The Virtues of Virtue Ethics

Which of the Big Three moral philosophies has some skin in the game?

In this essay, I will be defending virtue ethics, which is a moral philosophy that places the focus on character. Whereas consequentialism and deontology hold that having a good character is defined by acting morally, virtue ethics inverts this perspective: acting morally means acting as one with a good character does. In other words, “an action is right if it is the thing a virtuous agent would do”¹ .

Aristotle had a large influence on the historical development of virtue ethics and its philosophy. His core idea was that rightness is a golden mean between two vices: the vice of excess and the vice of deficiency. For example, Aristotle identified courage in the face of fear as a virtue—but its excess would manifest as rashness, and its deficiency as cowardice. Thus, one ought to embody a perfectly moderate amount of courage and other such virtues, including friendliness, ambition, and modesty, among others. While Plato believed that virtues were ends unto themselves, Aristotle viewed the virtues as a means by which humans can attain harmony and friendship on Earth². Regardless, both of them emphasized the idea that a good person does not act kind because certain rules tell them to do so, or a metric like happiness might be maximized. They act kind because they are kind. A virtuous person is genuinely happy to act virtuously because doing so reflects their innate character. Note that in this paper I will largely regard virtue ethics by its essential meaning, but most of my arguments stand using specific interpretations, such as Aristotle’s. Additionally, I will treat consequentialism and utilitarianism as interchangeable for brevity of argument, but one could substitute in a different formulation of consequentialism for the same effect.

Let us explore the differences between virtue ethics and other moral frameworks. Consider the question: why is it wrong to murder someone? Most everyone would agree that it is wrong, but it may be difficult to articulate exactly why. Consequentialism answers that letting someone live is a better outcome than killing them. Specifically, utilitarianism might hold that because an act of murder robs happiness from the victim, their family, and their community, it is the wrong thing to do. Deontology says that murder violates a moral law or duty; perhaps Kant’s Formula of Humanity³, or simply the right to life. Virtue ethics can offer an interesting, character-based analysis. A murder, by definition, is committed by someone who is a murderer—and being a murderer is consistent with being cruel, vicious, uncaring, or at the very best, intemperate and impulsive. In other words, a murderer is unvirtuous, making the actions that directly stem from this lack of virtue morally wrong. 

I admit that on first glance, this articulation may seem tautological at best, if not thoroughly unhelpful. However, in this essay, I hope to outline why virtue ethics is a superior conception of moral conduct, while addressing counterarguments to this point of view. The central thesis I want to underscore is that while virtue ethics is not perfect, it is the system that best embodies pragmatism, realism, and epistemic humility. Virtue ethics is unique in that it does not prescribe a concrete formula by which to ascertain morality. While consequentialism asks one to focus on the ends of an action, and deontology the means to those ends (the goodness of the action itself), virtue ethics is more nebulous: is this something a good person in the same situation would do? Critics of virtue ethics view this vagueness as a weakness—after all, is not the whole point of a moral philosophy to tell you exactly what this good person would do? But I argue that it is actually virtue ethics’ greatest asset. For there really exists no sweeping formula, rule, or mechanism that can determine the morally correct decision in every single situation, regardless of the specifics of the case. And virtue ethics does not pretend to be able to do so.

This way of thinking is more agreeable when one examines the basis of our conception of morality. Over the arc of human civilization, across time and geography, different notions of morality have been proposed, refuted, shared, and persecuted. Confucian filial piety obviously differs from Medieval European chivalry—and both now pale in importance to the libertarian individualism of the Enlightenment that reshaped our world over the past few centuries. But increasingly, research is suggesting that these various perspectives spring from a common set of basic values. The work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, for instance, makes a powerful argument for five such “moral foundations”—care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity—that appear to underlie moral thought. Haidt’s examples tend to be grounded in the American political spectrum; he argues, for example, that American conservatism appeals to people’s desire for loyalty, authority, and purity in society, while liberalism appeals to people’s liking for care and fairness. But he also extends his thesis across cultures, highlighting the restrictive traditions of Orissa, India as manifestations of the three conservative moral foundations⁴. While different people value different foundations, and different cultures appeal to these values in different ways, Haidt holds that their common existence is rooted in evolution: our species developed the notion of “morally good and bad”—and the five foundations underlying it—because it aided our survival and reproduction. 

And it is this evolutionary basis of morality that renders consequentialism and deontology almost useless as articulations of moral reasoning. Simply put, they just do not map to anything that matches our descriptive conception of morality. Throughout history, rights have been gained or lost, populations have been liberated or subjugated, traditions have been strengthened over time or forgotten with it. If you were to peer into the minds of advocates or opponents of these sociocultural changes, is it likely that their brains were busy computing a sum of human happiness, or scrutinizing a deontological law for transgressions? Or is it more likely that their biological preferences for human compassion, respect for authority, and related values were key drivers behind their reasoning? If Haidt is correct that we have acquired moral impulses for evolutionary reasons, then our desire to construct moral legal, social, and cultural institutions isn’t a quest to discover the objective morality that exists in the fabric of the universe, but to satisfy core biological impulses. The fact that the two main moral philosophies attempt to reduce this complexity into artificial bright-line rules should raise a red flag that they are unmoored from real life.

