two opposite vices. For example, courage is the perfect middle point between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of recklessness. Generosity is the mean between stinginess and profligacy.

This framework suggests that morality is a matter of "hitting the mark" in a specific context. There is no universal rule for how much money to give away or how much risk to take; the "right" amount is what a person with practical wisdom would do in that exact moment. It turns ethics into a craft, much like medicine or navigation, where excellence is found in balance and timing.

After centuries of being sidelined by Enlightenment-era rule-based systems, virtue ethics saw a massive revival starting in 1958 with Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay "Modern Moral Philosophy." Critics argued that modern ethics had become "schizophrenic," forcing people to choose between cold calculations of utility and rigid, impersonal duties that felt disconnected from real human life.

This revival, often called the "aretaic turn," has since bled into other fields. "Virtue epistemology" looks at the character traits of a good thinker; "virtue jurisprudence" examines the character of judges. It has even influenced "positive psychology," shifting the focus of mental health from merely fixing dysfunction to actively cultivating the traits that make life worth living.