aristotle virtue theory essay

Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity pp 215–229 Cite as

Was Aristotle a Virtue Argumentation Theorist?

• Andrew Aberdein 15  
• First Online: 13 July 2021

244 Accesses

2 Citations

1 Altmetric

Part of the book series: Argumentation Library ((ARGA,volume 39))

Virtue theories of argumentation (VTA) emphasize the roles arguers play in the conduct and evaluation of arguments, and lay particular stress on arguers’ acquired dispositions of character, that is, virtues and vices. The inspiration for VTA lies in virtue epistemology and virtue ethics, the latter being a modern revival of Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle is also, of course, the father of Western logic and argumentation. This paper asks to what degree Aristotle may thereby be claimed as a forefather by VTA.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Aberdein, A. (2010). Virtue in argument. Argumentation, 24 (2), 165–179.

Article   Google Scholar  

Aberdein, A. (2014). In defence of virtue: The legitimacy of agent-based argument appraisal. Informal Logic, 34 (1), 77–93.

Aberdein, A. (2016). The vices of argument. Topoi, 35 (2), 413–422.

Aberdein, A. (2018). Inference and virtue. In S. Oswald & D. Maillat (Eds.), Argumentation and Inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017 (Vol. 2, pp. 1–9). College Publications.

Google Scholar  

Aberdein, A. (2019). Courageous arguments and deep disagreements. Topoi Forthcoming.

Aberdein, A. (2020). Eudaimonistic argumentation. In F. H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (Eds.), From argument schemes to argumentative relations in the wild: A variety of contributions to argumentation theory (pp. 97–106). Springer.

Abizadeh, A. (2002). The passions of the wise: Phronêsis, rhetoric, and Aristotle’s passionate practical deliberation. The Review of Metaphysics, 56 (2), 267–296.

Aikin, S. F., & Anderson, M. (2006). Argumentative norms in Republic I . Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 13 (2), 18–23.

Allard-Nelson, S. K. (2001). Virtue in Aristotle’s R hetoric : A metaphysical and ethical capacity. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 34 (3), 245–259.

Amossy, R. (2001). Ethos at the crossroads of disciplines: Rhetoric, pragmatics, sociology. Poetics Today, 22 (1), 1–23.

Aristotle. (1976). Ethics (J. A. K. Thomson, Trans.). Penguin.

Aristotle. (1984). Topics (W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, Trans.). In J. Barnes (Eds.), The complete works of Aristotle (Vol. I, pp. 167–277). Princeton University Press.

Aristotle. (1991). The art of rhetoric (H. Lawson-Tancred, Trans.). Penguin.

Axtell, G. (1997). Recent work in virtue epistemology. American Philosophical Quarterly, 34 (1), 1–27.

Bailin, S., & Siegel, H. (2003). Critical thinking. In N. Blake, P. Smeyers, R. Smith, & P. Standish (Eds.), The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of education (pp. 181–193). Blackwell.

Battaly, H. (2008). Virtue epistemology. Philosophy Compass, 3 (4), 639–663.

Baumtrog, M. D. (2016). The willingness to be rationally persuaded. In P. Bondy & L. Benacquista (Eds.), Argumentation, objectivity and bias: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), May 18–21, 2016 . OSSA.

Beabout, G. R. (2013). What contemporary virtue ethics might learn from Aristotle’s Rhetoric . Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 87, 155–166.

Blair, J. A., & Johnson, R. H. (2011). Conductive argument: An overlooked type of defeasible reasoning . College Publications.

Braet, A. C. (1992). Ethos, pathos and logos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric : A re-examination. Argumentation, 6 (3), 307–320.

Brinton, A. (1986). Ēthotic argument. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 3 (3), 245–258.

Butcher, S. H. (1951). Aristotle’s theory of poetry and fine art, with a critical text and translation of the Poetics . Dover.

Callard, A. (2019). The devil’s advocate’s advocate. The Point Magazine , online at https://thepointmag.com/2019/examined-life/the-devils-advocates-advocate-agnes-callard .

Campolo, C. (2019). On staying in character: Virtue and the possibility of deep disagreement. Topoi, 38 (4), 719–723.

Cohen, D. H. (2005). Arguments that backfire. In D. Hitchcock & D. Farr (Eds.), The uses of argument (pp. 58–65). OSSA.

Cohen, D. H. (2009). Keeping an open mind and having a sense of proportion as virtues in argumentation. Cogency, 1 (2), 49–64.

Cohen, D. H. (2013). Virtue, in context. Informal Logic, 33 (4), 471–485.

Dutilh Novaes, C. (2015). A dialogical, multi-agent account of the normativity of logic. Dialectica, 69 (4), 587–609.

Ennis, R. H. (1996). Critical thinking dispositions: Their nature and assessability. Informal Logic, 18 (2–3), 165–182.

Facione, P. A. (2000). The disposition toward critical thinking: Its character, measurement, and relationship to critical thinking skill. Informal Logic, 20 (1), 61–84.

Fortenbaugh, W. W. (1992). Aristotle on persuasion through character. Rhetorica, 10 (3), 207–244.

Gilbert, M. A. (2015). Rules is rules: Ethos and situational normativity. In B. J. Garssen, D. Godden, G. Mitchell, & A. F. S. Henkemans (Eds.), Proceedings of ISSA 2014: Eighth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 467–474). Sic Sat.

Gilbert, M. A. (2016). Ethos, familiars and micro-cultures. In F. Paglieri, L. Bonelli, & S. Felletti (Eds.), The psychology of argument: Cognitive approaches to argumentation and persuasion (pp. 275–285). College Publications.

Paglieri, F. (2015). Bogency and goodacies: On argument quality in virtue argumentation theory. Informal Logic, 35 (1), 65–87.

Powers, L. H. (1998). Ad hominem arguments. In H. V. Hansen, C. W. Tindale, & A. V. Colman (Eds.), Argumentation and rhetoric . Vale.

Rapp, C., & Wagner, T. (2013). On some Aristotelian sources of modern argumentation theory. Argumentation, 27, 7–30.

Rorty, A. (2011). Aristotle on the virtues of rhetoric. The Review of Metaphysics, 64 (4), 715–733.

Rubinelli, S. (2009). Ars topica: The classical technique of constructing arguments from Aristotle to Cicero . Springer.

Santas, G. X. (1997). Does Aristotle have a virtue ethics? In D. Statman (Eds.), Virtue ethics: A critical reader (pp. 260–285). Georgetown University Press.

Self, L. S. (1979). Rhetoric and phronesis: The Aristotelian ideal. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 12 (2), 130–145.

Smith, R. (1997). Aristotle: Topics: Books I and VIII . Oxford University Press.

Sosa, E. (1991). Knowledge in perspective: Selected essays in epistemology . Cambridge University Press.

Stevens, K., & Cohen, D. H. (2020). Devil’s advocates are the angels of argumentation . In C. Dutilh Novaes, H. Jansen, J. A. Van Laar, & B. Verheij (Eds.), Reason to dissent: Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Argumentation , Groningen 2019 (Vol. 2, pp. 161–174). College Publications.

Trapp, R., & Hoff, N. (1985). A model of serial argument in interpersonal relationships. Journal of the American Forensic Association, 22, 1–11.

Zagzebski, L. (1996). Virtues of the mind . Cambridge University Press.

Žmavc, J. (2012). The ethos of classical rhetoric: From epieikeia to auctoritas . In F. H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (Eds.), Topical themes in argumentation theory (pp. 181–191). Springer.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Arts and Communication, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, USA

Andrew Aberdein

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew Aberdein .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Institut für Philosophie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Joseph Andrew Bjelde

David Merry

Christopher Roser

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Aberdein, A. (2021). Was Aristotle a Virtue Argumentation Theorist?. In: Bjelde, J.A., Merry, D., Roser, C. (eds) Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity. Argumentation Library, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70817-7_11

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70817-7_11

Published : 13 July 2021

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-70816-0

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-70817-7

eBook Packages : Religion and Philosophy Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Emotions
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Acquisition
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Culture
• Music and Media
• Music and Religion
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Oncology
• Medical Toxicology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business History
• Business Ethics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Methodology
• Economic History
• Economic Systems
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Theory
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

3 The Virtuous Spiral: Aristotle’s Theory of Habituation

Agnes Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

• Published: 20 April 2022
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

Central to Aristotelian ethics is the process of habituation by which agents acquire virtue. Aristotle holds that we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions—but he also holds that in order to perform virtuous actions, one must be virtuous. I explain that the Aristotelian account of habituation is not a closed circle, but rather a positive feedback loop relying on Aristotle’s division of the soul into an affective and intellectual part. When I act virtuously, my intellectual part shapes my affective part, regulating my feelings; and my affective part, thus improved, can act on my intellectual part, making me receptive to increases in my ethical knowledge; increases which in turn improve the ability of my intellect to regulate my feelings; and so on.

3.1 Introduction

Aristotle’s ethics is an ethics of virtue activation: a happy life calls for the exercise of the virtues of justice, courage, moderation, and the rest. But how do people become virtuous? This is a fundamental question for Aristotelian moral psychology, since we need to answer it in order to know how ethics can be realized in creatures like us: non-eternal organisms who exist by changing over time. Is virtue ‘natural’ to us—is it somehow, innate, waiting to be expressed—or is it the product of ‘nurture’—impressed upon us by our familial and social environment?

Aristotle’s answer is: neither. We acquire virtue by habituation. Aristotle grants that we could not acquire virtue without the contributions that both nature and nurture make to our efforts, but his understanding of the fundamental mechanism of virtue acquisition falls on neither side of that divide. Habituation is not the emergence of innate virtue nor the transfer of virtue from what has it, to what doesn’t. Rather, habituation is self-transformation, the acquisition of a disposition—such as the disposition to act virtuously—by way of exercising that very disposition—acting virtuously.

There is, however, a difficulty as to how such a process is possible, given that one cannot exercise a disposition one lacks. If virtue is both required for, and generated by, virtuous action, habituation becomes an incoherent process, a conceptual analog of M. C. Escher’s drawings of impossible cubes and staircases. Call this problem ‘the habituation circle’.

This chapter draws on Aristotle’s metaphysics of change and his analysis of the division in the soul to demystify the workings of habituation. Aristotle thinks that ethical change, like change in general, happens part by part. His account of habituation relies on the intelligibility of possessing partial virtue, and of performing an action in a partially virtuous manner. Though virtue both produces and is produced by virtuous activity, the two instances of ‘virtuous activity’ are not the same: the performance of a somewhat virtuous action makes a person somewhat more virtuous, and this in turn allows her to act somewhat more virtuously, and so on. The processes that correspond to the two ‘halves’ of the circle—virtue giving rise to virtuous activity, and virtuous activity giving rise to virtue—each operate on one another’s output in such a way as to move the agent towards more virtue, and more virtuous activity.

This feedback loop resembles a closed circle less than a spiral opening outwards, growing in size. Such growth calls for the two parts of the process—action producing virtue, and virtue producing action—to be separate occurrences. I show that Aristotle’s division of the soul into an affective and an intellectual part allows him to describe these as two distinct stages. When I make myself virtuous, I do so because my intellectual part can act on my affective part, regulating my feelings; and, in turn, my affective part can act on my intellectual part, making me receptive to knowledge.

3.2 Virtues and parts of the soul

In I.13, Aristotle divides the soul into an affective and an intellectual part. 1 In the affective part are contained desires, passions, pleasures, and pains: the affective part of the soul is that in virtue of which we are sensitive and feeling creatures. The intellectual part, by contrast, is responsible for the activities of thought and reasoning, both theoretical and practical.

The ethical virtues (courage, justice, moderation, etc.) are organized and perfected conditions of the affective part of the soul. These conditions amount to dispositions to act and feel in the right way.

But what is a disposition? A disposition is an extra level of organization to which something is subject when its nature underdetermines how it will respond in a set of situations. To have the relevant disposition is to have acquired the organization necessary for responding well, as opposed to badly, in the specified set of situations.

When, for instance, one’s soul is in a good (i.e. courageous) condition with respect to fear and boldness, one will feel and choose as one ought in circumstances that involve danger. Likewise, when one’s soul is in a good (i.e. moderate) condition in respect of appetitive desire, one will make the right choices in respect of food, or sex, or physical comfort. A virtuous person will be neither over-indulgent nor abstemious in a way that interferes with health or pleasure. In general, the virtuous person is the one who feels, desires, and fears in accordance with what is in fact good or bad.

If we turn our attention to the intellectual part of the soul, we see that it too has an organized or perfected condition. When someone is such that she reasons well theoretically—which is to say, about what is eternal and cannot be otherwise—then she has the virtue of sophia (theoretical wisdom). When she is disposed to reason well practically—which is to say, about what it is up to her to determine—then she has the virtue of phronēsis , practical wisdom. In general, we can say that a person has intellectual virtue when her thinking guides her in the right direction, either in theorizing—towards knowledge—or in acting—towards the good.

The distinction between ethical and intellectual virtue is an important one for discussions of virtue acquisition, since the two forms of virtue are acquired in different ways. Ethical virtue is acquired by a process of habituation ( ethismos ), whereas intellectual virtue is acquired by teaching (II.2, 1103a14–18). Aristotle’s discussion of virtue acquisition in the Nicomachean Ethics concentrates on ethical virtue specifically, and thus on the process of habituation. In fact, he typically uses the word ‘virtue’ ( aretē ) as a shorthand to refer to ethical virtue specifically, a practice that I, like most commentators, will henceforth follow. (Though in those places where context calls for disambiguation I will introduce the modifiers ‘ethical’ and ‘intellectual’.)

Nonetheless, it will not be possible to set aside intellectual virtue or its acquisition entirely. This is, first, because the two kinds of virtue-acquisition process often get conflated: some of Aristotle’s contemporaries were inclined—perhaps in part due to the influence of Socrates—to make the mistake of understanding the process of habituation into virtue as purely a matter of the intellectual acquisition of knowledge about how to act. Aristotle is interested in diagnosing and correcting this mistake, and thus the contrast between intellectual and ethical virtue hangs in the background of his account of habituation. More positively, he believes that education of the affective part of the soul is not independent of education of the intellectual part of the soul. This dependence is not surprising, given his thesis of the unity of the virtues (VI.12–13): just as one cannot have practical wisdom in the intellectual part without ethical virtue in the affective part (or vice versa), so too the process of acquiring the one is not fully independent of the process of acquiring the other.

3.3 Habituation as virtue acquisition

Aristotle’s view is that we become just, moderate, and courageous people by performing just, moderate, and courageous actions. Habituation is the process of acquiring the disposition (i.e. the virtue of justice, moderation, or courage) by performing the corresponding (just, moderate, or courageous) action. Before examining the workings of the process of habituation in further detail, it is worth situating this conception of habituation in Aristotle’s larger theory of virtue. Virtue, according to Aristotle, is something praiseworthy, and it does not arise by nature or by craft; nor is being virtuous a merely accidental property of a human being.

3.3.1 Not by nature

Let me begin by explaining why Aristotle thinks nothing acquired by habituation can be natural.

Aristotle’s metaphysical worldview divides the world into those things that do and those that don’t have an internal source of change and rest. His word for such a source of change is ‘nature’; ‘natural things’ are things that are such as to be the sources or causes of their own changes: plants, animals, their parts, and the simple bodies (earth, air, fire, and water). A tool or house, by contrast, is dependent for its existence and continued maintenance on external source of change and rest, namely the craftsman or the caretaker ( Physics II.1). Natural things use and sustain themselves, and these processes are governed by the form or (in the case of living things) the soul of the thing in question. A tiger’s activities are governed by its form (i.e. soul), and it exists for the sake of that form. It is self-regulating. For instance, the final dimension and shape that limits its growth can be traced to the form in it ( De Anima II.1–4, On Generation and Corruption I.5).

