# Virtue Ethics ## Intro Most moral debates ask "what should I do?" Virtue ethics asks a different first question: "what kind of person should I become?" It says that good actions flow from good character, and good character is built over time by practice, the way a musician is built by practice. The name "aretaic ethics" comes from the Greek word *aretē*, meaning excellence or virtue. A good knife cuts well; a good eye sees well; a good human being lives well. To be virtuous is to be excellent at being human. That last idea raises a hard question. To say someone is excellent at being human, you need to know what humans are *for*. Aristotle thought he knew. Christianity says it knows: we were made to know and love God. A purely naturalistic view of the world struggles to give any answer at all, and one of the most important moral philosophers of the last century argued that this is exactly why modern ethics fell apart. ![Marble portrait bust of Aristotle with curly hair and a full beard, set on an alabaster mantle](/codex/assets/aristotle-bust-altemps-after-lysippos.jpg) *Aristotle. Roman marble copy after a Greek bronze by Lysippos (about 330 BC); the alabaster mantle is a modern addition. Palazzo Altemps, Rome. Photo: Jastrow, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.* ## In full **Virtue ethics** (or **aretaic ethics**, from Greek *aretē*, "excellence") is the family of normative theories that make the *character* of the agent, rather than the rightness of acts (deontology) or the goodness of outcomes (consequentialism), the primary object of moral evaluation. Its core concepts are: - **virtue**, a stable, acquired excellence of character disposing a person to perceive, feel, choose and act well; - **practical wisdom** (*phronēsis*), the intellectual virtue of discerning what the situation requires; - **flourishing** (*eudaimonia*), the complete good of a human life, which the virtues partly constitute; - **telos**, the end or purpose of human nature, by reference to which a trait counts as an excellence. The tradition runs from [Plato](/codex/plato/) and [Aristotle](/codex/aristotle/) through the Stoics, [Augustine](/codex/augustine/) and [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/), declined in early modern moral philosophy, and revived in the twentieth century after G. E. M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) and Alasdair MacIntyre's *After Virtue* (1981). ## Three approaches compared | Approach | First question | What makes an act right | Representative | |---|---|---|---| | **Virtue ethics** | What kind of person should I be? | It is what a virtuous person would characteristically do in the circumstances | [Aristotle](/codex/aristotle/), [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/), Rosalind Hursthouse | | **Deontology** | What is my duty? | It conforms to a binding rule or duty | [Immanuel Kant](/codex/immanuel-kant/), W. D. Ross | | **Consequentialism** | What will produce the best results? | It produces the best overall outcome | Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill | The formula in the first row is Rosalind Hursthouse's (*On Virtue Ethics*, Oxford University Press, 1999). The three approaches are not always rivals. Christian ethics has always included duties (commandments), concern for consequences (love of neighbour seeks his good) and character (the fruit of the Spirit). The disagreement is over which is explanatorily basic. ## Aristotle Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics* is the classic statement. 1. **The human good is eudaimonia.** Every activity aims at some good, and the highest good is the one sought for its own sake. Aristotle identifies it as *eudaimonia*, usually translated "happiness" or "flourishing" (*NE* I.7). 2. **The function argument.** A thing's good lies in performing its characteristic function (*ergon*) well. The distinctively human function is activity of the soul in accordance with reason, so the human good is "activity of soul in accordance with virtue" over a complete life (*NE* I.7, 1098a). 3. **Two kinds of virtue.** Intellectual virtues are acquired by teaching; moral virtues by habituation. "We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts" (*NE* II.1, paraphrased). 4. **The mean.** A moral virtue is a settled disposition to choose the mean relative to us, between excess and deficiency, as a person of practical wisdom would determine it (*NE* II.6). Courage lies between rashness and cowardice; generosity between wastefulness and stinginess. The mean is not mediocrity: it is hitting the target. 5. **Practical wisdom.