virtue & vanity by astrid jane ray read online

We may not have a duty to flourish in the way we have a duty not to commit murder but questions about well-being are still legitimate questions for moral philosophers to address. It also asks what constitutes well-being or human flourishing.

Virtue ethics offers a broader conception of ethics in general. It doesn’t see moral philosophy as confined to working out which actions are right and which actions are wrong.

Thus for Aristotle, the life of a pleasure-seeking couch potato is not an example of the good life. These include things like the capacities for friendship, civic participation, aesthetic enjoyment, and intellectual enquiry.

Since Aristotle thinks that what distinguishes human beings from all other animals is our rationality, the good life for a human being is one in which the rational faculties are fully exercised.

But there are also virtues that it is good for any human being to possess, the qualities that enable them to live a good life and to flourish as a human being. a competent accountant must be good with numbers a soldier needs to be physically brave. People performing specific functions also require specific virtues: e.g. For instance, the main virtue of a racehorse is to be fast the main virtue of a knife is to be sharp. The sort of excellence in question can be specific to particular kinds of thing. It is a quality that enables a thing to perform its purpose or function. The Greek term that is usually translated as “virtue” is arête. Speaking generally, arête is a kind of excellence. Anyone who abides by this rule, he claims, will be behaving with complete consistency and rationality, and they will unfailingly do the right thing. Kantian ethics: The great German philosopher I mmanuel Kant argues that the basic rule we should follow is neither “Obey God’s laws,” nor “Promote happiness.” Instead, he claimed that the fundamental principle of morality is something like: Always act in the way that you could honestly want everyone to act if they were in a similar situation.So the right way to live is, in a general way, to try to promote the most happiness you can, both your own and that of other people– especially those around you–while trying to avoid causing pain or unhappiness. Utilitarianism: This is the view that what matters most in the world in the promotion of happiness and the avoidance of suffering.The right way to live is to follow these rules. the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran). The religious answer: God has given us a set of rules to follow.

Virtue & vanity by astrid jane ray read online