Aristotle denies that virtue is natural. Virtue arises by habituation, and natural things cannot be habituated to act contrary to their nature:

This makes it quite clear that none of the virtues of character comes about in us by nature; for no natural way of being is changed through habituation, as for example the stone which by nature moves downwards will not be habituated into moving upwards, even if someone tries to make it so by throwing it upwards ten thousand times, nor will fire move downwards, nor will anything else that is by nature one way be habituated into behaving in another. (II.1, 1103a18–23)

If it were in our nature to be good (or neither good nor bad), then habituation could not make us bad, and if it was in our nature to be bad (or neither good nor bad), then habituation could not make us good. Given that we can be changed by habituation, the virtues cannot be ours by nature. 2

3.3.2 Not an accidental change

Consider the relatively superficial kind of changes that something undergoes when it gets moved from one place to another, or dipped in paint. Accidental changes of this kind come at a tangent to the essence of the thing in question: something can take on and lose accidental properties without changing in any respect that concerns what it is. Could virtue be an accidental property? In Physics VII.3, Aristotle answers this question for one specific kind of accidental change—alterations, which are changes in the sensible properties of something: ‘dispositions, whether of the body or of the soul, are not alterations. For some [dispositions] are virtues and others are defects, and neither virtue nor defect is an alteration: virtue is a perfection’ (246a10–13). His reasoning can be generalized to all accidental changes, however, since no accidental change can be a perfection (or defect) of the thing in question—perfection must speak to the being of the thing in question:

So just as when speaking of a house we do not call its arrival at perfection an alteration (for it would be absurd to suppose that the coping or the tiling is an alteration or that in receiving its coping or its tiling a house is altered and not perfected), the same also holds good in the case of virtues and defects and of the things that possess or acquire them; for virtues are perfections and defects are departures: consequently they are not alterations. ( Phys. 7.3, 246a17–246b3)

The virtues are perfections of the thing whose virtues they are: a virtue is what it is for the thing to be a good exemplar of some particular kind. For this reason, a perfection stands in a close relation to the process of generation: Aristotle says that ‘a circle is perfect when it is really a circle and when it is best’ ( Phys. 7.3, 246a15–16). Perfection completes the process of generation, just as the coping or tiling completes the house. In being perfected, the thing comes to fully inhabit a particular way of being. And so the question, for a human being, is: which way of being does virtue perfect?

There are two possibilities. The first is that, despite not being due to nature, virtue nonetheless perfects nature. The second is that it perfects some non-natural way of being. This second option amounts, I will argue, a picture of virtue acquisition as virtue imposition, by society, upon the individual.

3.3.3 Non-artefactual

An artefact does not have its own nature. Its size, shape, and other properties are determined by the demands of its maker, and not, for example, by that of which it is made. A wooden bed is not, simply due to facts about what wood is like, a suitable place for a nap. It is suitable for a nap because someone has shaped it to be so. The maker makes the artwork by having, in his soul, the form that dictates how the artefact should be. He then imposes this form on some bit of matter whose nature was not such as to have this form. Aristotle says that once some wood has been made into a bed, it is no longer ‘wood’ but a ‘wooden’ something. The wood and its nature have been tamed and restrained by craft, and so ‘wood’ no longer counts as what it is to be the thing in question. Wood is demoted to the metaphysical status of matter. The thing is now an artefact—a bed—rather than a natural thing—some wood. 3

If virtue acquisition happened in an analogous way, a person’s natural passions would be the product of the institutions, laws, and individuals making up her society. Just as the structure and function of the wooden bed are determined not by anything about wood but by the form in the craftsman’s soul, so too someone’s desires, fears, and emotions would be determined by what a community needs her to feel and how it needs her to act. On this artefactual picture, virtue arises contrary to nature, in that the new form (e.g. chair), replaces the form that was there before (e.g. wooden). To the extent that the chair still behaves like wood—e.g. sprouts wood if you plant it ( Physics II.1, 193b7–13)—this is either accidental or contrary to its being a chair.

Aristotle rejects this artefactual picture of virtue acquisition. He denies that virtue acquisition works against the nature of the thing: ‘The virtues develop in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature, but because we are naturally able to receive them and are brought to completion by means of habituation.’ (II.1, 1103a23–6) It is not in the nature of wood to be braced and joined so as to support a sleeper. When the source of change and rest is external to something, Aristotle says that it is acted upon by a violent external force. 4 The wood is not ‘doing’ anything in becoming shaped into a chair. Its nature—which is what regulates all its doings—is being subordinated by the agency of the craftsman (and his tools). Habituation is to be contrasted with such processes, since it occurs by way of the actions of the thing being habituated. Aristotle thinks that, though virtue does not come about by nature, it is also does not come about in a way that is contrary to nature.

3.3.4 A source of praise

Why does Aristotle think that virtue is acquired through acting, rather than being acted upon? One possibility is that he took this as an observed fact about his own society. Another possibility is that this is a conclusion of what he took to be the most fundamental fact about virtue and vice: that they are sources of praise and blame. Aristotle’s methodology throughout the early books of the Nicomachean Ethics proceeds by operationalizing this feature of virtue: when he wants to make an argument as to what some virtue entails, he uses the fact that we praise or blame people who act in certain ways as the main constraint on the construction of the theory of that virtue. (For a general statement of the point, see I.12, 1101b13–14, II.5, 1105b30.) The intuitions with which he theorizes about courage and moderation presuppose that we see the courageous or moderate agent, rather than her parents or her society, as the proper target of praise—and likewise, that we see the cowardly or rash or immoderate agent as the proper target of blame.

Aristotle may have reasoned that if my excellence were something that someone did to me—a product of being shaped or inculcated or indoctrinated by the forces external to me—it would not be a source of praise. The passive recipient of virtue is not praiseworthy for having it, since it can be traced to another source. On the habituation theory, the mechanism of virtue acquisition is (the action of) the person being habituated. A person becomes virtuous not by having anything done to her, but rather by doing things—specifically, by performing virtuous actions. The virtue she acquires can, then, be traced to herself. I find it plausible that the demand to underwrite praiseworthiness is what led Aristotle to reject the artefactual picture in favour of one on which virtue is acquired by habituation.

It is worth emphasizing, however, that the agency manifested in virtue acquisition has a characteristic dependence on outside assistance. For example, in NE II.4 Aristotle explains that one way to do something you do not know how to do is to act under the direction of another. Aristotle does not believe that habituation would be possible, absent a framework of parents, teachers (and, most importantly) laws (see NE X.9)—for these give the agent direction in acting as she does not yet know how to act. Likewise, there are somatic or constitutional facts that have a role to play in one’s success. It follows that Aristotle’s ethical framework requires us to invoke the distinction between doing something with (natural and social) help and having something done to you.

The fact that habituation requires help has implications when it comes to moral responsibility for the failure to acquire virtue. Aristotle doesn’t make this point explicitly—he is less interested in questions of what mitigates responsibility in the failure case than in questions of what underwrites responsibility for the success case—but we can invoke his distinction between mere animalistic ‘brutishness’ and ethically blameworthy ‘vice’ in NE VII.5 to mark the relevant conceptual space. If someone’s natural or social environment is hostile enough to preclude virtue acquisition, then Aristotle says the resultant condition is not vice but rather something like brutishness. And while brutishness is in many ways analogous to vice—both are bad—this wider use of ‘bad’ does not license blame (1148b5–6).

When one’s failure to acquire virtue is due to the absence of the (natural or social) assistance, one is not morally responsible for this failure, and that is why we do not call these cases of true ‘vice.’

3.3.5 Habituation: summary

Thus, Aristotle’s account of habituation is an account of a process that is not natural, accidental, or artefactual:

Again, in the case of those things that accrue to us by nature we poses the capacities for them first, and display them in actuality later (something that is evident in the case of the senses: we did not acquire our senses as a result of repeated acts of seeing, or repeated acts of hearing but rather the other way round—we used them because we had them, rather than acquiring them because we used them); whereas we acquire the excellences through having first engaged in the activities, as is also the case with various sorts of expert knowledge—for the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing. 5 For example people become builders by building and cithara-players by playing the cithara; so too, then, we become just by doing just things, moderate by doing moderate things, courageous by doing courageous things. (II.1, 1103a26–1103b2)

Aristotelian habituation invokes the category of things we learn to do and learn by doing—dispositions. This category, first, rejects accidentality by invoking perfection and, second, creates room between the idea of natural self-perfection and the idea of external perfection. Acquisition by exercise sets the acquisition of a disposition apart from both natural and artefactual changes. When a thing’s perfection is the product of its nature—such as with seeing or hearing—it acquires the potentiality 6 before exercising it. The same is true (though Aristotle doesn’t make the point here) of a craft object: the craftsman makes the chair able to be used for sitting, and it has this potentiality before it is actually used for sitting. We do not create chairs by sitting on them, any more than we create the power of sight by seeing. But we do create the power to play the cithara or the power of moderation by playing the cithara and being moderate. The power is ours and not to be attributed to any external source of change—we created it, by doing what we did—but the power is not natural, both because we had to create it, and because we required assistance to do so.

3.4 The habituation circle

The various distinctive features of virtue turn out to call for the idea of acquiring a power by exercising it. But this is a problematic idea, and Aristotle devotes a chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics —II.4—to the problem:

But someone might raise a problem about how we can say that, to become just, people need to do what is just, and to do what is moderate in order to become moderate; for if they are doing what is just and moderate, they are already just and moderate, in the same way in which, if people are behaving literately and musically, they are already expert at reading and writing and in music. (1105a17–21)

This is what I have called the habituation circle (Fig. 3.1 ): in habituation, virtuous actions are generated from virtue, but virtue is also generated from virtuous actions. The circle has two parts, the Disposition from Action Principle and the Action from Disposition principle.

The Habituation Circle

The Disposition-from-Action Principle (DFA) says that people become just and moderate by doing just and moderate actions. The Action from Disposition Principle (AFD) says that just and moderate actions activate, and therefore presuppose the existence of, a person’s justice and moderation.

3.4.1 Knowledge as a back door to virtue?

This circular structure seems to make virtue acquisition impossible—unless perhaps there is an opening somewhere in the ‘circle’. If virtuous dispositions were not the only place from which virtuous actions could come, or vice versa, then we would have an easier time understanding how the process gets going. Is there another source for either one? Aristotle addresses himself to one such contender, knowledge. Aristotle sees intellectualism—the view that moral knowledge is all that is necessary for goodness—as a bad way of breaking into the circle; he argues both against the claim that virtuous dispositions come from knowledge (about how to be) and the claim that virtuous actions come from knowledge (about how to act).

3.4.1.1 Knowledge does not give rise to virtuous dispositions

Aristotle supports the claim that virtue must come from virtuous activity (and not knowledge) by denying that philosophizing can, independently of ethical habituation, give rise to virtue:

So it is appropriate to say that the just person comes about from doing what is just, and the moderate person from doing what is moderate; whereas from not doing these things no one will have excellence in the future either. But most people fail to do these things, and by taking refuge in talk they think that they are philosophizing, and that they will become excellent this way, so behaving rather like sick people, when they listen carefully to their doctors but then fail to do anything of what is prescribed for them. Well, just as the latter, for their part, won’t be in good bodily condition if they look after themselves, like that, neither will the former have their souls in a good condition if they philosophize like that. (II.4, 1105b9–18)

Aristotle is describing people who make the mistake of thinking they are going to be made good merely by acquiring knowledge. His claim is that it is not knowledge that leads the unhabituated to virtue of soul but rather action, just as it is not knowledge that leads to ‘virtue’ of body—health—but the action of following through on medical advice. The analogy with health might strike some as tendentious—it is clear that knowledge cannot, in and of itself, heal physical problems; it is perhaps less obvious that knowledge cannot, in and of itself, heal the soul.

It is important to understand this claim in the context of Aristotle’s divided psychology: improvements in the intellectual part of the soul no more immediately translate into improvements in the affective part of the soul than they do to the body. Aristotle notes in I.13 that the disconnect between the mind and the body is obvious—we can see it in the case of paralysed limbs—whereas in the soul the ‘disconnect’ between affective and intellectual is not as obvious but nonetheless equally real: ‘The difference is that in the case of the body we actually see the part that is moving wrongly, which we do not in the case of the soul. But perhaps we should not be any less inclined to think that in the soul, too, there is something besides reason, opposing and going against it’ (I.13, 1102b21–5).

Knowledge cannot heal your flu; so too it cannot heal your cowardice. This should not be seen as an argument by bad analogy, but as a reminder of the distinction articulated in I.13: the evident division between body and knowledge is meant to call to mind the less evident division between the knowledge in the intellectual part of the soul and ethical virtue in the affective part.

3.4.1.2 Knowledge does not give rise to virtuous actions

Aristotle inveighs against those who think knowledge will yield right action:

This is why the young are not an appropriate audience for the political expert; for they are inexperienced in the actions that constitute life, and what is said will start from these and will be about these. What is more, because they have a tendency to be led by the emotions, it will be without point or use for them to listen, since the end is not knowing things but doing them. Nor does it make any difference whether a person is young in years or immature in character, for the deficiency is not a matter of time, but the result of living by emotion and going after things in that way. For having knowledge turns out to be without benefit to such people, as it is to those who lack self-control; whereas for those who arrange their desires, and act, in accordance with reason, it will be of great use to know about these things. (I.3, 1095a2–16)

In this passage, Aristotle criticizes those who believe that right action will come to immature persons from the acquisition of knowledge—instead, he says, they will be like akratics, namely, people who cannot enact the knowledge that they have. Elsewhere he says that an akratic is like a city that has good laws but fails to enforce them (VII.10, 1152a20). Knowledge is not useful to a person for whom the appetitive part of the soul is in disarray. Rather, what is crucial both for right action and for the profitability of knowledge is that the person have a certain character, namely of the sort where their desires are made to accord with reason. Good actions cannot spring directly from knowledge, absent virtue.

Aristotle denies that knowledge represents a way of getting virtuous dispositions without virtuous actions, or vice versa. For it is the fact that someone (already) has virtue and (already) acts virtuously that allows any knowledge he acquires to be of benefit to him. Not only is knowledge no solution to the habituation circle, but it is, in fact, infected by the problem. Practical knowledge may be acquired by teaching but is nonetheless dependent on the success of habituation. This is because moral knowledge only gets a grip on us to the extent that it speaks the language of our motives and passions. If we preach to the unhabituated, our moral lessons are fated to fall on deaf ears. Thus, in order to be teachable, we require ethical virtue. In this way the problem of the acquisition of ethical virtue is also a problem for the acquisition of the intellectual virtue of wisdom ( phronēsis ).