** *Phronēsis* (*NE* VI) is the virtue that sees what the moment calls for. Without it, the moral virtues cannot hit the mean; without the moral virtues, practical wisdom degenerates into mere cleverness. ## Augustine and Aquinas ### Augustine [Augustine](/codex/augustine/) gave the tradition its Christian centre. His "brief and true definition" of virtue is *ordo amoris*, the order of love (*City of God* XV.22). Virtue is not first a matter of self-mastery but of loving the right things in the right order, God above all and other things in relation to Him. ### Aquinas [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/) systematised Christian virtue ethics in the *Summa Theologiae* I-II, questions 55-67, the treatise on the virtues: - **qq. 55-56**, the essence of virtue as a good *habitus* and its seat in the powers of the soul; - **qq. 57-58**, the intellectual virtues and how they differ from the moral; - **qq. 59-60**, the moral virtues and the passions; - **q. 61**, the four **cardinal virtues**: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, inherited from Plato's *Republic* and the Stoics (the label "cardinal" comes from Latin *cardo*, "hinge"); - **q. 62**, the three **theological virtues**: faith, hope and charity, which direct a person to God as supernatural end and are given, not acquired ([1 Corinthians 13:13](/codex/1-corinthians-13-13/)); - **q. 63**, the causes of virtue, including the distinction between *acquired* virtues, gained by practice, and *infused* virtues, given by grace; - **qq. 64-67**, the mean, the connection of the virtues, their equality, and their endurance after this life. Aquinas thus holds Aristotle's structure together with a higher end. Natural virtue perfects human nature for its natural flourishing; grace perfects it for its final end, the vision of God. ## The modern revival ### Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) G. E. M. Anscombe's paper in *Philosophy* (vol. 33, 1958) made three claims: 1. Moral philosophy should be set aside until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology. 2. The concepts of moral obligation and the moral "ought" should be dropped if possible, because they survive from an earlier *law conception of ethics* whose framework, a divine lawgiver, modern philosophers no longer accept. 3. The differences among English moral philosophers since Henry Sidgwick are of little importance. The same paper coined the term "consequentialism". Anscombe was a Catholic and herself believed in the divine law; her point was diagnostic. Without the lawgiver, she argued, "ought" in its special moral sense has lost its meaning, and the honest secular option is to return to Aristotelian concepts such as virtue and flourishing. See [Divine Command Theory](/codex/divine-command-theory/). ### MacIntyre, *After Virtue* (1981) Alasdair MacIntyre (*After Virtue*, University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) argued that modern moral debate is interminable because it uses fragments of an older scheme whose context has been lost. The classical scheme had three parts: 1. human nature *as it happens to be*; 2. human nature *as it could be if it realised its telos*; 3. ethics, as the practices and precepts that move a person from the first to the second. The Enlightenment rejected the second element, the idea of a human telos, under the influence of Protestant and Jansenist theology on one side and mechanistic science on the other. What remained was a set of moral rules (the third element) and a picture of untutored human nature (the first) with nothing to connect them. The "Enlightenment project" of justifying morality without a telos, MacIntyre concludes, had to fail, and emotivism, the view that moral claims express preferences, is the culture it left behind. His own positive account defines the virtues in relation to *practices*, the *narrative unity* of a human life, and *traditions* of enquiry. He developed it further in *Whose Justice? Which Rationality?* (1988) and *Dependent Rational Animals* (1999). MacIntyre became a Catholic in the 1980s and later described himself as a Thomist. ### Other contemporary voices - **Philippa Foot**, *Natural Goodness* (2001), grounds virtue in the natural norms of a living species, a secular neo-Aristotelianism. - **Rosalind Hursthouse**, *On Virtue Ethics* (1999), the standard philosophical statement of the view. - **Linda Zagzebski**, *Divine Motivation Theory* (2004), a Christian virtue theory grounded in God's motives, and *Exemplarist Moral Theory* (2017). - **Stanley Hauerwas**, *A Community of Character* (1981), virtue formed in the church as a community. - **[N.T. Wright](/codex/n-t-wright/)**, *After You Believe* (2010; UK title *Virtue Reborn*), a biblical-theological case that Christian character is formed by practice in anticipation of the new creation. ## Virtue in Scripture The New Testament gives several lists of the traits a Christian is to have. They overlap with the classical virtues but are not identical, and their source is different. ### The ladder of 2 Peter 1:5-7 > Yea, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge; and in your knowledge self-control; and in your self-control patience; and in your patience godliness; and in your godliness brotherly kindness; and in your brotherly kindness love. ([2 Peter 1:5-7](/codex/2-peter-1-5-8/), ASV) The word translated "virtue" is *aretē* (see [G0703 - arete](/codex/g0703-arete/)). The list begins with faith and ends with love, and it is preceded by the statement