ETHICAL REALISM

The virtue ethics of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans,

and the Stoics were very individualistic and primarily
concerned with helping one person become a better person
though self-improvement. This is a sharp contrast to the
current popular moral theories—Kantianism and
consequentialism—that tend to be concerned with
categorizing actions as right and wrong. These moral theories
provide us with a set of rules to follow. They are much like
computer programs invented to determine which actions are
(or tend to be) right or wrong. The personal requirement of
“thinking for yourself” would ideally be dispensable because
the moral theory can think for us.
• Although virtue ethics lacks in popularity, many
people still think it is indispensable. Virtue ethics
requires us to understand how to transform
ourselves into better people. That means we have
to understand what is moral, how to be motivated to
be moral, and how to actually behave morally. I will
describe the virtue ethics of Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Stoics.
 SOCRATES
• Socrates thought that knowledge is virtue, and virtue leads to
happiness. It makes sense to think that moral people know
what morality is. If you know right from wrong, then you
might be able to choose to do what you know to be right. It
also makes some sense to suspect that our beliefs about
right and wrong influence our decisions. If we believe it’s
right to help a drowning child, then it would be fairly
shocking to decide not to do so—and it would less surprising
when we decide to help the child.
• It is quite a shocking statement to say that virtue
always leads to happiness. Criminals commit
crimes that hurt others to help themselves. To think
that their crimes would make them unhappy is a
strange thought. However, it isn’t too shocking to
think that helping others can make us happy, so
doing the right thing might be more fulfilling than
committing crimes.
• Perhaps the most shocking thought that Socrates proposed was the
unity of the virtues—if you have one virtue, then you have them all.
Courage requires wisdom, wisdom requires moderation (e.g.
appropriate eating habits), and moderation requires courage.
Socrates argued that all virtues are a sort of wisdom, but it isn’t clear
that one sort of wisdom would require all sorts of wisdom. I could
know nothing about programming computers, but that doesn’t seem
to make me less virtuous. However, Socrates might have envisioned
a person with an ideal virtue (such as ideal courage) that would
require us to possess all other virtues assuming that there will be at
least one situation when one virtue requires another. For example,
moderation might require the courage to feel the pain of withdrawal
symptoms after we become addicted to cigarettes
 PLATO
• Plato thought that we have three major parts: The intellect,
the emotions, and the appetites. We have the intellect to
reason and learn, emotions to be motivated, and the
appetites to know when we are in need of something (food,
water, etc.) Wise people use their emotions to motivate them
to do what the intellect finds valuable, but the unwise use
their emotions to motivate them to overindulge the appetites.
To over-indulge the appetites is to be immoderate and
addictive, but the intellect should learn to value fulfilling our
appetites in a healthy way.
• Plato helps us understand why some people do
what they know to be wrong—because our
emotions can side with our appetites—but he
does not make it entirely clear why some
people are (relatively) wise and are able to
passionately value the right things, but others
are unwise and passionately value superficial
things.
 ARISTOTLE
• Aristotle concludes that (a) the proper object of virtue is
happiness and (b) we can become wise through habit.
• Aristotle’s first conclusion was partially justified through an
important discovery—morality needs a goal (or one or more
primary values). If nothing really matters, then morality is
baseless. If we want money just to make more money, then
the money will never do any good. We need to spend the
money and use it for something worthy for its own sake. Most
of our goals are nonmoral goals, such as our goal to make
money. Our goals are only virtuous when they lead to
something truly good.
• Additionally, Aristotle’s first conclusion helps explain why we can
be motivated to being virtuous—attaining personal happiness is
what everyone finds worthy of being a goal.
• However, the strange result of Aristotle’s first conclusion is that
what we think has to be virtuous, right, and good—such as
helping people—is actually only contingently virtuous based on
the assumption that such things will make us happy.1 Whatever
we think of as “morality” would be rejected by Aristotle as soon
as we discover that it doesn’t bring us personal happiness. What
Aristotle calls “morality” is potentially revisionary because our
common sense understanding of morality could be severely
mistaken once we realize that whatever makes us personally
happy is good, virtuous, or right by definition.
• I don’t find it strange to think that something is only virtuous if it has some
relation to what is “truly good,” but Aristotle didn’t seem to find the right
relation. He advocated a sort of selfish egoism that most people would
now find puzzling and objectionable. The fact that I might personally get
no happiness in helping others doesn’t seem to make my action wrong or
unwise.
• Aristotle’s second conclusion, that we can attain virtue through habit,
continues Plato’s discovery that morality and psychology must be
connected. We need to find motivation to be moral, but not all our moral
knowledge is something we can easily explain or prove to others. There is
something “intuitive” about our everyday moral decisions. We don’t have
the time to think about moral theories before making every moral
decision. Instead, we use our entire life experience to help us know what
decision is most likely to make us happy.
• Aristotle’s second conclusion attempts to explain
how our life experience can help us make quick,
thoughtless, effortless moral decisions by attributing
our decisions to habit. Once we have made certain
decisions in the past, it’s easy to make similar
decisions now. We can also “acquire a taste” for
healthy food and learn to take pleasure in virtuous
actions by continuing to do them.
 EPICUREANISM
• The Epicureans agreed with Aristotle that virtue is necessary
to attain certain values, and the main purpose of virtue is to
attain those values for oneself. The Epicureans valued joy,
pleasure, and avoidance of suffering. Here “joy” includes
positive emotions and “intellectual pleasures.” Epicurus
didn’t glorify superficial bodily pleasures and found that
pleasures of reason were the most fulfilling.
• For Epicurus virtuous people would feel no pain or
suffering, and they would not be demanding in their
life. Instead, they would appreciate what little joy and
pleasures they could get. To become virtuous
required that one correct their thinking and practice
“spiritual meditations” that would continually remind
themselves that there is no reason to suffer and every
reason to appreciate their life. The Epicureans
realized that certain thoughts have an effect over our
emotions, and “virtuous thoughts” could eliminate
our suffering.
 STOICISM
• The Stoics based their moral philosophy on the virtue ethics
of Socrates (knowledge leads to virtue and happiness), but
the Stoics were also highly influenced by Aristotle. They
agreed with Aristotle that virtue is necessary to attain a
certain value, and the main purpose of virtue is to attain that
value. However, the Stoics found that the most important
value is virtue itself. Virtue doesn’t technically need to lead
to another value because it is worthy for its own sake.
Additionally, the Stoics provided us with a sophisticated
moral psychology that could greatly help us find motivation
to be virtuous.
• Many Stoics seemed to agree with Socrates that knowledge
leads to virtue and happiness, but they added a couple of
details. In particular, the Stoics realized that evaluative
beliefs and thoughts influence our emotions and actions. If
you believe that saving a drowning child is virtuous, then it is
likely that you will feel at least somewhat motivated to save
the child, and it is then likely that you will actually save the
child. We can have virtuous thoughts and beliefs, emotions,
and actions. Courageous thoughts lead to courageous
emotions and actions.Again, the Epicureans needlessly
restrict values to ones attained for oneself, but this is not
something many people will agree with.
• Virtue ethics is about ethics up close and personal. It’s about
motivating ourselves to be better people. I don’t see any
reason to think that virtue ethics has to be incompatible with
our current popular moral theories, but I also find virtue
ethics to be indispensable. The impersonal rules given to us
by the popular moral theories neither provide us with the
motivation to be moral nor do they help us think on our toes
make moral decisions.