3.4.2 Partial virtue in Metaphysics Theta 8

Aristotle’s answer to how habituation works, in light of the circle, is that one can act from partial virtue and one can perform actions that are partially virtuous. Virtue and virtuous activity come from one another because each can arise in an imperfect or incomplete form. Aristotle offers this answer in two places: the first is a chapter we have already sampled, Nicomachean Ethics II.4, and the second is Metaphysics Theta (θ) 8, in which he discusses the acquisition of a disposition in relation to the distinction between potentiality and actuality 7 . The two accounts are compatible, though they have different emphases. The NE II.4 discussion is focused on the explanatory force of the fact that we can perform actions that are virtuous, but not paradigmatically so; by contrast, in θ8 Aristotle’s solution to the same puzzle stresses the fact that virtue can exist in someone in an incomplete condition. Let me begin with the latter passage:

This is why it is thought impossible to be a builder if one has built nothing or a lyre player if one has never played the lyre; for he who learns to play the lyre learns to play it by playing it, and all other learners do similarly. And thence arose the sophistical quibble, that one who does not possess a science will be doing that which is the object of the science; for he who is learning it does not possess it. But since, of that which is coming to be, some part must have come to be, and, of that which, in general, is changing, some part must have changed (this is shown in the treatise on movement), the learner must, it would seem, possess something of the science. But here too, then, it is clear that actuality is in this sense also, viz. in order of generation and of time, prior to potency. ( Metaphysics θ8, 1049b29–1050a3)

Here Aristotle states the puzzle of the habituation circle in terms of dispositions in general, rather than focusing on the disposition of virtue in particular. The disposition is what gets activated when the person performs the corresponding activity (AFD). But the disposition arises from the activity (DFA). For example, in order to play the lyre one must (already) know how to play it; likewise, the person who does geometrical calculations must (already) know geometry. In order to be in the process of learning— to be engaging in the activities of building or geometrical construction—one must already have the art one is learning. So how is the agency of the learner—doing the relevant action without but in order to acquire the relevant disposition—possible?

Aristotle’s answer in this passage is that it is possible because the learner has some of the disposition: ‘the learner must, it would seem, possess something of the science.’ When he is done learning, he will have all of it. The crucial innovation Aristotle has introduced here is the idea that dispositions are complexes, and have parts. He wants us to understand a case of knowing some geometry, or having some facility with the lyre, as a case in which one has a part, but not the whole, of the disposition. Aristotle’s answer here effectively qualifies the truth of AFD: actions can come not only from corresponding dispositions but also from parts of the disposition .

Aristotle makes the corresponding qualification in DFA, to the effect that the activities of the learner are themselves not full or perfect instances of the corresponding kind. In the same passage, he mentions in passing that those who are learning by practice do not engage in the relevant activity ‘except in a limited sense’ ( Meta . θ8, 1050a14). He does not, however, offer more details as to what engaging in an activity in a ‘limited sense’ amounts to. But he does precisely this in his discussion of the habituation circle in NE II.4.

3.4.3 Acting partially virtuously in NE II.4

After stating the problem (1105a1721, previously cited), Aristotle observes:

One can do something literate both by chance and at someone else’s prompting. One will only count as literate, then, if one both does something literate and does it in the way a literate person does it; and this is a matter of doing it in accordance with one’s own expert knowledge of letters. (II.4, 1105a22–6)

Introducing a qualification on DFA breaks the habituation circle, since it becomes possible to acquire a disposition by performing an action in a different and defective way compared to the way in which a person will perform it once he has acquired the disposition. Later, Aristotle describes this qualification specifically with reference to the case of an ethical disposition:

So things done are called just and moderate whenever they are such that the just person or the moderate person would do them; whereas a person is not just and moderate because he does these things, but also because he does them in the way in which just and moderate people do them. So it is appropriate to say that the just person comes about from doing what is just, and the moderate person from doing what is moderate; whereas from not doing these things no one will have virtue in the future either. (1105b512)

It is possible to do just and moderate actions in two ways.

in the fully just and moderate way that the just or moderate man does them;

in the qualified way that the learner does them.

In between the two passages quoted above, Aristotle explains what differentiates (1) from (2). The fully just actions of the person who has already acquired justice meet three additional conditions: ‘first, if he does them knowingly, secondly if he decides to do them, and decides to do them for themselves, and thirdly if he does them from a firm and unchanging disposition’ ( NE II.4, 1105a31–3).

An action is done in a partly just manner if the agent (1) lacks knowledge, (2) fails to choose it for its own sake, and (3) has a changeable character. (3) paraphrases the fact that he is a learner—his character is in transition, which is precisely why he must act from only a partial (but growing) ethical disposition. This is in effect a reiteration of the qualification on AFD covered in more detail in the Metaphysics theta 8 passage discussed above. (1) is a consequence of (3), given Aristotle’s thesis of the unity of the virtues: he holds that the (practically) intellectual virtues are conditional on the possession of the ethical ones. What, then, do we make of (2), choosing the action for its own sake? What does it mean that the learner fails to (fully) meet this condition?

As Marta Jimenez (2016) has argued, this cannot mean that he performs the action from an ulterior motive such as a desire for money, status, or appetitive pleasure. In that case he would become habituated into acting on that (bad) reason, and such actions would never qualify as just, or moderate, or brave. Rather, it must be that he comes, more and more, to appreciate the value of acting courageously—to take pleasure in courage itself. How does that happen?

In order to answer this question, we will have to describe in more detail what it means to do something ‘partly’ for its own sake—or to have ‘part’ of a virtuous disposition.

3.5 Acquiring new pleasures

Habituation is a matter of doing a (somewhat) virtuous action from a (somewhat) virtuous disposition so as to act (somewhat) more virtuously from a (somewhat) more virtuous disposition. The question is, motivationally speaking: what drives this process? Aristotle holds that we are motivated by pleasure and pain, but it is precisely the mark of not yet being habituated to fail to take pleasure in the right sorts of actions. How do the wrong sorts of motivations motivate us to acquire the right ones? Notice that this problem arises for ethical habituation specifically, as opposed to craft habituation, which does not involve a habituation of the motivational faculty itself. Rewards and incentives can come in ‘from the outside’ to fuel the person’s training in some arena of technical competence. In ethical habituation, however, the person’s capacities for pleasure and pain place restrictions on the actions she can perform to habituate herself.

In an influential paper, Myles Burnyeat (1980 : 78) argues that we come to experience virtuous actions as enjoyable by performing them:

I may be told, and may believe, that such and such actions are just and noble, but I have not really learned for myself (taken to hear, made second nature to me) that they have this intrinsic value until I have learned to value (love) them for it, with the consequence that I take pleasure in doing them. To understand and appreciate the value that makes them enjoyable in themselves I must learn for myself to enjoy them, and that does take time and practice—in short, habituation.

Burnyeat is surely correct that this is Aristotle’s view, but he does not address the question of how such process of coming-to-take-pleasure works, and, more specifically, he does not explain how I can come to take the ‘right’ sorts of pleasures by doing an action that springs from the ‘wrong’ sorts of pleasures.

Hallvard Fossheim (2006) notes this lacuna, and argues that it is the mimetic character of the trainee’s actions that make them pleasant: the trainee imitates virtuous acts of those around her, and the production of mimetic representations is, quite generally, a pleasant activity. This account has a number of virtues, one being that such pleasures are not ‘ulterior motives’—they are plausibly understood as pleasure in the very act (of representing) itself, and likewise tied to an appreciation of what one is representing.

Fossheim may be right that habituation involves mimesis. But invoking mimesis does not, of itself, explain the dynamic process by which the action becomes less and less of an imitation as one becomes more and more virtuous. This is not true of other forms of mimetic representation, such as acting in a play. Those representations are simply indulged in for some period and subsequently come to an end. We will need to say more to explain how, in habituation, mimetic pleasure, decreasing over time, gives way to the correct pleasure taken in the action for its own sake.

If we want to pinpoint the mechanism for changes in one’s faculty of pleasure-taking, we should turn to Aristotle’s psychology. His conception of the divided soul in I.13, already discussed, provides him with the resources to explain the kinds of changes to which our affective condition is subject. Given that ethical virtue is a matter of the condition of the affective part of our soul, Aristotle must think that the actions we perform shape or influence the organization of this part of our soul.

What shape do they give it? Whatever shape the action has. The goodness of a good action lies in the fact that it is in accord with a rational principle, a principle having its source in the intellectual part of the soul. Like Plato, Aristotle sees the intellectual part as being the ‘most authoritative element’ (IX.8, 1168b) of a human being: ‘For each person ceases to investigate how he will act at whatever moment he brings the origin of the action back to himself, and to the leading part of himself; for this is the part that decides’ (III.3, 1113a5–6).

The intellectual part grasps some rational principle ( orthos logos : see VI.1) and the person acts in accordance with it. Consider Aristotle’s definition of ethical virtue as ‘a disposition, issuing in decisions, depending on intermediacy of the kind relative to us, this being determined by rational prescription and in the way in which the practically wise person ( phronimos ) would determine it.’ (II.6, 1106b36–1107a2) This is a striking definition, considering that decision, reason, and practical wisdom are all features pertaining to the other part of the soul—the intellectual, not the affective. Aristotle’s thought is that it is virtuous to have one’s passions arranged in the way that precisely conforms to and supports the reasoning work of the rational part of the soul. Though the affective part is not rational in the sense of being able to produce reasoning, it is receptive to the rationality of the intellectual part. 8

The affective part of the soul becomes virtuous by (gradually) taking on the organization of the intellectual part of the soul. The mechanism of this transformation is action: every action has an intellectual principle, and when someone acts in accordance with that principle, the principle comes to shape who he is. The affective part of the soul is precisely a capacity to be affected; and we ourselves (qua intellectual) are among the things by which we ourselves (qua affective) can be affected. When we act in accordance with the intellectual part of our soul, our affective part becomes rational in the sense in which someone is rational in listening to a rational adviser (I.13, 1102b29–1103a3). We shape ourselves by heeding our own advice. In this sense, we become what we do: the order of our actions informs the order of our feelings. We thereby come to take pleasure in what we (rationally grasp that we) ought to do, and be pained by what we (rationally grasp that we) ought not do.

This does not necessarily or unfailingly happen—I can insulate myself from being ‘educated’ by my actions if, for instance, I feel ashamed of what I did. Hence Aristotle thinks of shame as a semi-virtue, appropriate only for the young. It is both ‘occasioned by bad actions’ (IV.9, 1128b22)—which presupposes that one has acted badly—and functions as a restraint on future actions—‘young people should have a sense of shame because they live by emotion and get so many things wrong, but are held back by a sense of shame’ (IV.9 1128b17–18). Shame could, then, be understood as a corrective on the usual process of habituation, in that shame sets up a wall of resistance to having one’s passions informed by the logic of one’s action. Assuming that one does not set up such a barrier, one steers a course towards becoming what one does.

The cognitive aspects of action—the action’s intellectual principle—creates an order in the affective aspects of the soul of the person engaging in it. When a learner acts, practising the disposition in question, she is acting on herself. She thereby comes to take pleasure in accordance with the rule (logos) in question, and to feel pain in violations of it. Thus practice changes our sources of pleasure or pain. If this were all there were to the story, then practice would not constitute learning, but rather the embodying or realizing in the soul of the learning one has already done. And that learning would be the product of teaching, since while the affective part of the soul is educated by habituation, the intellectual part is educated by teaching. But the conclusion that teaching is the ultimate driver of moral education is, we have already seen, in tension with Aristotle’s avowed anti-intellectualism.

Recall Aristotle’s warning against attempting to acquire virtue by listening to speeches, and his insistence that works of ethics are useless to those who have not been well habituated. Aristotle understands ethical virtue as paving the way for acceptance of rational content by the intellectual part of the soul; in the passage quoted at greater length above, he says knowledge brings profit ‘for those who arrange their desires, and act, in accordance with reason’ ( NE I.3, 1095a10–11). If this is so, how does one come to desire and act in accordance with a rational principle? We seem to be back in a version of the circle: it is knowledge in the intellectual part that drives the actions that habituate the affective part, but it is only when the affective part is habituated that the intellectual part is receptive to knowledge.

Practice may, as I have been asserting, have hedonic powers; but it also, as Burnyeat (1980 : 73) observes, has cognitive powers. I propose that in order to explain how practice can improve cognition and conation, we have to acknowledge an asymmetry between the two parts of the soul. It is true that each is necessary for the well-functioning of the other—this is a version of Aristotle’s doctrine of the unity of the ethical and intellectual virtues (VI.12–13)—but it cannot be that for every advance in ethical virtue, the corresponding intellectual advance is already presupposed. If that were the case, there would never be any felt need to move further.

The progress of habituation is self-guided—something the agent does, albeit with outside assistance—and so he needs access to a perspective on which his current situation seems in need of rectification; this, in turn, requires misalignment between the parts of the soul. Thus we must construe each advance in affective virtue as making possible a further but distinct advance in intellectual virtue—and vice versa. Let me discuss this point by way of an example.

Anyone who has commanded a reluctant child has faced the hopeless prospect of providing him with an endless list of corrections and clarifications. Sometimes one adopts the strategy of continuously barking commands and criticisms at him, and this can bring about a result in the vicinity of the desired one, but it is not satisfying. One feels that one has eviscerated the project of parenting by adopting the role of a puppeteer. For one never ends up at the endpoint one was wishing for, which is to be able to praise one’s child for what he has done. The problem is both that the child does not know how to do the relevant task well and at the same time that he does not care enough about its being done well to appreciate the various distinctions and niceties that would go into learning. In one’s better moments as a parent, one takes a different approach. One lowers one’s sights, divests oneself from concern with the quality of the end result, and produces a simpler, more digestible command.

The value of the simpler command to do the less valuable action is that the child can take pride and pleasure in doing it successfully on his own. Perhaps he cannot put all the toys back in their proper places, but he can work to gather them all in a given box. And once he has learned how to do that simpler task well on his own, one can introduce a small refinement, one which the child is in a position to see as a way of improving what he was doing earlier.

If I allow the child to incorporate some instruction before introducing more, I am giving him a chance to, as we say, ‘get a feel for’ the relevant task. When a child learns in this way, he is developing a certain kind of disposition. Engaging in the action corresponding to the (simple) instruction allows the affective part of his soul to take on the order corresponding to that instruction. Once this has happened, he has an easier time grasping the point of subsequent refinements, which can in turn ready him for further refinements. We call this ‘getting a feel’ because one comes to feel and therefore doesn’t need to check that one is doing the action correctly. What he does becomes what he has learned, and that allows him to do more and learn more.

By contrast, consider instruction by way of a list of rules. It doesn’t matter whether the rules are received as a series of spoken commands, or a visual checklist, or memorized and internally consulted. The person who aims to follow instruction given in this format will have to repeatedly observe what he is doing and check whether it conforms to the rules. The detachment that can be engendered by this approach—‘am I going through the right sorts of motions?’—is an alternative to what I have described as having a feel for the right way of proceeding. Nonetheless, the checklist approach may produce a good result. For instance, in medicine it has been claimed that surgical checklists save lives ( Gawande 2007 ). The limit case of this is machines, which produce very good results relying exclusively on lists of rules.

Craft habituation has much in common with ethical habituation: they both require part-by-part change, both involve learning by doing, and both are characterized by the DFA-AFD circle (see fig. 3.1 ). But there are important differences. First, in craft the disposition acquired needn’t involve taking pleasure in the relevant activity. Second, in craft the actions that bring about the disposition needn’t be the product of free choice: a slave can acquire a craft, under duress. Perhaps the deepest difference between craft habituation and ethical habituation, however, lies in the question of how necessary they are in the first place.

In the case of craft, Aristotle notes, mere success in respect of the product, irrespective of how it was brought about, suffices for us: ‘the things that come about through the agency of skills contain in themselves the mark of their being done well, so that it is enough if they turn out in a certain way’ (II.4, 1105a27–8). In ethics, our goal is that the action should be able to be done for its own sake, from an affective grasp of the importance of acting in this way—as ethical habituators, our target is the affective condition of someone’s soul. We care not (only) that the result was achieved, but also how it was achieved. A craftsman is in principle replaceable by a rule-following machine, but ethics is not subject to the same substitution.