that God's "divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness" ([2 Peter 1:3](/codex/2-peter-1-3/), ASV). Effort ("all diligence") and grace stand side by side. ### The fruit of the Spirit > But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law. ([Galatians 5:22-23](/codex/galatians-5-22-23/), ASV) Paul calls these *fruit*, singular, produced by the Spirit, not achievements of technique. This is the sharpest contrast with Aristotle, for whom virtue is the product of habituation. Yet Paul also uses the language of training: "exercise thyself unto godliness" ([1 Timothy 4:7](/codex/1-timothy-4-7/), ASV). ### Philippians 4:8 > Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. ([Philippians 4:8](/codex/philippians-4-8/), ASV) This is Paul's only use of *aretē*. The list borrows the vocabulary of Greek moral philosophy and asks the church to dwell on whatever is genuinely excellent. ### Colossians 3:12-14 > Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. ([Colossians 3:12-14](/codex/colossians-3-12/), ASV) The motive is christological ("even as the Lord forgave you"), and humility (*lowliness*) appears as a virtue, which it did not for Aristotle. Love binds the rest together, as Augustine would later say. ### Christian distinctives 1. **The telos is God.** The end of human life is not self-sufficient flourishing but communion with God and conformity to Christ ([Romans 8:29](/codex/romans-8-29/)). 2. **Grace precedes effort.** The virtues are fruit of the Spirit and gifts as well as habits. 3. **New virtues.** Humility, patience under injury and forgiveness are central, where classical ethics praised magnanimity and proper pride. 4. **Character and command agree.** Jesus' Beatitudes ([Matthew 5:3-12](/codex/matthew-5-3-12/)) describe character; the commandments describe conduct. The new covenant promise is a law written on the heart, which is to say a character that wants what the command requires ([Jeremiah 31:33](/codex/jeremiah-31-33/)). ## The apologetic point: virtue needs a telos Virtue ethics is often offered as a secular alternative to theistic ethics, since it appeals to flourishing rather than divine commands. The argument runs the other way: 1. **A virtue is an excellence relative to an end.** A trait is a virtue only if it helps a thing of a certain kind be what that kind of thing is *for*. 2. **So virtue ethics needs a real human telos**, a fact about what human beings are for that holds whether or not anyone wants it. 3. **Naturalism struggles to supply one.** On an unguided Darwinian picture, biological functions are fixed by past selection. That yields facts about what traits were favoured for reproduction, not facts about what human life *ought* to aim at. Selection could favour cunning and in-group cruelty as readily as justice. 4. **This is MacIntyre's own diagnosis.** *After Virtue* argues that modern ethics broke down precisely because it abandoned teleology, and MacIntyre's later work recovers teleology through Aristotle and Aquinas. 5. **Theism supplies the telos.** If humans are made in the image of God ([Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/)) for communion with Him, there is a fact about what human beings are for, and the virtues are excellences relative to it. See [Final Causality](/codex/final-causality/) and [G5056 - telos](/codex/g5056-telos/). ### The strongest secular reply Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse argue that a species' natural norms are objective without God. A wolf that does not hunt with the pack is defective as a wolf; a human who lacks courage or justice is defective as a human. Humans, as rational animals, can reflect on and revise these norms. **Reply.** The analogy shows that biological norms can be described objectively. It does not show why a rational agent who understands those norms is *bound* to follow them when they conflict with his desires, nor why "characteristic of the species" should mean "good". This is the [is-ought gap](/codex/is-ought-fallacy/) in Aristotelian dress. The theist grounds the norm in a purpose that is *intended*, not merely selected, and in a Person to whom the agent is answerable. See [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/), [Godless Normative Realism](/codex/godless-normative-realism/) and [Kantian Ethics Without God Defeater](/codex/kantian-ethics-without-god-defeater/). ### A calibrated conclusion This argument does not show that atheists cannot be virtuous. Many are, and [Romans 2:14-15](/codex/romans-2-14-15/) expects it. It shows that the *theory* of virtue, followed to its foundations, presses for a real human telos, and that theism provides one where naturalism has to work much harder. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - G. E. M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy," *Philosophy* 33 (1958). [doi:10.1017/s0031819100037943](https://doi.org/10.1017/s0031819100037943) [open access](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9E56836F22C34BE2CE4A3E763691C2FB/S0031819100037943a.pdf/div-class-title-modern-moral-philosophy-a-href-fn01-ref-type-fn-span-class-sup-1-span-a-div.pdf) - Philippa Foot, *Natural Goodness* (Oxford University Press, 2001). [doi:10.1093/0198235089.001.0001](https://doi.org/10.1093/0198235089.001.0001) - Stanley Hauerwas, *A community of character* (1981). