Montgomery Community College Virtue and Ethics Questions

A Non-Relative Virtues:
An Aristotelian Approach
Martha Nussbaum
Aristotelian Ethics…
• “… ethics is not an exact science,
any more than are medicine and
the art of navigation; and
consequently the rules of conduct
that it lays down are only of general
validity, and their application must
vary with the circumstances of the
particular occasion, and be
modified by the discretion of the
agent.”
Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 2
Aristotle: A defender of moral Virtues
• “Aristotle’s Ethics combine rigor and
concreteness, theoretical power with
sensitivity to actual circumstances of
human life and choice, in the multiplicity
of variety and mutability.”
• Is virtue-based ethics a return to
Relativism?
• “… all [traditions] connect virtue ethics with a
relativistic denial that ethics, correctly understood,
offers any trans-cultural norms justifiable with
reference to reasons of universal human validity,
with reference to which we may appropriately
criticize different local conception of the good.”
• “If the position of women, as established by local
traditions in many parts of the world, is to be
improved, if traditions of slave holding racial
inequality, if religious intolerance, if aggressive
and warlike conceptions of manliness, if unequal
norms of material distribution are to be criticized in
the name of practical reason, this criticizing will
have to be done from a Kantian or utilitarian
viewpoint, not through the Aristotelian approach.”
Nussbaum, page 440
Aristotle according to Nussbaum…
• Aristotle was a defender of an ethical theory based
on the virtues, but also a defender or a single
objective account of the human good, or human
flourishing.
• Aristotle’s objectivism is derived from features of
humanness that lie beneath all local traditions and
are recognized in local traditions.
• Aristotle believes that there is no incompatibility
between basing an ethical theory on the virtues
and defending the singleness and objectivity of the
human good (happiness).
VIRTUE ETHICS
ARISTOTLE
RELATIVISM
UNIVERSAL GOOD
LOCAL VIRTUES
HAPPINESS
For Nussbaum, Aristotle have two major
arguments for a non-relative concept of virtue:
• Aristotle’s specifications of virtues is a
criticism of some common Greeks
conceptions of the local and traditional
virtues.
• Aristotle defended an objective theory of
the virtues by identifying spheres of
human experience- these spheres are
common to all human beings.
Aristotle’s Virtues:
• Aristotle is simply describing
• Examples of
what is admirable in his own
Spheres:
society.
– fear or important
• Some of his virtues and vices
damage.
are nameless, what implies
– Bodily appetites.
that he is studying virtues and
– Management of
vices are not only prominent
one’s property.
in his tradition.
– Social Association.
• In each of his description of a
– Intellectual life.
vice/virtue he isolates a
sphere of any human
life(universal/non-relative).
For Nussbaum Aristotle is a
defender of an ethical theory
based on a SINGLE
OBJECTIVE HUMAN GOOD:
Human Flourishing – Happiness
• Nussbaum presents five basic arguments:
1. There is one single objective good – human
flourishing – happiness.
2. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle isolates a
sphere of human experience- common to all human
beings.
3. Aristotle asks, What is to choose and respond well
within that sphere?
4. Aristotle, characterized each sphere as universal
experience and choice.
5. No matter where one lives, one cannot escape these
questions/spheres, so long as one is living a human
life.
Aristotle account for Ethics:
• We began with some experiences-individual as well
communal- broadly constructed.
• Experiences fix the reference of the corresponding virtue
word-experiences informs us of harm, deprivation,
inequality.Only human beings, develop concepts
• The reference of the virtue terms is fixed by spheres of
choice, frequently connected with our finitude and limitation,
that we encounter in virtue of shared conditions of human
existence.
• Understanding and assessing the circumstances of the
problems of human experience, we can then provide
responses to those problems.
• To hold tradition fixed is to prevent ethical progress- systems
of laws that progress beyond the past.
Aristotelian approach to the spheres of
human experience:
• “ An initial demarcation of the sphere of
choice, of the grounding experiences.”
• “The ensuing more concrete inquiry into what
appropriate choice in that sphere is.”
These approach creates the framework for the
development of an
objective human morality based on the idea of
VIRTUOS ACTION.
The Spheres of Human Existence
• MORTALITY
• PRACTICAL
REASON
• THE BODY
• PLEASURE AND
PAIN
• EARLY INFANT
DEVELOPMENT
• AFILIATION
• COGNOTIVE
CAPABILITY
• HUMOR