Habituation is the way in which we learn not only how to be ethical but also how to be good at driving, hairdressing, or cooking. In all cases, practice ingrains in the person the feel for what they are doing that allows them to acquire further refinements in an intelligent way. However, this fact is a deeper fact about ethics than it is about habituation in other areas. In the case of craft, it merely happens to be the case that acquiring a disposition is a useful way to bring about the relevant result; sometimes we bypass habituation using checklists or, for that matter, machines. Habituation is essential to the practice of ethics in a way in which it is not essential to the existence of craft objects, because in the latter case all that we care about is that a set of rules are followed, but not (necessarily) that they are followed from the relevant motivational makeup.

We want the ethical learner’s sense of the rightness of what she is doing to be properly internal to her. The target of ethical habituation is not to give rise to a set of actions but rather to give rise to the kind of person who will do such actions for their own sakes. As we have seen, Aristotle holds it to be distinctive of the ethical good that praise must be appropriate to it, and this in turn means that the action must come from within the agent in a substantive sense. It must spring from an inner principle that informs what she takes pleasure in. That’s what habituation does: it turns an ethical rule into a principle of action for a being for whom it was not by nature a principle.

Habituation is possible because my affective and my intellectual improvement are mutually reinforcing without being fully mutually dependent on one another. The circle of Aristotelian habituation is broken by the fact that the two parts of the soul are, in their imperfectly developed state, decoupled enough to act on one another. On the one hand, improvements in my understanding of a rule happen by way of its coming to more fully inform the affective part of my soul. As Aristotle said (I.3, 1095a2–16, previously cited section 3.4.1.2 ), learning is only of benefit to those who have acquired the right dispositions by way of practice—only such people will be in a position to further ‘internalize’ an understanding of the rule/instruction (logos). On the other hand, those very improvements in my affective condition are themselves products the of rule-governed actions—which is to say, of my intellectual acquisitions.

The more I understand the rule, the more I am able to affectively inhabit it, and the more I affectively inhabit it, the better I understand it. This interplay is productive because defects in the two parts of the soul do not perfectly mirror one another. My growth can be represented not as a circle, but as a spiral (see Fig. 3.2 : VD = ‘virtuous disposition’; VA = virtuous activity).

Virtuous Spiral

Aristotle’s thesis of the unity of the virtues requires that my (intellectual) grasp of a rule cannot be perfected so long as imperfections remain in my affective condition, and vice versa. It does not, however, follow that defects in the one part translate into corresponding defects in the other. That would only be true if the two parts of the soul were by nature, i.e. pre-habituation, in a complete state of harmony. But Aristotle denies that this is the case, observing that the two parts can stand to one another in the relation that someone stands to her own paralysed limbs (I.13, 1102b13–28). So, for instance, the akratic is someone who has a reasoned decision in the intellectual part of her soul, but fails to act on it due to imperfections in her affective condition. Such a person has the universal knowledge of how one ought to act in her circumstances (1151a20–1151a28 9 ), despite a defect in her affective condition. Such a person is akin to one who understands what she has been commanded to do, but is disinclined to obey the command. (Recall, once again, Aristotle’s comparison between akratics and the city that fails to enforce its laws: VII.10, 1152a20.)

Likewise, the phenomenon of ‘natural virtue’ (VI.13 10 ) reveals the possibility of a gap in the opposite direction. ‘Natural virtue’ is a virtue-resembling, unhabituated condition in which our passions, by accident of birth, take on some order that has the appearance of the one habituation would produce. This condition is one that not only (pre-habituated) human children but also non-human animals can be in. A naturally virtuous person is in an affective condition that resembles that of the courageous or moderate person while lacking the corresponding intellectual grasp of the rule. Thus we can call a non-human animal, such as a lion, naturally ‘courageous’ despite the animal’s lacking the intellectual part of the soul entirely.

(It’s worth clarifying that ‘natural virtue’ is not a kind of virtue, and a ‘naturally virtuous’ person is not virtuous, i.e. ethically good. As noted above, Aristotle believes that we do not have virtue by nature. ‘Natural’ in ‘natural virtue’ is an alienating term, so that the phrase should be read as something like: an analog in the natural world to what virtue is in the ethical one.)

The possibility of akrasia and natural virtue allows us to make a conjecture as to the ‘entry point’ for habituation, which is that habituation gets going on the basis of the individuals having (some) natural virtue and (some) access to explicit moral commands from parents, teachers, and lawmakers. The two parts of the soul have, in this way, independent origin stories, and these two parts do not fully line up until the person acquires (full) ethical and intellectual virtue. This misalignment makes it possible for the parts to improve one another: my failure to fully comprehend the rule (logos) can be rectified by my taking pleasure in following it, but also my failure to take full pleasure in following it can be rectified by my acting in accordance with (whatever limited intellectual grasp I currently have of) the rule. Aristotle’s thesis about the unity of the virtues is also a theory about when the soul is unified—and when it isn’t. The disunity of the soul makes virtue acquisition possible, and the unity of virtue is the unity of the soul.

For human beings, unity of soul is an achievement: virtue brings the parts of the soul into alignment. Until it is achieved, the parts of the soul are disunified enough to break the virtuous cycle. Because virtue is what unifies the soul, it constitutes a perfection of our natural condition; because the soul is not, by nature, unified, its habituation into virtue is a possibility.

It is not currently fashionable to understand human beings as divided into Reason and Passion, for it seems to us that most of what we do is thoroughly permeated by both. Aristotle would agree. He does not ever seem inclined to factor out motivation into its intellectual and affective components. The dividedness of the soul is relevant not for the synchronic analysis of virtuous (or vicious) action but in order to have a story to tell about how such action comes into being. If habituation is to be the work of the agent herself, she must act upon herself, and that in turn generates a psychology of self-distance. Dividing the soul into affect and intellect gives virtue a way to come into being. The division of the soul is not a story about a soul standing still; instead, it offers Aristotle the materials to account for a distinctively ethical form of change.

Barnes, J. (ed.) 1984 . The Complete Works of Aristotle . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Broadie, S. (ed.) and C. Rowe (trans.) 2002 . Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Burnyeat, M.   1980 . Aristotle on learning to be good. In Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Callard, A.   2017 . Enkratēs Phronimos . Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99(1): 31–63.

Fossheim, H.   2006 . Habituation as mimesis. In T. D. J. Chappell (ed.), Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gawande, A. 2007. The checklist. New Yorker , 12 Oct.

Jimenez, M.   2016 . Aristotle on becoming virtuous by doing virtuous actions.   Phronesis 61(1): 3–32.

Further Reading

General overview of aristotle’s ethics.

Cooper, John M.   1986 . Reason and Human Good in Aristotle . Indianapolis: Hackett.

Broadie, Sarah.   1991 . Ethics with Aristotle . New York: Oxford University Press

Bostock, David.   2000 . Aristotle’s Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Human function

Kraut, Richard.   1979 . The peculiar function of human beings.   Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9(3): 467–78.

Barney, Rachel.   2008 . Aristotle’s argument for a human function. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34: 293–322.

Destrée, Pierre.   2007 . Aristotle on the causes of akrasia. In Christopher Bobonich and Pierre Destree (eds), Akrasia in Greek Philosophy: From Socrates to Plotinus . Leiden: Brill.

Pickavé, Martin , and Jennifer Whiting . 2008 . Nicomachean Ethics 7.3 on akratic ignorance. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34: 323–71.

Annas, Julia.   1977 . Plato and Aristotle on friendship and altruism.   Mind 86(344): 532–54.

Brewer, Talbot.   2005 . Virtues we can share: friendship and Aristotelian ethical theory.   Ethics 115(4): 721–58.

Kahn, Charles H.   1981 . Aristotle and altruism.   Mind 90: 20–40.

Gosling, J. C. B. , and C. C. W. Taylor . 1982 . The Greeks on Pleasure . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wolfsdorf, David.   2013 . Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reason vs passion

Lorenz, Hendrik.   2006 . The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McDowell, John.   1996 . Incontinence and practical wisdom in Aristotle. In Sabina Lovibond and Stephen G. Williams (eds), Essays for David Wiggins: Identity, Truth and Value . Oxford: Blackwell.

The best life

Lawrence, Gavin.   1993 . Aristotle and the ideal life.   Philosophical Review 102(1): 1–34.

Lear, Gabriel Richardson.   2000 . Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Aristotle calls these two parts of the soul ἄλογον and λόγον ἔχον (I.13, 1102a27–8), which makes it natural to reach for the labels ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ when referring to them. However, this bit of terminology must be taken with a grain of salt, for the following reasons. (1) Aristotle specifies that in applying these labels he is simply following a (probably Platonic) convention. (2) He goes on to subdivide the ‘irrational’ into the part relevant to ethical virtue and a nutritive part irrelevant to virtue (1102b11). He distinguishes the part of the ‘irrational part’ that I call ‘affective’ from the nutritive part precisely on the grounds that the affective participates in reason in a way (1102b13–14). (3) He seems open to classifying both (what I am calling) affective and intellectual as sub-parts of ‘what has reason’ (διττὸν ἔσται καὶ τὸ λόγον ἔχον, 1103a1–2). For these reasons, the labels ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ are misleading, and incline the reader to conceive of the part of the soul corresponding to ethical virtue as less rational than Aristotle understands it to be. For these reasons, as in Callard (2017 : 32 n. 2), I adopt the convention of identifying the two parts of the soul not by the presence of absence of reason, but by the characteristic activities Aristotle associates with each part: feeling (affect) and thinking (intellect).

See § 3.3.2 for a discussion of what Aristotle calls ‘natural virtue’.

Aristotle’s discussions of this point can be found at Phys. VII.3, 245b9–a1; Meta. θ7, 1049a18–24; Meta. Z7 1033a16–22

‘So, too, among things living and among animals we often see things suffering and acting from force, when something from without moves them contrary to their own internal tendency’ ( EE 1224a20–23).

  Rowe’s (2002) translation of this clause reads, ‘for the way we learn the things we should do, knowing how to do them, is by doing them.’ I find Rowe’s English, specifically the grammatical role of the clause in commas, hard to construe. For this reason I have supplanted his translation of the quoted phrase with the one in Barnes (1984) .

For the distinction between potentiality and actuality, see n. 7 .

For the distinction between potentiality and actuality, see Metaphysics θ.6, where Aristotle says that it cannot be analysed into simpler terms, but can only be elucidated by analogy: the potential stands to the actual as what can build stands to what builds, or as waking stands to sleeping, or as having one’s eyes shut stands to seeing, or as matter to stands to what it composes, or as the unwrought stands to the wrought.

See esp. 1151a25–6: ‘the best thing in him, the first principle, is preserved.’

Cf. EE III.7, 1234a24–33.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent.

This is not to say that only virtue ethicists attend to virtues, any more than it is to say that only consequentialists attend to consequences or only deontologists to rules. Each of the above-mentioned approaches can make room for virtues, consequences, and rules. Indeed, any plausible normative ethical theory will have something to say about all three. What distinguishes virtue ethics from consequentialism or deontology is the centrality of virtue within the theory (Watson 1990; Kawall 2009). Whereas consequentialists will define virtues as traits that yield good consequences and deontologists will define them as traits possessed by those who reliably fulfil their duties, virtue ethicists will resist the attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that is taken to be more fundamental. Rather, virtues and vices will be foundational for virtue ethical theories and other normative notions will be grounded in them.

We begin by discussing two concepts that are central to all forms of virtue ethics, namely, virtue and practical wisdom. Then we note some of the features that distinguish different virtue ethical theories from one another before turning to objections that have been raised against virtue ethics and responses offered on its behalf. We conclude with a look at some of the directions in which future research might develop.

1.2 Practical Wisdom

2.1 eudaimonist virtue ethics, 2.2 agent-based and exemplarist virtue ethics, 2.3 target-centered virtue ethics, 2.4 platonistic virtue ethics, 3. objections to virtue ethics, 4. future directions, other internet resources, related entries, 1. preliminaries.

In the West, virtue ethics’ founding fathers are Plato and Aristotle, and in the East it can be traced back to Mencius and Confucius. It persisted as the dominant approach in Western moral philosophy until at least the Enlightenment, suffered a momentary eclipse during the nineteenth century, but re-emerged in Anglo-American philosophy in the late 1950s. It was heralded by Anscombe’s famous article “Modern Moral Philosophy” (Anscombe 1958) which crystallized an increasing dissatisfaction with the forms of deontology and utilitarianism then prevailing. Neither of them, at that time, paid attention to a number of topics that had always figured in the virtue ethics tradition—virtues and vices, motives and moral character, moral education, moral wisdom or discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept of happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life and the fundamentally important questions of what sorts of persons we should be and how we should live.

Its re-emergence had an invigorating effect on the other two approaches, many of whose proponents then began to address these topics in the terms of their favoured theory. (One consequence of this has been that it is now necessary to distinguish “virtue ethics” (the third approach) from “virtue theory”, a term which includes accounts of virtue within the other approaches.) Interest in Kant’s virtue theory has redirected philosophers’ attention to Kant’s long neglected Doctrine of Virtue , and utilitarians have developed consequentialist virtue theories (Driver 2001; Hurka 2001). It has also generated virtue ethical readings of philosophers other than Plato and Aristotle, such as Martineau, Hume and Nietzsche, and thereby different forms of virtue ethics have developed (Slote 2001; Swanton 2003, 2011a).

Although modern virtue ethics does not have to take a “neo-Aristotelian” or eudaimonist form (see section 2), almost any modern version still shows that its roots are in ancient Greek philosophy by the employment of three concepts derived from it. These are arête (excellence or virtue), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom) and eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness or flourishing). (See Annas 2011 for a short, clear, and authoritative account of all three.) We discuss the first two in the remainder of this section. Eudaimonia is discussed in connection with eudaimonist versions of virtue ethics in the next.

A virtue is an excellent trait of character. It is a disposition, well entrenched in its possessor—something that, as we say, goes all the way down, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker—to notice, expect, value, feel, desire, choose, act, and react in certain characteristic ways. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. A significant aspect of this mindset is the wholehearted acceptance of a distinctive range of considerations as reasons for action. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, practices honest dealing and does not cheat. If such actions are done merely because the agent thinks that honesty is the best policy, or because they fear being caught out, rather than through recognising “To do otherwise would be dishonest” as the relevant reason, they are not the actions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, tells the truth because it is the truth, for one can have the virtue of honesty without being tactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognises “That would be a lie” as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reason for not making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due, but not overriding, weight to “That would be the truth” as a reason for making them.

An honest person’s reasons and choices with respect to honest and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty, truth, and deception—but of course such views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed through deception rather than thinking they have been clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is dishonest and so on. Given that a virtue is such a multi-track disposition, it would obviously be reckless to attribute one to an agent on the basis of a single observed action or even a series of similar actions, especially if you don’t know the agent’s reasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002).

Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree. To possess such a disposition fully is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare, and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal (Athanassoulis 2000). Most people who can truly be described as fairly virtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can truly be described as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have their blind spots—little areas where they do not act for the reasons one would expect. So someone honest or kind in most situations, and notably so in demanding ones, may nevertheless be trivially tainted by snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and less than kind to strangers with the wrong accent.

Further, it is not easy to get one’s emotions in harmony with one’s rational recognition of certain reasons for action. I may be honest enough to recognise that I must own up to a mistake because it would be dishonest not to do so without my acceptance being so wholehearted that I can own up easily, with no inner conflict. Following (and adapting) Aristotle, virtue ethicists draw a distinction between full or perfect virtue and “continence”, or strength of will. The fully virtuous do what they should without a struggle against contrary desires; the continent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise.

