Aristotle Virtue Ethics

Virtue deals with figuring out what’s right and wrong and developing one’s character based on the series of actions that one does. Virtue ethics states that the highest good one can appeal to is the highest law of the community. The main purpose of virtue ethics is to make sound decisions in life. Each action that a person makes should help them learn a little bit about themselves and what is right or wrong. The community helps develop virtues and laws that people can conform to. According to Aristotle, a virtue is the “golden mean” between two respective vices. In some sort, the virtue is the middle ground between two bad things. However, the virtue is not normally directly in the middle of the two virtues. Depending on the person and the

They are always socially and historically produced. No one person can just decide that a certain action is virtuous or not. Instead, it takes the interactions of people and the community at large to develop a virtue and find the mean between the two vices that work for the community. Individuals in the community are the ones that ultimately create the virtue. It is then through the teaching of people and their upbringing that the virtue is passed on and developed generation after generation. This can be seen as the process of habituation. Habituation is the development of habits and for Aristotle, can be the development of virtue through one’s life actions. Aristotle also talks about the process of macro-habituation which is when the whole community comes together and through their collective actions, they determine a virtue. There is also a second sort of habituation which is fitting the virtue into one’s own life. What the community has determined to be a virtue may need to be slightly adapted to fit an individual. Not everyone has the same talents, traits, and needs. Through a slight adaptation, people can fit their individual needs to the community to ensure that the community and individuals needs are all

One virtue that Aristotle talks about is temperance. This is laid out in respect to tempering one’s appetite. The two corresponding vices for temperance are gluttony and ascetic. To help make this a little clearer, we can take use an example of donuts. Eating two dozen donuts in one day would be considered gluttonous and very unhealthy. However, never eating donuts and refusing to splurge every once in a while would be just as strange. This would be ascetic as one would be completely abstaining from eating donuts. Somewhere between those two extremes, there must be an acceptable number of donuts to eat. This would be where the golden mean would lay. However, this number will change person to person. It is singular. For a person who is obsessed with fitness and watching what they eat, they may only eat a couple of donuts a year. However, a person working at a donut show may eat a donut a day and still be considered temperate. It is through one’s lifestyle and community that the average amount, or golden mean is