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL83284W) - Rosalind Hursthouse, *On virtue ethics* (Oxford University Press, 1999). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4964825W) - Alasdair C. MacIntyre, *After virtue* (1981). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL10446730W) - N. T. Wright, *After you believe: why Christian character matters* (2010). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1981259W) - Tom Wright, *Virtue Reborn* (2010). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17413138W) - Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, *Divine Motivation Theory* (Cambridge University Press, 2004). [doi:10.1017/cbo9780511606823](https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511606823) - Linda Zagzebski, *Exemplarist Moral Theory* (Oxford University Press, 2017). [doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190655846.001.0001](https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190655846.001.0001) [open access](https://www.rivistateoria.eu/index.php/teoria/article/download/44/43) ## See also - [Morality](/codex/morality/), the master hub for the moral-theory cluster - [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/), the argument from objective moral values to God - [Divine Command Theory](/codex/divine-command-theory/), the deontological-theistic alternative and Anscombe's diagnosis - [Aristotle](/codex/aristotle/), the founder of the tradition - [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/), its Christian systematiser - [Augustine](/codex/augustine/), virtue as rightly ordered love - [G0703 - arete](/codex/g0703-arete/), the Greek word behind "aretaic" - [G5056 - telos](/codex/g5056-telos/), the end that virtue serves - [Final Causality](/codex/final-causality/), the metaphysics of purpose - [Sanctification](/codex/sanctification/), the Christian growth in character - [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/), what human beings are for - [Is-Ought Fallacy](/codex/is-ought-fallacy/), the gap naturalist virtue ethics must cross - [Kantian Ethics Without God Defeater](/codex/kantian-ethics-without-god-defeater/), the parallel argument against secular deontology
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is virtue ethics?** Virtue ethics is an approach to morality that focuses on character rather than rules or results. It asks what kind of person one should become, and holds that right action flows from virtues such as courage, justice, temperance and practical wisdom, developed through practice. **Q: What does aretaic ethics mean?** "Aretaic" comes from the Greek *aretē*, meaning excellence or virtue. Aretaic ethics is another name for virtue ethics: the study of the excellences of character that make a person good. **Q: What is the difference between virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism?** Deontology asks what one's duty is and judges acts by whether they follow binding rules. Consequentialism asks what will produce the best results. Virtue ethics asks what kind of person to be and judges acts by whether they are what a virtuous person would characteristically do. **Q: What are the cardinal and theological virtues?** The four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, inherited from Plato and the Stoics. The three theological virtues are faith, hope and love, named in [1 Corinthians 13:13](/codex/1-corinthians-13-13/). Thomas Aquinas treats both sets in the *Summa Theologiae* I-II, questions 61 and 62. **Q: Is virtue ethics compatible with Christianity?** Yes. Augustine and Aquinas built Christian ethics around virtue, and the New Testament gives lists of virtues in [2 Peter 1:5-7](/codex/2-peter-1-5-7/), [Galatians 5:22-23](/codex/galatians-5-22-23/), [Philippians 4:8](/codex/philippians-4-8/) and [Colossians 3:12-14](/codex/colossians-3-12-14/). The Christian version differs from Aristotle's in making God the end of human life and grace the source of the virtues. **Q: Can atheists ground virtue ethics without God?** Atheist neo-Aristotelians such as Philippa Foot argue that human nature supplies objective standards. The theist reply is that biological norms describe what is typical of a species but do not explain why a rational agent ought to follow them. Alasdair MacIntyre argued that modern ethics broke down precisely because it abandoned the idea of a real human purpose. **Q: What did Elizabeth Anscombe argue in "Modern Moral Philosophy"?** In 1958 Anscombe argued that the modern moral "ought" is a leftover from a law-based conception of ethics that assumed a divine lawgiver. Without that framework, she said, the concept has lost its sense, and philosophers should return to Aristotelian ideas of virtue and flourishing. The paper sparked the modern revival of virtue ethics.