PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW ABOUT THE CASE STUDY
VIRTUES-BASED ETHICS VIDEO TRANSCRIPT.
MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, everyone. This week, we’re going to talk about virtues-based ethics and think through a couple of case studies and apply them to virtues-based ethics.
So let’s dive in and talk about Aristotle. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who studied under Plato. And he thought that we should develop our character. And if we all had very well-developed moral character
then the world would be a better place. So I’m going to review with you intellectual virtues, what those mean for Aristotle, how to develop proper moral virtues, and then think about contemporary dilemmas related to his ethics, and think about if this works.
We’re going to evaluate his method critically. Does virtue ethics work? If it does work, how does it work? How can you apply that to current ethical dilemmas? So why do any of it?
He says that we should always be aiming, achieving to try to be our best. So if this were me in yoga, maybe I would aim or achieve for this pose if I were trying to be the best yogi possible.
If I were trying to be the best human possible, then I should really develop my intellectual and moral values to the best of my ability. And that’s what he says. So the Nicomachean Ethics are broken into two books.
We’re going to talk mainly about book two. But it’s important to know what he’s saying in book one. He says, the most important human activity that we should be working for or striving toward is a final end of happiness.
That is a eudaimonia, that we should be aiming to function well and be happy. And he says, virtue is excellence. So as we’re aiming to increase our– or better, best our personalities, we
should be aiming to be excellent. Every activity we do should be exerted to the best of our abilities. And we should be, again, striving for the best that we can be.
[MUSIC PLAYING] And then I want you to think about all these types of ethics that we’ve been reviewing. We’re going to go into them more, but we will be looking at certain contemporary issues
and asking, what would Aristotle do? And can virtue ethics help us with bioethical questions, biomedical questions, research, and maybe end-of-life decisions? I have some YouTube videos for you to watch.
More recently, I think that this is a very old movie, or old in that it’s 20 to 30 years old. It’s called groundhog. Day. But those of us who have recently survived the pandemic
will appreciate this even more. And we can think about it in terms of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. So think about what a virtuous person would do, and we’re going to talk more about that soon.
Have a great day. [MUSIC PLAYING]
So there are two types, as I said, of excellence, of virtue. So virtue for Aristotle is excellence. There’s intellectual, that which we develop by going to college, reading, learning as much as we can. And then what else?
What’s the second virtue or type of excellence? It’s morals, moral virtue. So we have intellectual virtue that we develop by studying, by reading, by learning from a mentor. And then moral virtues which we develop by habit.
That’s practice, practice, practice, for Aristotle. Do we need both? What do you think? Yes, we absolutely do. We absolutely need moral excellence,
but we have to first develop rational capacity to choose. What does that mean? We have to develop our intellect and know the difference between this and that, and know, possibly, what could happen.
But it’s very tied to practicing and learning on our own. So I’ll explain more. Again, virtue is an admirable character trait for Aristotle. Intellectual virtue is that type of character trait that comes from learning.
It allows us to choose, to reason, to use our brains and think. But then also when we’re faced with a choice and an action to practice, that we will over, and over, and over again choose well.
So it’s not about just at one time choosing to be good. We need to for the rest of our lives, as humans, constantly be facing these tests, if you will, of our morality and constantly, habitually choosing the right thing. So how do we do that?
We need to think about passions and actions. What do moral virtues include? I’m going to speak to that. Think of the cookies. Keep the cookies in your mind.
That should be easy to do. Keep this picture in your mind, those of you who know what this is. I think it’s a very popular video game. Why do moral virtues include?
There are passions and actions. These are activities. And so passions and actions have to do with– maybe passions might be fear, confidence, or appetite, or anger, pleasure, and pain.
And our actions would be those things that we choose to do. So how do we spend our time? Let me go back. Do we spend our time eating lots and lots of cookies? Do we spend our time playing lots and lots of video games?
Maybe in the spring of 2020 we do. But Aristotle would want you to choose something else. With phronesis he wants you to choose more virtuous actions and passions. This is pronounced phronesis.
This is your mortal wisdom to choose not just pleasurable actions and passions, but intellectual and virtuous morals and actions. How do we do that? How do we keep practicing that?
So what he would say for failure, failure is an excess. So if I spent all day eating that plate of cookies, a big mound of cookies, that would be failure, because I would be in excess of good moral decision making and moral behavior and actions.
A deficit would be too little. So he doesn’t want you to absolutely abstain from anything fun or tasty. He wants you to find the middle ground. Here’s what that looks like.
Success is finding the intermediate, for Aristotle, or the mean, he calls, the virtue of the mean. That’s success. And that is moral virtue. But you have to practice.
So again, we start with intellectual virtues. And that’s really important. And then we have to learn to develop moral virtues. And that’s just through practice. Let me give you some other examples.