At the end of the day, consequentialism and deontology are not really good-faith arguments for how we ought to conduct ourselves on a daily basis. I do not believe someone who calls himself a “consequentialist” can live as a consequentialist, no more than I believe someone who claims to be a “deontologist” can live as a deontologist. For the former would almost certainly end up impoverished (having donated almost all his possessions to the Third World’s poorest) and the latter friendless (for not being willing to tell a white-lie, ever) if not imprisoned (for refusing to comply with laws he deems unjust). And do we see this happening? Do we see so-called consequentialist philosophers giving away all their goods to charity, or purported fans of deontology living their lives with unmitigated honesty and righteousness? No, of course not*. Because this is impossible, if one wishes to have any semblance of a happy, meaningful, or at the very least, normal life. 

It is plainly obvious that the two main moral philosophies set out to do more than they can possibly accomplish: by aiming to prescribe moral law regardless of the circumstances, they fall short in too many of those circumstances. The utilitarian should theoretically be okay with killing a person and harvesting their organs to save five others’ lives, while we know that any ordinary person would be morally repulsed. The deontologist should theoretically find it wrong to lie to a murderer about a prospective victim’s whereabouts, while any sensible actor knows it’s just common sense. That these philosophies too easily prescribe opinions that run afoul of our most basic instincts and intuitions is proof that there is something irredeemably wrong with them. A reasonable person recognizes that sometimes the right thing to do depends on outcomes, and sometimes it does not. There may be truth to consequentialism at times, and truth to deontology at times, but clearly there is something more nuanced and complex at play if these clear-cut rules are not true all the time. 

And it is this respect for nuance that is virtue ethics’ strength. Let us reconsider the examples discussed here. The virtue ethicist most certainly does not condone organ harvesting like the utilitarian would, because a good person just would not steal someone’s life and bodily organs to give to five others. The virtue ethicist most certainly would lie to protect someone from a murderer, because a good person would obviously value a human life over truth-telling. We should take this alignment between virtue ethics-inspired decisions and our general intuitive judgements to be a positive sign. For these two examples, we see that virtue ethics is able to navigate across the spectrum of consequentialism and deontology, easily ranging from valuing the ends to acknowledging the means to those ends. But what about other cases? Are these two just cherry-picked to prove my point?

The truth is that I could spend pages listing various examples and constructing analyses of them using the three moral philosophies. I will instead offer a general indicator that virtue ethics is the superior philosophy: if we say that sometimes consequentialism gets it right, and sometimes deontology gets it right, the fact that virtue ethics is capable of embracing results consistent with either of them, depending on the circumstances, is a good sign that it is more likely to arrive at the truth. If either extreme is wrong, it would make more sense that something between them is better. Admittedly, this argument is not a strong affirmation of virtue ethics on its own merits; at the very least, it says that it is the least bad alternative. To understand the true strength of the virtue ethics, one must contemplate what it looks like in practice.

I said earlier that I do not believe that one can live practically as a deontologist, nor as a consequentialist. Embracing either philosophy to its fullest extent results in an unnatural, inconceivable lifestyle. But I do believe one can live as a virtue ethicist. After all, do we often complain of someone for being “too focused on exemplifying good character traits”? Do we fault a man for aiming to tell the truth when possible, but being willing to tell a little white lie to spare someone’s feelings? Do we detest a hard worker who donates what he can to charity, while declining to give away his retirement fund? More generally, do we condemn someone who endeavors to embody honesty and kindness, generosity and responsibility, but who recognizes that these traits must be balanced in some way? If your answers to these questions are no, then you may be more sympathetic to virtue ethics than you initially believed. 

Detractors observe that virtue ethics does not prescribe perfectly clear answers. For starters, it is hard to agree on one exact set of virtues to follow. And even if we did, we may still disagree on their applications; we all know from experience that sometimes, moral dilemmas can be very difficult to resolve. But virtue ethics has the humility to not try to resolve an infinite number of situations with one crisp, clean rule. Instead, it asks you to acquire the moral wisdom, the phronesis, to be able to grapple with these dilemmas on your own; to strengthen your character with the small, everyday acts of integrity and compassion so that the harder choices become less hard. To do what is right when no one is looking, not because it satisfies some quantitative cost-benefit analysis or deontological rule, but because it makes you a better person. Virtue ethics recognizes that morality is something innate to the human condition; to our desire to order society in a way that “feels right”, balancing deeply held values. It respects that this moral intuition is not cleanly articulable, and attempts to do so inevitably fail. Instead, its fundamental focus on having a good character offers a way by which to navigate the difficult terrain of right and wrong in daily life.

1. Cameron, R. Introduction to Philosophy (Spring 2019). University of Virginia

2. Hursthouse, R. and Pettigrove, G., "Virtue Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.

3. Kant, I. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

4. Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon Books.