Describing the continent as “falling short” of perfect virtue appears to go against the intuition that there is something particularly admirable about people who manage to act well when it is especially hard for them to do so, but the plausibility of this depends on exactly what “makes it hard” (Foot 1978: 11–14). If it is the circumstances in which the agent acts—say that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a full purse or that she is in deep grief when someone visits seeking help—then indeed it is particularly admirable of her to restore the purse or give the help when it is hard for her to do so. But if what makes it hard is an imperfection in her character—the temptation to keep what is not hers, or a callous indifference to the suffering of others—then it is not.

Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue is through lacking phronesis —moral or practical wisdom.

The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes its possessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent or admirable person who acts and feels as she should. These are commonly accepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation to particular (putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may say of someone that he is generous or honest “to a fault”. It is commonly asserted that someone’s compassion might lead them to act wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example, in their desire to prevent someone else’s hurt feelings. It is also said that courage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wicked things than he would have been able to do if he were timid. So it would appear that generosity, honesty, compassion and courage despite being virtues, are sometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest, compassionate, and courageous might not be a morally good person—or, if it is still held to be a truism that they are, then morally good people may be led by what makes them morally good to act wrongly! How have we arrived at such an odd conclusion?

The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, which permits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms, combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that the virtuous agent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rational choice. If one thinks of generosity or honesty as the disposition to be moved to action by generous or honest impulses such as the desire to give or to speak the truth, if one thinks of compassion as the disposition to be moved by the sufferings of others and to act on that emotion, if one thinks of courage as mere fearlessness or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeed seem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to their possessor’s acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon as it is stated, that these are dispositions that can be possessed by children, and although children thus endowed (bar the “courageous” disposition) would undoubtedly be very nice children, we would not say that they were morally virtuous or admirable people. The ordinary usage, or the reliance on motivation by inclination, gives us what Aristotle calls “natural virtue”—a proto version of full virtue awaiting perfection by phronesis or practical wisdom.

Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis that are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related) modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuous morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what he intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also, on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack of knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledge is not culpable. So, for example, children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set about securing the benefit or because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable. Adults, on the other hand, are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objective viewpoint. They are also culpable if their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is part of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefits effectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistake of concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs to know it in the belief that they are benefiting him.

Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well or “do the right thing”, we may say that practical wisdom is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlike the nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation. The detailed specification of what is involved in such knowledge or understanding has not yet appeared in the literature, but some aspects of it are becoming well known. Even many deontologists now stress the point that their action-guiding rules cannot, reliably, be applied without practical wisdom, because correct application requires situational appreciation—the capacity to recognise, in any particular situation, those features of it that are morally salient. This brings out two aspects of practical wisdom.

One is that it characteristically comes only with experience of life. Amongst the morally relevant features of a situation may be the likely consequences, for the people involved, of a certain action, and this is something that adolescents are notoriously clueless about precisely because they are inexperienced. It is part of practical wisdom to be wise about human beings and human life. (It should go without saying that the virtuous are mindful of the consequences of possible actions. How could they fail to be reckless, thoughtless and short-sighted if they were not?)

The second is the practically wise agent’s capacity to recognise some features of a situation as more important than others, or indeed, in that situation, as the only relevant ones. The wise do not see things in the same way as the nice adolescents who, with their under-developed virtues, still tend to see the personally disadvantageous nature of a certain action as competing in importance with its honesty or benevolence or justice.

These aspects coalesce in the description of the practically wise as those who understand what is truly worthwhile, truly important, and thereby truly advantageous in life, who know, in short, how to live well.

2. Forms of Virtue Ethics

While all forms of virtue ethics agree that virtue is central and practical wisdom required, they differ in how they combine these and other concepts to illuminate what we should do in particular contexts and how we should live our lives as a whole. In what follows we sketch four distinct forms taken by contemporary virtue ethics, namely, a) eudaimonist virtue ethics, b) agent-based and exemplarist virtue ethics, c) target-centered virtue ethics, and d) Platonistic virtue ethics.

The distinctive feature of eudaimonist versions of virtue ethics is that they define virtues in terms of their relationship to eudaimonia . A virtue is a trait that contributes to or is a constituent of eudaimonia and we ought to develop virtues, the eudaimonist claims, precisely because they contribute to eudaimonia .

The concept of eudaimonia , a key term in ancient Greek moral philosophy, is standardly translated as “happiness” or “flourishing” and occasionally as “well-being.” Each translation has its disadvantages. The trouble with “flourishing” is that animals and even plants can flourish but eudaimonia is possible only for rational beings. The trouble with “happiness” is that in ordinary conversation it connotes something subjectively determined. It is for me, not for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy. If I think I am happy then I am—it is not something I can be wrong about (barring advanced cases of self-deception). Contrast my being healthy or flourishing. Here we have no difficulty in recognizing that I might think I was healthy, either physically or psychologically, or think that I was flourishing but be wrong. In this respect, “flourishing” is a better translation than “happiness”. It is all too easy to be mistaken about whether one’s life is eudaimon (the adjective from eudaimonia ) not simply because it is easy to deceive oneself, but because it is easy to have a mistaken conception of eudaimonia , or of what it is to live well as a human being, believing it to consist largely in physical pleasure or luxury for example.

Eudaimonia is, avowedly, a moralized or value-laden concept of happiness, something like “true” or “real” happiness or “the sort of happiness worth seeking or having.” It is thereby the sort of concept about which there can be substantial disagreement between people with different views about human life that cannot be resolved by appeal to some external standard on which, despite their different views, the parties to the disagreement concur (Hursthouse 1999: 188–189).

Most versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordance with virtue is necessary for eudaimonia. This supreme good is not conceived of as an independently defined state (made up of, say, a list of non-moral goods that does not include virtuous activity) which exercise of the virtues might be thought to promote. It is, within virtue ethics, already conceived of as something of which virtuous activity is at least partially constitutive (Kraut 1989). Thereby virtue ethicists claim that a human life devoted to physical pleasure or the acquisition of wealth is not eudaimon , but a wasted life.

But although all standard versions of virtue ethics insist on that conceptual link between virtue and eudaimonia , further links are matters of dispute and generate different versions. For Aristotle, virtue is necessary but not sufficient—what is also needed are external goods which are a matter of luck. For Plato and the Stoics, virtue is both necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia (Annas 1993).

According to eudaimonist virtue ethics, the good life is the eudaimon life, and the virtues are what enable a human being to be eudaimon because the virtues just are those character traits that benefit their possessor in that way, barring bad luck. So there is a link between eudaimonia and what confers virtue status on a character trait. (For a discussion of the differences between eudaimonists see Baril 2014. For recent defenses of eudaimonism see Annas 2011; LeBar 2013b; Badhwar 2014; and Bloomfield 2014.)

Rather than deriving the normativity of virtue from the value of eudaimonia , agent-based virtue ethicists argue that other forms of normativity—including the value of eudaimonia —are traced back to and ultimately explained in terms of the motivational and dispositional qualities of agents.

It is unclear how many other forms of normativity must be explained in terms of the qualities of agents in order for a theory to count as agent-based. The two best-known agent-based theorists, Michael Slote and Linda Zagzebski, trace a wide range of normative qualities back to the qualities of agents. For example, Slote defines rightness and wrongness in terms of agents’ motivations: “[A]gent-based virtue ethics … understands rightness in terms of good motivations and wrongness in terms of the having of bad (or insufficiently good) motives” (2001: 14). Similarly, he explains the goodness of an action, the value of eudaimonia , the justice of a law or social institution, and the normativity of practical rationality in terms of the motivational and dispositional qualities of agents (2001: 99–100, 154, 2000). Zagzebski likewise defines right and wrong actions by reference to the emotions, motives, and dispositions of virtuous and vicious agents. For example, “A wrong act = an act that the phronimos characteristically would not do, and he would feel guilty if he did = an act such that it is not the case that he might do it = an act that expresses a vice = an act that is against a requirement of virtue (the virtuous self)” (Zagzebski 2004: 160). Her definitions of duties, good and bad ends, and good and bad states of affairs are similarly grounded in the motivational and dispositional states of exemplary agents (1998, 2004, 2010).

However, there could also be less ambitious agent-based approaches to virtue ethics (see Slote 1997). At the very least, an agent-based approach must be committed to explaining what one should do by reference to the motivational and dispositional states of agents. But this is not yet a sufficient condition for counting as an agent-based approach, since the same condition will be met by every virtue ethical account. For a theory to count as an agent-based form of virtue ethics it must also be the case that the normative properties of motivations and dispositions cannot be explained in terms of the normative properties of something else (such as eudaimonia or states of affairs) which is taken to be more fundamental.

Beyond this basic commitment, there is room for agent-based theories to be developed in a number of different directions. The most important distinguishing factor has to do with how motivations and dispositions are taken to matter for the purposes of explaining other normative qualities. For Slote what matters are this particular agent’s actual motives and dispositions . The goodness of action A, for example, is derived from the agent’s motives when she performs A. If those motives are good then the action is good, if not then not. On Zagzebski’s account, by contrast, a good or bad, right or wrong action is defined not by this agent’s actual motives but rather by whether this is the sort of action a virtuously motivated agent would perform (Zagzebski 2004: 160). Appeal to the virtuous agent’s hypothetical motives and dispositions enables Zagzebski to distinguish between performing the right action and doing so for the right reasons (a distinction that, as Brady (2004) observes, Slote has trouble drawing).

Another point on which agent-based forms of virtue ethics might differ concerns how one identifies virtuous motivations and dispositions. According to Zagzebski’s exemplarist account, “We do not have criteria for goodness in advance of identifying the exemplars of goodness” (Zagzebski 2004: 41). As we observe the people around us, we find ourselves wanting to be like some of them (in at least some respects) and not wanting to be like others. The former provide us with positive exemplars and the latter with negative ones. Our understanding of better and worse motivations and virtuous and vicious dispositions is grounded in these primitive responses to exemplars (2004: 53). This is not to say that every time we act we stop and ask ourselves what one of our exemplars would do in this situations. Our moral concepts become more refined over time as we encounter a wider variety of exemplars and begin to draw systematic connections between them, noting what they have in common, how they differ, and which of these commonalities and differences matter, morally speaking. Recognizable motivational profiles emerge and come to be labeled as virtues or vices, and these, in turn, shape our understanding of the obligations we have and the ends we should pursue. However, even though the systematising of moral thought can travel a long way from our starting point, according to the exemplarist it never reaches a stage where reference to exemplars is replaced by the recognition of something more fundamental. At the end of the day, according to the exemplarist, our moral system still rests on our basic propensity to take a liking (or disliking) to exemplars. Nevertheless, one could be an agent-based theorist without advancing the exemplarist’s account of the origins or reference conditions for judgments of good and bad, virtuous and vicious.

The touchstone for eudaimonist virtue ethicists is a flourishing human life. For agent-based virtue ethicists it is an exemplary agent’s motivations. The target-centered view developed by Christine Swanton (2003), by contrast, begins with our existing conceptions of the virtues. We already have a passable idea of which traits are virtues and what they involve. Of course, this untutored understanding can be clarified and improved, and it is one of the tasks of the virtue ethicist to help us do precisely that. But rather than stripping things back to something as basic as the motivations we want to imitate or building it up to something as elaborate as an entire flourishing life, the target-centered view begins where most ethics students find themselves, namely, with the idea that generosity, courage, self-discipline, compassion, and the like get a tick of approval. It then examines what these traits involve.

A complete account of virtue will map out 1) its field , 2) its mode of responsiveness, 3) its basis of moral acknowledgment, and 4) its target . Different virtues are concerned with different fields . Courage, for example, is concerned with what might harm us, whereas generosity is concerned with the sharing of time, talent, and property. The basis of acknowledgment of a virtue is the feature within the virtue’s field to which it responds. To continue with our previous examples, generosity is attentive to the benefits that others might enjoy through one’s agency, and courage responds to threats to value, status, or the bonds that exist between oneself and particular others, and the fear such threats might generate. A virtue’s mode has to do with how it responds to the bases of acknowledgment within its field. Generosity promotes a good, namely, another’s benefit, whereas courage defends a value, bond, or status. Finally, a virtue’s target is that at which it is aimed. Courage aims to control fear and handle danger, while generosity aims to share time, talents, or possessions with others in ways that benefit them.

A virtue , on a target-centered account, “is a disposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its field or fields in an excellent or good enough way” (Swanton 2003: 19). A virtuous act is an act that hits the target of a virtue, which is to say that it succeeds in responding to items in its field in the specified way (233). Providing a target-centered definition of a right action requires us to move beyond the analysis of a single virtue and the actions that follow from it. This is because a single action context may involve a number of different, overlapping fields. Determination might lead me to persist in trying to complete a difficult task even if doing so requires a singleness of purpose. But love for my family might make a different use of my time and attention. In order to define right action a target-centered view must explain how we handle different virtues’ conflicting claims on our resources. There are at least three different ways to address this challenge. A perfectionist target-centered account would stipulate, “An act is right if and only if it is overall virtuous, and that entails that it is the, or a, best action possible in the circumstances” (239–240). A more permissive target-centered account would not identify ‘right’ with ‘best’, but would allow an action to count as right provided “it is good enough even if not the (or a) best action” (240). A minimalist target-centered account would not even require an action to be good in order to be right. On such a view, “An act is right if and only if it is not overall vicious” (240). (For further discussion of target-centered virtue ethics see Van Zyl 2014; and Smith 2016).

The fourth form a virtue ethic might adopt takes its inspiration from Plato. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues devotes a great deal of time to asking his fellow Athenians to explain the nature of virtues like justice, courage, piety, and wisdom. So it is clear that Plato counts as a virtue theorist. But it is a matter of some debate whether he should be read as a virtue ethicist (White 2015). What is not open to debate is whether Plato has had an important influence on the contemporary revival of interest in virtue ethics. A number of those who have contributed to the revival have done so as Plato scholars (e.g., Prior 1991; Kamtekar 1998; Annas 1999; and Reshotko 2006). However, often they have ended up championing a eudaimonist version of virtue ethics (see Prior 2001 and Annas 2011), rather than a version that would warrant a separate classification. Nevertheless, there are two variants that call for distinct treatment.

Timothy Chappell takes the defining feature of Platonistic virtue ethics to be that “Good agency in the truest and fullest sense presupposes the contemplation of the Form of the Good” (2014). Chappell follows Iris Murdoch in arguing that “In the moral life the enemy is the fat relentless ego” (Murdoch 1971: 51). Constantly attending to our needs, our desires, our passions, and our thoughts skews our perspective on what the world is actually like and blinds us to the goods around us. Contemplating the goodness of something we encounter—which is to say, carefully attending to it “for its own sake, in order to understand it” (Chappell 2014: 300)—breaks this natural tendency by drawing our attention away from ourselves. Contemplating such goodness with regularity makes room for new habits of thought that focus more readily and more honestly on things other than the self. It alters the quality of our consciousness. And “anything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity, and realism is to be connected with virtue” (Murdoch 1971: 82). The virtues get defined, then, in terms of qualities that help one “pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is” (91). And good agency is defined by the possession and exercise of such virtues. Within Chappell’s and Murdoch’s framework, then, not all normative properties get defined in terms of virtue. Goodness, in particular, is not so defined. But the kind of goodness which is possible for creatures like us is defined by virtue, and any answer to the question of what one should do or how one should live will appeal to the virtues.

Another Platonistic variant of virtue ethics is exemplified by Robert Merrihew Adams. Unlike Murdoch and Chappell, his starting point is not a set of claims about our consciousness of goodness. Rather, he begins with an account of the metaphysics of goodness. Like Murdoch and others influenced by Platonism, Adams’s account of goodness is built around a conception of a supremely perfect good. And like Augustine, Adams takes that perfect good to be God. God is both the exemplification and the source of all goodness. Other things are good, he suggests, to the extent that they resemble God (Adams 1999).