How do we choose? He says virtue is a state of character concerned with choice. So we always have to be thinking. But the more we practice making these good choices,
the easier it should get. So it shouldn’t be difficult to behave well if we habitually behave well. So how do we choose? Do we choose that which feels good all the time?
No, that’s not what he means. Do we choose that which benefits us the most? No, that’s not what he means either. Do we choose that which benefits others? It might.
We need to learn. And we need to practice. Again, we think about the mean between two excesses. So there is a spectrum. I could have zero cookies, or I could have the huge plate
of cookies all to myself? What would he want you to do? He wouldn’t want you to have those two excess or deficits, because that would be failure. Here’s a nice little storyboard that I put together.
Dessert, for this idea. I’m not having any ever. Here’s someone who is abstaining 100%. They are really just not giving into anything. And Aristotle would say that’s a failure as well.
Here’s another person who is being excessive. This person wants one of every flavor. So every flavor of ice cream, they’re going to have one of each. That’s failure too, because that’s excess.
So in the middle somewhere it might be a little bit– one tiny scoop of ice cream. You can think about this in terms of how we know how much to drink or how much to study. And Aristotle would say, look, you
don’t want to be a complete square or abstain from absolutely everything. But you don’t want to be excessive. Because then you would be a boor. You would be boorish.
You would be a glutton. And this is what he is wanting us to avoid. So these spectrums. If I think about moderation, it is in the middle of these two spectrums– abstinence,
complete zero, nothing, and gluttony, way too much. So we’re going to be somewhere here in the middle with moderation. In terms of the virtue of generosity, here’s a picture of someone who might be hoarding.
They are like a penny pincher, keeping everything to themselves. That’s a deficit of generosity. So that person is not able to give. Here is an excess of generosity, someone who just
spends everything they have. Spend, spend, spend, spend. Spendthrift. So this person is at the store spending all of their money. That’s an excess.
Here’s someone that is in the middle, in the mean of generosity. They’re going to donate a little bit to charity. They’re going to keep some in their savings account. They’re going to pay their bills.
So Aristotle recognized money is a very important thing. And it is practically, pragmatically necessary. And he said himself, it’s much better to have some money and be comfortable and have everything you need. But you don’t want to be excessive.
You don’t want to hoard and be deficient in sharing it. You don’t want to be excessive in spending it, and then you’ll have nothing. So we learn by doing. We can’t get these habits, this moral virtue, until we
learn how to do these things. And that’s a result of habit. Repeated exposure and practice responding to certain types of interactions and certain types of dilemmas. Should I spend this money?
Should I not? Should I help this person? Should I not? And you will read Aristotle– for instance, if you are someone who
is trying to exhibit some courage, you wouldn’t want to run into a fire without any protection and think you’re going to save the whole world, unless maybe you’re a firefighter. That would be foolhardy.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to do nothing and run in your house, not even call 9-1-1. So he’s saying, find that middle ground. But everywhere in the world, we have to go out and practice that over and over again.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The other thing that’s important, he wants you to find someone to emulate. So find someone that is practicing these things, walking the walk, if you will. For Aristotle, a mentor is very important, so you one,
develop your intellectual virtues. You learn how to learn. You learn how to be smart, and articulate, and right, and learn what virtues you may have to come across, or you may have to develop.
Two, you find someone to emulate. I’m using Yoda as an example, because he’s a sage, right? But maybe you have a mentor at work, or you look up to a parent, or a grandparent, someone that is walking that walk.
That’s your second step to becoming virtuous. And then, third for Aristotle, is the habituation– practice, practice, practice. That’s how you develop that moral character long-term, OK? So virtuous people discover the mean, that middle ground
between excess and deficit. And they deliberately choose it every single time– not because they have to, because they’re obligated, but because they want to, they feel good, and they know that this makes them a virtuous person.
So some things to think about, we’ll talk more about later. Here’s another picture of a virtuous person. Virtuous people are motivated to act in ways that benefit society. What does that mean?
If you think about campus recreation, we’re going to talk more about this. What things on campus can I be doing to benefit my society, my campus community? Might this be something?
What would Aristotle say? And we’ll talk about what we think people here are doing. Maybe they’re protesting. But I see pipes in the background, smoking in the foreground.
And we wonder, is this benefiting the campus community? Is this benefiting the campus community? Maybe tidying up, cleaning up, planting plants, does that work?
http://confucius-1.com/analects/index.html
http://confucius-1.com/analects/analects-4.html
http://www.walden.org/what-we-do/library/Thoreau/
Discussion reflections should include answers to the following:
- What would Aristotle and Confucius each say about littering and how it relates to global health and the health of the planet and why.
- After watching the instructor video with case study on ecosystems, state how the “virtuous person” would approach this dilemma and why.
- Explain what drawbacks there could be to virtues-based morality. For instance, there are news reports that some rivers in Asia are reported as turning black in color. What is wrong with that? How did it happen and what do you think a virtue ethicist would have to say about that and why? Article #1 and Article #2