PHIL 2270 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Kantian Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Psychological Egoism
14 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
COMPARING MILL vs KANT
Kantian Ethics
Utilitarian Ethics
What is the highest
good?
A Good Will
Happiness
How are actions
evaluated
Motive- Duty
Consequences – Social Benefits
What is the status of
moral rules?
Universal
Situational
Does the theory take
disinterested stance?
Yes
Yes
What makes morality
possible?
Will, God, Immortality, Freedom
Conscience
Virtue ethics: focuses not on what makes actions right but rather on what makes a
person good - on moral character.
Aristotle: “What makes a person good is that they consistently act in accordance with
virtue.” The good person is a virtuous person, and a virtuous person is happy.
Virtue: an acquired tendency (disposition) to act between two extremes (the mean)
and this tendency is acquired via practice. You become virtuous by practicing good
deeds.
Examples of virtue:
1) Courage - standing one’s ground when appropriate. It is a mean between
rashness & cowardice.
2) Generous - giving to others in need that is a mean between miserliness &
being overly generous.
3) Loyalty - being faithful to family & friends that is a mean between disloyalty &
being pathologically loyal. Too faithful: Vicious. Not Faithful enough: Deficiency
→ Another example: Truthful. Deficient: habitual liar. Vicious: being too honest and
hurting someone’s feelings.
Observations:
1) Corresponding to each virtue are 2 vices - too little of the virtue, or too much
of it. Too much of a good thing is just as much a vice as too little of it.
2) Given that loyalty is a virtue that espouses partiality towards loved ones, it
follows that virtue ethics eschews the disinterested moral stance. This distinguishes
it from Deont/Conseq.
Virtue ethics suffers from the “incompleteness problem”.
→ It doesn’t provide a motive for acting virtuously without appealing to an external
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