The resemblance requirement identifies a necessary condition for being good, but it does not yet give us a sufficient condition. This is because there are ways in which finite creatures might resemble God that would not be suitable to the type of creature they are. For example, if God were all-knowing, then the belief, “I am all-knowing,” would be a suitable belief for God to have. In God, such a belief—because true—would be part of God’s perfection. However, as neither you nor I are all-knowing, the belief, “I am all-knowing,” in one of us would not be good. To rule out such cases we need to introduce another factor. That factor is the fitting response to goodness, which Adams suggests is love. Adams uses love to weed out problematic resemblances: “being excellent in the way that a finite thing can be consists in resembling God in a way that could serve God as a reason for loving the thing” (Adams 1999: 36).

Virtues come into the account as one of the ways in which some things (namely, persons) could resemble God. “[M]ost of the excellences that are most important to us, and of whose value we are most confident, are excellences of persons or of qualities or actions or works or lives or stories of persons” (1999: 42). This is one of the reasons Adams offers for conceiving of the ideal of perfection as a personal God, rather than an impersonal form of the Good. Many of the excellences of persons of which we are most confident are virtues such as love, wisdom, justice, patience, and generosity. And within many theistic traditions, including Adams’s own Christian tradition, such virtues are commonly attributed to divine agents.

A Platonistic account like the one Adams puts forward in Finite and Infinite Goods clearly does not derive all other normative properties from the virtues (for a discussion of the relationship between this view and the one he puts forward in A Theory of Virtue (2006) see Pettigrove 2014). Goodness provides the normative foundation. Virtues are not built on that foundation; rather, as one of the varieties of goodness of whose value we are most confident, virtues form part of the foundation. Obligations, by contrast, come into the account at a different level. Moral obligations, Adams argues, are determined by the expectations and demands that “arise in a relationship or system of relationships that is good or valuable” (1999: 244). Other things being equal, the more virtuous the parties to the relationship, the more binding the obligation. Thus, within Adams’s account, the good (which includes virtue) is prior to the right. However, once good relationships have given rise to obligations, those obligations take on a life of their own. Their bindingness is not traced directly to considerations of goodness. Rather, they are determined by the expectations of the parties and the demands of the relationship.

A number of objections have been raised against virtue ethics, some of which bear more directly on one form of virtue ethics than on others. In this section we consider eight objections, namely, the a) application, b) adequacy, c) relativism, d) conflict, e) self-effacement, f) justification, g) egoism, and h) situationist problems.

a) In the early days of virtue ethics’ revival, the approach was associated with an “anti-codifiability” thesis about ethics, directed against the prevailing pretensions of normative theory. At the time, utilitarians and deontologists commonly (though not universally) held that the task of ethical theory was to come up with a code consisting of universal rules or principles (possibly only one, as in the case of act-utilitarianism) which would have two significant features: i) the rule(s) would amount to a decision procedure for determining what the right action was in any particular case; ii) the rule(s) would be stated in such terms that any non-virtuous person could understand and apply it (them) correctly.

Virtue ethicists maintained, contrary to these two claims, that it was quite unrealistic to imagine that there could be such a code (see, in particular, McDowell 1979). The results of attempts to produce and employ such a code, in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, when medical and then bioethics boomed and bloomed, tended to support the virtue ethicists’ claim. More and more utilitarians and deontologists found themselves agreed on their general rules but on opposite sides of the controversial moral issues in contemporary discussion. It came to be recognised that moral sensitivity, perception, imagination, and judgement informed by experience— phronesis in short—is needed to apply rules or principles correctly. Hence many (though by no means all) utilitarians and deontologists have explicitly abandoned (ii) and much less emphasis is placed on (i).

Nevertheless, the complaint that virtue ethics does not produce codifiable principles is still a commonly voiced criticism of the approach, expressed as the objection that it is, in principle, unable to provide action-guidance.

Initially, the objection was based on a misunderstanding. Blinkered by slogans that described virtue ethics as “concerned with Being rather than Doing,” as addressing “What sort of person should I be?” but not “What should I do?” as being “agent-centered rather than act-centered,” its critics maintained that it was unable to provide action-guidance. Hence, rather than being a normative rival to utilitarian and deontological ethics, it could claim to be no more than a valuable supplement to them. The rather odd idea was that all virtue ethics could offer was, “Identify a moral exemplar and do what he would do,” as though the university student trying to decide whether to study music (her preference) or engineering (her parents’ preference) was supposed to ask herself, “What would Socrates study if he were in my circumstances?”

But the objection failed to take note of Anscombe’s hint that a great deal of specific action guidance could be found in rules employing the virtue and vice terms (“v-rules”) such as “Do what is honest/charitable; do not do what is dishonest/uncharitable” (Hursthouse 1999). (It is a noteworthy feature of our virtue and vice vocabulary that, although our list of generally recognised virtue terms is comparatively short, our list of vice terms is remarkably, and usefully, long, far exceeding anything that anyone who thinks in terms of standard deontological rules has ever come up with. Much invaluable action guidance comes from avoiding courses of action that would be irresponsible, feckless, lazy, inconsiderate, uncooperative, harsh, intolerant, selfish, mercenary, indiscreet, tactless, arrogant, unsympathetic, cold, incautious, unenterprising, pusillanimous, feeble, presumptuous, rude, hypocritical, self-indulgent, materialistic, grasping, short-sighted, vindictive, calculating, ungrateful, grudging, brutal, profligate, disloyal, and on and on.)

(b) A closely related objection has to do with whether virtue ethics can provide an adequate account of right action. This worry can take two forms. (i) One might think a virtue ethical account of right action is extensionally inadequate. It is possible to perform a right action without being virtuous and a virtuous person can occasionally perform the wrong action without that calling her virtue into question. If virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for right action, one might wonder whether the relationship between rightness/wrongness and virtue/vice is close enough for the former to be identified in terms of the latter. (ii) Alternatively, even if one thought it possible to produce a virtue ethical account that picked out all (and only) right actions, one might still think that at least in some cases virtue is not what explains rightness (Adams 2006:6–8).

Some virtue ethicists respond to the adequacy objection by rejecting the assumption that virtue ethics ought to be in the business of providing an account of right action in the first place. Following in the footsteps of Anscombe (1958) and MacIntyre (1985), Talbot Brewer (2009) argues that to work with the categories of rightness and wrongness is already to get off on the wrong foot. Contemporary conceptions of right and wrong action, built as they are around a notion of moral duty that presupposes a framework of divine (or moral) law or around a conception of obligation that is defined in contrast to self-interest, carry baggage the virtue ethicist is better off without. Virtue ethics can address the questions of how one should live, what kind of person one should become, and even what one should do without that committing it to providing an account of ‘right action’. One might choose, instead, to work with aretaic concepts (defined in terms of virtues and vices) and axiological concepts (defined in terms of good and bad, better and worse) and leave out deontic notions (like right/wrong action, duty, and obligation) altogether.

Other virtue ethicists wish to retain the concept of right action but note that in the current philosophical discussion a number of distinct qualities march under that banner. In some contexts, ‘right action’ identifies the best action an agent might perform in the circumstances. In others, it designates an action that is commendable (even if not the best possible). In still others, it picks out actions that are not blameworthy (even if not commendable). A virtue ethicist might choose to define one of these—for example, the best action—in terms of virtues and vices, but appeal to other normative concepts—such as legitimate expectations—when defining other conceptions of right action.

As we observed in section 2, a virtue ethical account need not attempt to reduce all other normative concepts to virtues and vices. What is required is simply (i) that virtue is not reduced to some other normative concept that is taken to be more fundamental and (ii) that some other normative concepts are explained in terms of virtue and vice. This takes the sting out of the adequacy objection, which is most compelling against versions of virtue ethics that attempt to define all of the senses of ‘right action’ in terms of virtues. Appealing to virtues and vices makes it much easier to achieve extensional adequacy. Making room for normative concepts that are not taken to be reducible to virtue and vice concepts makes it even easier to generate a theory that is both extensionally and explanatorily adequate. Whether one needs other concepts and, if so, how many, is still a matter of debate among virtue ethicists, as is the question of whether virtue ethics even ought to be offering an account of right action. Either way virtue ethicists have resources available to them to address the adequacy objection.

Insofar as the different versions of virtue ethics all retain an emphasis on the virtues, they are open to the familiar problem of (c) the charge of cultural relativity. Is it not the case that different cultures embody different virtues, (MacIntyre 1985) and hence that the v-rules will pick out actions as right or wrong only relative to a particular culture? Different replies have been made to this charge. One—the tu quoque , or “partners in crime” response—exhibits a quite familiar pattern in virtue ethicists’ defensive strategy (Solomon 1988). They admit that, for them, cultural relativism is a challenge, but point out that it is just as much a problem for the other two approaches. The (putative) cultural variation in character traits regarded as virtues is no greater—indeed markedly less—than the cultural variation in rules of conduct, and different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes happiness or welfare. That cultural relativity should be a problem common to all three approaches is hardly surprising. It is related, after all, to the “justification problem” ( see below ) the quite general metaethical problem of justifying one’s moral beliefs to those who disagree, whether they be moral sceptics, pluralists or from another culture.

A bolder strategy involves claiming that virtue ethics has less difficulty with cultural relativity than the other two approaches. Much cultural disagreement arises, it may be claimed, from local understandings of the virtues, but the virtues themselves are not relative to culture (Nussbaum 1993).

Another objection to which the tu quoque response is partially appropriate is (d) “the conflict problem.” What does virtue ethics have to say about dilemmas—cases in which, apparently, the requirements of different virtues conflict because they point in opposed directions? Charity prompts me to kill the person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it. Honesty points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion to remaining silent or even lying. What shall I do? Of course, the same sorts of dilemmas are generated by conflicts between deontological rules. Deontology and virtue ethics share the conflict problem (and are happy to take it on board rather than follow some of the utilitarians in their consequentialist resolutions of such dilemmas) and in fact their strategies for responding to it are parallel. Both aim to resolve a number of dilemmas by arguing that the conflict is merely apparent; a discriminating understanding of the virtues or rules in question, possessed only by those with practical wisdom, will perceive that, in this particular case, the virtues do not make opposing demands or that one rule outranks another, or has a certain exception clause built into it. Whether this is all there is to it depends on whether there are any irresolvable dilemmas. If there are, proponents of either normative approach may point out reasonably that it could only be a mistake to offer a resolution of what is, ex hypothesi , irresolvable.

Another problem arguably shared by all three approaches is (e), that of being self-effacing. An ethical theory is self-effacing if, roughly, whatever it claims justifies a particular action, or makes it right, had better not be the agent’s motive for doing it. Michael Stocker (1976) originally introduced it as a problem for deontology and consequentialism. He pointed out that the agent who, rightly, visits a friend in hospital will rather lessen the impact of his visit on her if he tells her either that he is doing it because it is his duty or because he thought it would maximize the general happiness. But as Simon Keller observes, she won’t be any better pleased if he tells her that he is visiting her because it is what a virtuous agent would do, so virtue ethics would appear to have the problem too (Keller 2007). However, virtue ethics’ defenders have argued that not all forms of virtue ethics are subject to this objection (Pettigrove 2011) and those that are are not seriously undermined by the problem (Martinez 2011).

Another problem for virtue ethics, which is shared by both utilitarianism and deontology, is (f) “the justification problem.” Abstractly conceived, this is the problem of how we justify or ground our ethical beliefs, an issue that is hotly debated at the level of metaethics. In its particular versions, for deontology there is the question of how to justify its claims that certain moral rules are the correct ones, and for utilitarianism of how to justify its claim that all that really matters morally are consequences for happiness or well-being. For virtue ethics, the problem concerns the question of which character traits are the virtues.

In the metaethical debate, there is widespread disagreement about the possibility of providing an external foundation for ethics—“external” in the sense of being external to ethical beliefs—and the same disagreement is found amongst deontologists and utilitarians. Some believe that their normative ethics can be placed on a secure basis, resistant to any form of scepticism, such as what anyone rationally desires, or would accept or agree on, regardless of their ethical outlook; others that it cannot.

Virtue ethicists have eschewed any attempt to ground virtue ethics in an external foundation while continuing to maintain that their claims can be validated. Some follow a form of Rawls’s coherentist approach (Slote 2001; Swanton 2003); neo-Aristotelians a form of ethical naturalism.

A misunderstanding of eudaimonia as an unmoralized concept leads some critics to suppose that the neo-Aristotelians are attempting to ground their claims in a scientific account of human nature and what counts, for a human being, as flourishing. Others assume that, if this is not what they are doing, they cannot be validating their claims that, for example, justice, charity, courage, and generosity are virtues. Either they are illegitimately helping themselves to Aristotle’s discredited natural teleology (Williams 1985) or producing mere rationalizations of their own personal or culturally inculcated values. But McDowell, Foot, MacIntyre and Hursthouse have all outlined versions of a third way between these two extremes. Eudaimonia in virtue ethics, is indeed a moralized concept, but it is not only that. Claims about what constitutes flourishing for human beings no more float free of scientific facts about what human beings are like than ethological claims about what constitutes flourishing for elephants. In both cases, the truth of the claims depends in part on what kind of animal they are and what capacities, desires and interests the humans or elephants have.

The best available science today (including evolutionary theory and psychology) supports rather than undermines the ancient Greek assumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves and unlike polar bears. No rationalizing explanation in terms of anything like a social contract is needed to explain why we choose to live together, subjugating our egoistic desires in order to secure the advantages of co-operation. Like other social animals, our natural impulses are not solely directed towards our own pleasures and preservation, but include altruistic and cooperative ones.

This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claim that the virtues are at least partially constitutive of human flourishing and also undercut the objection that virtue ethics is, in some sense, egoistic.

(g) The egoism objection has a number of sources. One is a simple confusion. Once it is understood that the fully virtuous agent characteristically does what she should without inner conflict, it is triumphantly asserted that “she is only doing what she wants to do and hence is being selfish.” So when the generous person gives gladly, as the generous are wont to do, it turns out she is not generous and unselfish after all, or at least not as generous as the one who greedily wants to hang on to everything she has but forces herself to give because she thinks she should! A related version ascribes bizarre reasons to the virtuous agent, unjustifiably assuming that she acts as she does because she believes that acting thus on this occasion will help her to achieve eudaimonia. But “the virtuous agent” is just “the agent with the virtues” and it is part of our ordinary understanding of the virtue terms that each carries with it its own typical range of reasons for acting. The virtuous agent acts as she does because she believes that someone’s suffering will be averted, or someone benefited, or the truth established, or a debt repaid, or … thereby.

It is the exercise of the virtues during one’s life that is held to be at least partially constitutive of eudaimonia , and this is consistent with recognising that bad luck may land the virtuous agent in circumstances that require her to give up her life. Given the sorts of considerations that courageous, honest, loyal, charitable people wholeheartedly recognise as reasons for action, they may find themselves compelled to face danger for a worthwhile end, to speak out in someone’s defence, or refuse to reveal the names of their comrades, even when they know that this will inevitably lead to their execution, to share their last crust and face starvation. On the view that the exercise of the virtues is necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia , such cases are described as those in which the virtuous agent sees that, as things have unfortunately turned out, eudaimonia is not possible for them (Foot 2001, 95). On the Stoical view that it is both necessary and sufficient, a eudaimon life is a life that has been successfully lived (where “success” of course is not to be understood in a materialistic way) and such people die knowing not only that they have made a success of their lives but that they have also brought their lives to a markedly successful completion. Either way, such heroic acts can hardly be regarded as egoistic.

