POLS 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Deontological Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism
30 Nov 2015
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Outline: background, aristotle"s ethics, human happiness, the politics. Moved to athens when he was 17 and spent 19yrs learning at plato"s academy. After plato"s death, he created his own academy called the lyceum: taught almost every imaginable subject, ranging from biology and logic to music, ethics an political theory. All his writings are lecture notes structured towards young wealthy men. Aristotle"s ethics: 1 of 3 main philosophical traditions. What makes an action right or wrong: 1. The right action is the action that a person of virtue would perform. Instead of cost and benefit analysis you would do whatever a virtuous person would do. This puts a lot of weight on the definition of a virtuous person. The morality and virtuousness of a person is context specific. People who practiced saw this as the appeal: 2. You should do that act which brings about the best consequences.