A lingering suggestion of egoism may be found in the misconceived distinction between so-called “self-regarding” and “other-regarding” virtues. Those who have been insulated from the ancient tradition tend to regard justice and benevolence as real virtues, which benefit others but not their possessor, and prudence, fortitude and providence (the virtue whose opposite is “improvidence” or being a spendthrift) as not real virtues at all because they benefit only their possessor. This is a mistake on two counts. Firstly, justice and benevolence do, in general, benefit their possessors, since without them eudaimonia is not possible. Secondly, given that we live together, as social animals, the “self-regarding” virtues do benefit others—those who lack them are a great drain on, and sometimes grief to, those who are close to them (as parents with improvident or imprudent adult offspring know only too well).

The most recent objection (h) to virtue ethics claims that work in “situationist” social psychology shows that there are no such things as character traits and thereby no such things as virtues for virtue ethics to be about (Doris 1998; Harman 1999). In reply, some virtue ethicists have argued that the social psychologists’ studies are irrelevant to the multi-track disposition (see above) that a virtue is supposed to be (Sreenivasan 2002; Kamtekar 2004). Mindful of just how multi-track it is, they agree that it would be reckless in the extreme to ascribe a demanding virtue such as charity to people of whom they know no more than that they have exhibited conventional decency; this would indeed be “a fundamental attribution error.” Others have worked to develop alternative, empirically grounded conceptions of character traits (Snow 2010; Miller 2013 and 2014; however see Upton 2016 for objections to Miller). There have been other responses as well (summarized helpfully in Prinz 2009 and Miller 2014). Notable among these is a response by Adams (2006, echoing Merritt 2000) who steers a middle road between “no character traits at all” and the exacting standard of the Aristotelian conception of virtue which, because of its emphasis on phronesis, requires a high level of character integration. On his conception, character traits may be “frail and fragmentary” but still virtues, and not uncommon. But giving up the idea that practical wisdom is the heart of all the virtues, as Adams has to do, is a substantial sacrifice, as Russell (2009) and Kamtekar (2010) argue.

Even though the “situationist challenge” has left traditional virtue ethicists unmoved, it has generated a healthy engagement with empirical psychological literature, which has also been fuelled by the growing literature on Foot’s Natural Goodness and, quite independently, an upsurge of interest in character education (see below).

Over the past thirty-five years most of those contributing to the revival of virtue ethics have worked within a neo-Aristotelian, eudaimonist framework. However, as noted in section 2, other forms of virtue ethics have begun to emerge. Theorists have begun to turn to philosophers like Hutcheson, Hume, Nietzsche, Martineau, and Heidegger for resources they might use to develop alternatives (see Russell 2006; Swanton 2013 and 2015; Taylor 2015; and Harcourt 2015). Others have turned their attention eastward, exploring Confucian, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions (Yu 2007; Slingerland 2011; Finnigan and Tanaka 2011; McRae 2012; Angle and Slote 2013; Davis 2014; Flanagan 2015; Perrett and Pettigrove 2015; and Sim 2015). These explorations promise to open up new avenues for the development of virtue ethics.

Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last thirty-five years, it is still very much in the minority, particularly in the area of applied ethics. Many editors of big textbook collections on “moral problems” or “applied ethics” now try to include articles representative of each of the three normative approaches but are often unable to find a virtue ethics article addressing a particular issue. This is sometimes, no doubt, because “the” issue has been set up as a deontologicial/utilitarian debate, but it is often simply because no virtue ethicist has yet written on the topic. However, the last decade has seen an increase in the amount of attention applied virtue ethics has received (Walker and Ivanhoe 2007; Hartman 2013; Austin 2014; Van Hooft 2014; and Annas 2015). This area can certainly be expected to grow in the future, and it looks as though applying virtue ethics in the field of environmental ethics may prove particularly fruitful (Sandler 2007; Hursthouse 2007, 2011; Zwolinski and Schmidtz 2013; Cafaro 2015).

Whether virtue ethics can be expected to grow into “virtue politics”—i.e. to extend from moral philosophy into political philosophy—is not so clear. Gisela Striker (2006) has argued that Aristotle’s ethics cannot be understood adequately without attending to its place in his politics. That suggests that at least those virtue ethicists who take their inspiration from Aristotle should have resources to offer for the development of virtue politics. But, while Plato and Aristotle can be great inspirations as far as virtue ethics is concerned, neither, on the face of it, are attractive sources of insight where politics is concerned. However, recent work suggests that Aristotelian ideas can, after all, generate a satisfyingly liberal political philosophy (Nussbaum 2006; LeBar 2013a). Moreover, as noted above, virtue ethics does not have to be neo-Aristotelian. It may be that the virtue ethics of Hutcheson and Hume can be naturally extended into a modern political philosophy (Hursthouse 1990–91; Slote 1993).

Following Plato and Aristotle, modern virtue ethics has always emphasised the importance of moral education, not as the inculcation of rules but as the training of character. There is now a growing movement towards virtues education, amongst both academics (Carr 1999; Athanassoulis 2014; Curren 2015) and teachers in the classroom. One exciting thing about research in this area is its engagement with other academic disciplines, including psychology, educational theory, and theology (see Cline 2015; and Snow 2015).

Finally, one of the more productive developments of virtue ethics has come through the study of particular virtues and vices. There are now a number of careful studies of the cardinal virtues and capital vices (Pieper 1966; Taylor 2006; Curzer 2012; Timpe and Boyd 2014). Others have explored less widely discussed virtues or vices, such as civility, decency, truthfulness, ambition, and meekness (Calhoun 2000; Kekes 2002; Williams 2002; and Pettigrove 2007 and 2012). One of the questions these studies raise is “How many virtues are there?” A second is, “How are these virtues related to one another?” Some virtue ethicists have been happy to work on the assumption that there is no principled reason for limiting the number of virtues and plenty of reason for positing a plurality of them (Swanton 2003; Battaly 2015). Others have been concerned that such an open-handed approach to the virtues will make it difficult for virtue ethicists to come up with an adequate account of right action or deal with the conflict problem discussed above. Dan Russell has proposed cardinality and a version of the unity thesis as a solution to what he calls “the enumeration problem” (the problem of too many virtues). The apparent proliferation of virtues can be significantly reduced if we group virtues together with some being cardinal and others subordinate extensions of those cardinal virtues. Possible conflicts between the remaining virtues can then be managed if they are tied together in some way as part of a unified whole (Russell 2009). This highlights two important avenues for future research, one of which explores individual virtues and the other of which analyses how they might be related to one another.

• Abramson, Kate, 2015, “What’s So ‘Natural’ about Hume’s Natural Virtues?” in D. Ainslie and A. Butler, The Cambridge Companion to Hume’s Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 333–368.
• Adams, Robert Merrihew, 1999, Finite and Infinite Goods , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2006, A Theory of Virtue , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Alfano, Mark (ed.), 2015, Current Controversies in Virtue Theory , New York: Routledge.
• Angier, Tom, 2018, “Aristotle and the Charge of Egoism,” Journal of Value Inquiry , 52: 457–475.
• Angle, Stephen and Michael Slote (eds.), 2013, Virtue Ethics and Confucianism , New York: Routledge.
• Annas, Julia, 1993, The Morality of Happiness , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1999, Platonic Ethics, Old and New , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2004, “Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association , Presidential Address, 78 (2): 61–75.
• –––, 2006, “Virtue Ethics”, in David Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 515–36.
• –––, 2009, “Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism,” in Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 205–21.
• –––, 2011, Intelligent Virtue , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2015, “Applying Virtue to Ethics,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 32 (1): 1–14.
• –––, 2016, “Learning Virtue Rules: The Issue of Thick Concepts,” in Developing the Virtues , Julia Annas, Darcia Narvaez, and Nancy Snow (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 224–234.
• –––, 2017, “Which Variety of Virtue Ethics?” in Carr, et al. (2017), pp. 35–51.
• Anscombe, G.E.M., 1958, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy , 33: 1–19.
• Athanassoulis, Nafsika, 2000, “A Response to Harman: Virtue Ethics and Character Traits”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), 100: 215–21.
• –––, 2014, “Educating for Virtue”, in van Hooft (2014), pp. 440–450.
• Audi, Robert, 2009, “Moral Virtue and Reasons for Action,” Philosophical Issues , 19: 1–20.
• Back, Youngsun, 2018, “Virtue and the Good Life in the Early Confucian Tradition,” Journal of Religious Ethics , 46: 37–62.
• Badhwar, Neera, 1996, “The Limited Unity of Virtue,” Noûs , 30: 306–29.
• –––, 2014, Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Bailey, Olivia, 2010, “What Knowledge is Necessary for Virtue?” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy , 4 (2): 1–17.
• Baril, Anne, 2014, “Eudaimonia in Contemporary Virtue Ethics,” in van Hooft (2014), pp. 17–27.
• Battaly, Heather (ed.), 2010, Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic , a pair of special issues of Metaphilosophy , 41(1/2).
• –––, 2015, “A Pluralist Theory of Virtue,” in Alfano (2015), pp. 7–21.
• Baxley, Anne Margaret, 2007, “The Price of Virtue,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 88: 403–23.
• Besser-Jones, Lorraine, 2008, “Social Psychology, Moral Character and Moral Fallibility,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 76: 310–32.
• –––, 2020, “Learning Virtue,” Journal of Moral Education , 49: 282–294.
• Besser-Jones, Lorraine, and Michael Slote (eds.), 2015, The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics , New York: Routledge.
• Birondo, Noell, 2016, “Virtue and Prejudice: Giving and Taking Reasons,” The Monist , 99: 212–223.
• ––– and S. Stewart Braun, 2017, Virtue’s Reasons: New Essays on Virtue, Character, and Reasons , New York: Routledge.
• Bloomfield, Paul, 2014, The Virtues of Happiness: A Theory of the Good Life , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Bommarito, Nicolas, 2018, Inner Virtue , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Boyd, Craig and Kevin Timpe, 2021, The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Brady, Michael S., 2004, “Against Agent-Based Virtue Ethics,” Philosophical Papers , 33: 1–10.
• –––, 2005, “The Value of the Virtues,” Philosophical Studies , 125: 85–144.
• –––, 2018, Suffering and Virtue , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Brown, Etienne, 2016, “Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and the Normativity Challenge,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review , 55: 131–150.
• Cafaro, Philip (ed.), 2010, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics , 23 (1/2). (Special edition on environmental virtue ethics.)
• –––, 2015, “Environmental Virtue Ethics,” in Besser-Jones and Slote (2015), pp. 427–444.
• ––– and Ronald D. Sandler (eds.), 2010, Virtue Ethics and the Environment , New York: Springer.
• Calhoun, Cheshire, 2000, “The Virtue of Civility,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 29 (3): 251–275.
• Carr, David and Jan Steutel (eds.), 1999, Virtue Ethics and Moral Education , New York: Routledge.
• –––, J. Arthur, and K. Kristjansson (eds.), 2017, Varieties of Virtue Ethics , London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Chappell, T. (ed.), 2006, Values and Virtues , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2014, Knowing What to Do , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chappell, Sophie Grace, 2015, “Lists of the Virtues,” Ethics and Politics , 17: 74–93.
• Clarke, Bridget, 2010, “Virtue and Disagreement,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 13: 273–91.
• –––, 2018, “Virtue as a Sensitivity,” in Snow (ed.) 2018, pp. 35–56.
• Cline, Erin, 2015, Families of Virtue: Confucian and Western Views on Childhood Development , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Cocking, Dean and Justin Oakley, 2001, Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Cokelet, Bradford, 2012, “Two-Level Eudaimonism and Second-Personal Reasons,” Ethics , 122: 773–780.
• –––, 2014, “Virtue Ethics and the Demands of Social Morality,” Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics , 4: 236–260.
• –––, 2016, “Confucianism, Buddhism, and Virtue Ethics,” European Journal for the Philosophy of Religion , 8: 187–214.
• ––– and Blaine Fowers, 2019, “Realistic Virtues and How to Study Them,” Journal of Moral Education , 48: 7–26.
• Crisp, Roger (ed.), 1996, How Should One Live? , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 2015, “A Third Method of Ethics?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 90: 257–273.
• ––– and Michael Slote (eds.), 1997, Virtue Ethics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Curren, Randall, 2015, “Virtue Ethics and Moral Education,” in Besser-Jones and Slote (2015), pp. 459–470.
• Curzer, Howard, 2012, Aristotle and the Virtues , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2017, “Against Idealization in Virtue Ethics,” in Varieties of Virtue Ethics , Carr, et al. (eds.) 2017, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 53–71.
• Darr, Ryan, 2020, “Virtues as Qualities of Character: Alasdair MacIntyre and the Situationist Critique of Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics , 48: 7–25.
• Davis, Leesa, 2014, “Mindfulness, Non-Attachment and Other Buddhist Virtues,” in van Hooft (2014), pp. 306–317.
• Dent, N.J.H., 1984, The Moral Psychology of the Virtues , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• DePaul, Michael and Linda Zagzebski (eds.), 2003, Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Doris, John M., 1998, “Persons, Situations and Virtue Ethics,” Noûs , 32 (4): 504–30.
• –––, 2010, “Heated Agreement: Lack of Character as Being for the Good,” Philosophical Studies , 148 (1): 135–146.
• Driver, Julia, 2001, Uneasy Virtue , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Dumler-Winckler, Emily, 2015, “Putting on Virtue without Putting off Feminists,” Journal of Religious Ethics , 43: 342–367.
• Fernando, Mario and Geoff Moore, 2015, “MacIntyrean Virtue Ethics in Business: A Cross-Cultural Comparison,” Journal of Business Ethics , 132: 185–202.
• Finnigan, Bronwyn, 2015, “Phronesis in Aristotle: Reconciling Deliberation with Spontaneity,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 91: 674–697.
• ––– and Koji Tanaka, 2011, “Ethics for Madhyamikas,” in Dreyfus et al., Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 221–231.
• Flanagan, Owen, 2015, “It Takes a Metaphysics: Raising Virtuous Buddhists,” in Snow (2015), pp. 171–196.
• Foot, Philippa, 1978, Virtues and Vices , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 1994, “Rationality and Virtue,” in H. Pauer-Studer (ed.), Norms, Values and Society , Amsterdam: Kluwer, pp. 205–16.
• –––, 1995, “Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , 15: 1–14.
• –––, 2001, Natural Goodness , Oxford, Clarendon Press.
• Frey, Jennifer and Candace Vogler (eds.), 2018, Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology , New York: Routledge.
• Friedman, Marilyn, 2009, “Feminist Virtue Ethics, Happiness and Moral Luck,” Hypatia , 24: 29–40.
• Frykholm, Erin, 2015, “A Humean Particularist Virtue Ethic,” Philosophical Studies , 172: 2171–2191.
• Gardiner, Stephen (ed.), 2005, Virtue Ethics, Old and New , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Geach, Peter, 1956, “Good and Evil,” Analysis , 17: 33–42.
• –––, 1977, The Virtues , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gelfand, Scott, 2019, “Hutchesonian Inspired Agent-Based Virtue Ethics,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 57: 483–504.
• Goldie, Peter, 2004, On Personality , London: Routledge.
• Gowans, Christopher W., 2011, “Virtue Ethics and Moral Relativism”, in Stephen D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism , New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 391–410.
• Griswold, Charles, 1999, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hacker-Wright, John, 2007, “Moral Status in Virtue Ethics,” Philosophy , 82: 449–73.
• –––, 2010, “Virtue Ethics Without Right Action: Anscombe, Foot and Contemporary Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Value Inquiry , 44: 209–24.
• Halwani, Raja, 2003, Virtuous Liaisons , Chicago: Open Court.
• Harcourt, Edward, 2015, “Nietzsche and the Virtues,” in Besser-Jones and Slote (2015), pp. 165–179.
• Harman, G., 1999, “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), 119: 316–31.
• –––, 2009, “Scepticism About Character Traits,” Journal of Ethics , 13: 235–42.
• Hartman, Edwin, 2013, “The Virtue Approach to Business Ethics,” in Russell (2013), pp. 240–264.
• Herdt, Jennifer, 2010, Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices , Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• –––, 2019, “Excellence-Prior Eudaimonism,” Journal of Religious Ethics , 47: 68–93.
• Hirji, Sukaina, 2019, “What’s Aristotelian about Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 98: 671–696.
• Hudson, Stephen, 1986, Human Character and Morality , Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Hurka, Thomas, 2001, Virtue, Vice, and Value , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2006, “Virtuous Act, Virtuous Dispositions,” Analysis , 66: 69–76.
• Hursthouse, Rosalind, 1990–1, “After Hume’s Justice,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 91: 229–45.
• –––, 1999, On Virtue Ethics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2007, “Environmental Virtue Ethics,” in Walker and Ivanhoe 2007, pp. 155–172.
• –––, 2011, “Virtue Ethics and the Treatment of Animals,” in Tom L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics , New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 119–143.
• James, Simon, 2019, “Suffering and the Primacy of Virtue,” Analysis , 79: 605–613.
• Jenkins, Willis, 2016, “The Turn to Virtue in Climate Ethics,” Environmental Ethics , 38: 77–96.
• Johnson, Robert N., 2003, “Virtue and Right,” Ethics , 133: 810–34.
• –––, 2007, “Was Kant a Virtue Ethicist?” in Monica Betzler (ed.), Kant’s Ethics of Virtue , Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag, pp. 61–76.
• Kamtekar, Rachana, 1998, “Imperfect Virtue,” Ancient Philosophy , 18: 315–339.
• –––, 2004, “Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character,” Ethics , 114: 458–91.
• –––, 2016, “Becoming Good: Narrow Dispositions and the Stability of Virtue,” in Developing the Virtues, Julia Annas, Darcia Narvaez, and Nancy Snow (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 184–203.
• Kawall, Jason, 2009, “In Defence of the Primacy of Virtues,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy , 3 (2): 1–21.
• –––, 2021, The Virtues of Sustainability , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Keller, Simon, 2007, “Virtue Ethics is Self-Effacing,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 85 (2): 221–32.
• Kekes, John, 2002, The Art of Life , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Kraut, Richard, 1989, Aristotle on the Human Good , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Kristjánsson, K., 2008, “An Aristotelian Critique of Situationism,” Philosophy , 83: 55–76.
• –––, 2018, Virtuous Emotions , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kupperman, Joel J., 2001, “The Indispensability of Character,” Philosophy , 76: 239–50.
• –––, 2009, “Virtue in Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Ethics , 13: 243–55.
• LeBar, Mark, 2009, “Virtue Ethics and Deontic Constraints,” Ethics , 119: 642–71.
• –––, 2013a, “Virtue and Politics”, in Russell (2013), pp. 265–289.
• –––, 2013b, The Value of Living Well , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Leunissen, Mariska, 2017, From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1985, After Virtue , London: Duckworth, 2 nd Edition.
• –––, 1999, Dependent Rational Animals , Chicago: Open Court.
• McAleer, Sean, 2007, “An Aristotelian Account of Virtue Ethics: An Essay in Moral Taxonomy,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 88: 308–25.
• –––, 2010, “Four Solutions to the Alleged Incompleteness of Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy , 4 (3): 1–20.
• McDowell, John, 1979, “Virtue and Reason,” The Monist , 62: 331–50.
• –––, 1995, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Virtues and Reasons , R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence and W. Quinn (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 149–79.
• McPherson, David, 2020, Virtue and Meaning: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Martinez, Joel, 2011, “Is Virtue Ethics Self-Effacing?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 89 (2): 277–88.
• Merritt, M., 2000, “Virtue Ethics and Situationist Personality Psychology,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 3: 365–83.
• Miller, Christian, 2013, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2014, Character and Moral Psychology , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2018, The Character Gap: How Good Are We? , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Moore, Geoff, 2017, Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Murdoch, Iris, 1971, The Sovereignty of Good , London: Routledge.
• Nussbaum, Martha C., 1990, “Aristotelian Social Democracy,” in R. Douglass, G. Mara, and H. Richardson (eds.), Liberalism and the Good , New York: Routledge, pp. 203–52.
• –––, 1993, “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” in The Quality of Life , Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 242–70.
• –––, 2006, Frontiers of Justice , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Oakley, Justin, 2013, “Virtue Ethics and Bioethics,” in Russell (2013), pp. 197–220.
• Perrett, Roy and Glen Pettigrove, 2015, “Hindu Virtue Ethics,” in Besser-Jones and Slote (2015), pp. 51–62.
• Pettigrove, Glen, 2007, “Ambitions,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 10 (1): 53–68.
• –––, 2011, “Is Virtue Ethics Self-Effacing?” Journal of Ethics , 15 (3): 191–207.
• –––, 2012, “Meekness and ‘Moral’ Anger,” Ethics , 122 (2): 341–370.
• –––, 2018, “Alternatives to Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics,” in Snow (ed.) 2018, pp. 359–376.
• ––– and Christine Swanton (eds.), 2022, Neglected Virtues , New York: Routledge.
• Pieper, Josef, 1966, The Four Cardinal Virtues , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Pinsent, Andrew, 2013, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics , New York: Routledge.
• Price, A.W., 2011, Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Prinz, Jesse, 2009, “The Normativity Challenge: Cultural Psychology Provides the Real Threat to Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Ethics , 13: 117–44.
• Prior, William, 1991, Virtue and Knowledge: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Ethics , New York: Routledge.
• Reed, Philip, 2016, “Empirical Adequacy and Virtue Ethics,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 19: 343–357.
• Reid, Jeremy, 2019, “Virtue, Rule-Following, and Absolute Prohibitions,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association , 5: 78–97.
• Reshotko, Naomi, 2006, Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-Bad , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Roberts, Robert, 2017, “Varities of Virtue Ethics,” in Carr, et al. (2017), pp. 17–34.
• Rogers, Tristan, 2020, “Virtue Ethics and Political Authority,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 51: 303–321.
• Russell, Daniel C., 2008a, “Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Fundamentality of Virtue,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 45: 329–48.
• –––, 2008b, “That ‘Ought’ Does Not Imply ‘Right’: Why It Matters for Virtue Ethics,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 46: 299–315.
• –––, 2009, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues , New York: Oxford University Press.
• ––– (ed.), 2013, The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Russell, Paul, 2006, “Moral Sense and Virtue in Hume’s Ethics,” in Chappell (2006), pp. 158–170.
• Sandler, Ronald, 2007, Character and Environment: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Sanford, Jonathan, 2015, Before Virtue: Assessing Contemporary Virtue Ethics , Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press.
• Sim, May, 2015, “Why Confucius’ Ethics is a Virtue Ethics,” in Besser-Jones and Slote (2015), pp. 63–76.
• Singh, Keshav, 2021, “Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics,” The Monist , 104: 319–336.
• Slingerland, Edward, 2011, “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics,” Ethics , 121 (2): 390–419.
• Slote, Michael, 1993, “Virtue Ethics and Democratic Values,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 14: 5–37.
• –––, 1997, “Virtue Ethics”, in Marcia Baron, Philip Pettit, and Michael Slote, Three Methods of Ethics , Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 175–238.
• –––, 2001, Morals from Motives , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2010, Moral Sentimentalism , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011, The Impossibility of Perfection: Aristotle, Feminism, and the Complexities of Ethics , New York, Oxford University Press.
• Smith, Nicholas R., 2017, “Right-Makers and the Targets of the Virtues,” Journal of Value Inquiry , 51: 311–326.
• –––, 2018, “Right Action as Virtuous Action,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 96: 241–254.
• Snow, Nancy, 2010, Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory , New York: Routledge.
• ––– (ed.), 2015, Cultivating Virtue , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2016, “Virtue Acquisition: The Paradox of Striving,” Journal of Moral Education , 45: 179–191.
• ––– (ed.), 2018, The Oxford Handbook of Virtue , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2020, Contemporary Virtue Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Solomon, David, 1988, “Internal Objections to Virtue Ethics,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 13: 428–41, reprinted in Statman 1997.
• Sreenivasan, Gopal, 2002, “Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution,” Mind , 111 (January): 47–68.
• Stalnaker, Aaron, 2019, Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Stangl, Rebecca, 2010, “Asymmetrical Virtue Particularism,” Ethics , 121: 37–57.
• –––, 2015, “Taking Moral Risks and Becoming Virtuous,” in Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology , Christian Miller, R. Michael Furr, Angela Knobel, and William Fleeson (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 215–232.
• –––, 2020, Neither Heroes nor Saints: Ordinary Virtue, Extraordinary Virtue, and Self-Cultivation , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Star, Daniel, 2015, Knowing Better: Virtue, Deliberation, and Normative Ethics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Statman, D. (ed.), 1997, Virtue Ethics , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Steyl, Steven, 2019, “The Virtue of Care,” Hypatia , 34: 507–526.
• Stichter, Matt, 2011, “Virtues, Skills, and Right Action,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 14: 73–86.
• Striker, Gisela, 2006, “Aristotle’s Ethics as Political Science”, in Burkhard Reis (ed.), The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 127–141.
• Stocker, Michael, 1976, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” Journal of Philosophy , 14: 453–66.
• Svensson, Frans, 2010, “Virtue Ethics and the Search for an Account of Right Action,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 13: 255–71.
• Swanton, Christine, 2003, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2009, “Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Demandingness,” in T. Chappell (ed.), The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays , Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 104–122.
• –––, 2011a, “Nietzsche and the Virtues of Mature Egoism,” in Simon May (ed.), Cambridge Critical Guide to Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 285–308.
• –––, 2011b, “Virtue Ethics,” in Christian Miller (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Ethics , New York: Continuum, 190–213.
• –––, 2013, “A New Metaphysics for Virtue Ethics: Heidegger Meets Hume,” in Julia Peters (ed.), Aristotelian Ethics in Contemporary Perspective , New York: Routledge, pp. 177–194.
• –––, 2015, The Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche , Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
• –––, 2021, Target Centred Virtue Ethics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Taylor, Gabriele, 2006, Deadly Vices , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Taylor, Jacqueline, 2002, “Hume on the Standard of Virtue,” Journal of Ethics , 6: 43–62.
• –––, 2006, “Virtue and the Evaluation of Character,” in Saul Traiger (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise , Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 276–295.
• –––, 2008, “Hume on Beauty and Virtue,” in Elizabeth Radcliffe (ed.), A Companion to Hume , Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 273–292.
• Tessman, Lisa, 2005, Burdened Virtues , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Timpe, Kevin and Craig Boyd (eds.), 2014, Virtues and Their Vices , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Toner, Christopher, 2006, “The Self-Centeredness Objection to Virtue Ethics,” Philosophy , 81: 595–618.
• –––, 2010, “Virtue Ethics and The Nature and Forms of Egoism,” Journal of Philosophical Research , 35: 323–52.
• Upton, Candace (ed.), 2009, Virtue Ethics and Moral Psychology: The Situationism Debate , a pair of special issues of The Journal of Ethics , 13 (2/3).
• –––, 2016, “The Empirical Argument Against Virtue,” Journal of Ethics , 20: 335–371.
• Vallor, Shannon, 2016, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting , New York: Oxford University Press.
• van Hooft, Stan (ed.), 2014, The Handbook of Virtue Ethics , Durham: Acumen.
• van Zyl, Liezl, 2009, “Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance,” Journal of Moral Philosophy , 6 (1): 50–69.
• –––, 2010, “Right Action and the Non-Virtuous Agent,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 28 (1): 80–92.
• –––, 2014, “Right Action and the Targets of Virtue,” in van Hooft (2014), pp. 118–129.
• –––, 2019, Virtue Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction , New York: Routledge.
• Vigani, Denise, 2017, “Is Patience a Virtue?” Journal of Value Inquiry , 51: 327–340.
• –––, 2019, “Virtuous Construal: In Defense of Silencing,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association , 5: 229–245.
• Vogler, Candace, 2013, “Natural Virtue and Proper Upbringing,” in Aristotelian Ethics in Contemporary Perspectives , Julia Peters (ed.), New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2020, “Aristotelian Necessity,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement , 87: 101–110.
• Walker, Rebecca L. and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), 2007, Working Virtue , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Watson, Gary, 1990, “On the Primacy of Character,” in Flanagan and Rorty, pp. 449–83, reprinted in Statman, 1997.
• Welchman, Jennifer (ed.), 2006, The Practice of Virtue: Classic and Contemporary Readings in Virtue Ethics , Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
• White, Nicholas, 2015, “Plato and the Ethics of Virtue,” in Besser-Jones and Slote (2015), pp. 3–15.
• Williams, Bernard, 1985, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2002, Truth and Truthfulness , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Wilson, Alan, 2018, “Honesty as a Virtue,” Metaphilosophy , 49: 262–280.
• Wynn, Mark, 2020, Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues: Living between Heaven and Earth , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Yu, Jiyuan, 2007, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue , New York: Routledge.
• Zagzebski, Linda, 1996, Virtues of the Mind , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1998, “The Virtues of God and the Foundations of Ethics,” Faith and Philosophy , 15 (4): 538–553.
• –––, 2004, Divine Motivation Theory , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2017, Exemplarist Moral Theory , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Zwolinski, Matt and David Schmidtz, 2013, “Environmental Virtue Ethics,” in Russell (2013), pp. 221–239.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Bibliography on Virtue Ethics (in PDF, listed alphabetically), and Bibliography on Virtue Ethics (in PDF, listed chronologically), by Jörg Schroth.

Aristotle | character, moral | character, moral: empirical approaches | consequentialism | ethics: deontological | moral dilemmas

Acknowledgments

Parts of the introductory material above repeat what was said in the Introduction and first chapter of On Virtue Ethics (Hursthouse 1999).

Copyright © 2022 by Rosalind Hursthouse Glen Pettigrove < glen . pettigrove @ glasgow . ac . uk >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

• How It Works
• All Projects
• Write my essay
• Buy essay online
• Custom coursework
• Creative writing
• Custom admission essay
• College essay writers
• IB extended essays
• Buy speech online
• Pay for essays
• College papers
• Do my homework
• Write my paper
• Custom dissertation
• Buy research paper
• Buy dissertation
• Write my dissertation
• Essay for cheap
• Essays for sale
• Non-plagiarized essays
• Buy coursework
• Term paper help
• Buy assignment
• Custom thesis
• Custom research paper
• College paper
• Coursework writing
• Edit my essay
• Nurse essays
• Business essays
• Custom term paper
• Buy college essays
• Buy book report
• Cheap custom essay
• Argumentative essay
• Assignment writing
• Custom book report
• Custom case study
• Doctorate essay
• Finance essay
• Scholarship essays
• Essay topics
• Research paper topics
• Top queries link

Best Philosophy Essay Examples

Aristotle virtue theory.

978 words | 4 page(s)

Aristotle’s conception of virtue within Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most important aspects to this ethical treaty as it is explicitly concerned with determining a definition of virtue and the virtuous act as a foundation for moral philosophy and ethical action. To these ends the following paper will analysis the definition and function of virtue as is presented in Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics; with a particular focus on the example of bravery Aristotle uses to define the parameters and characteristics of virtue as well as Aristotle’s discussion on the motivational aspects or moral or ‘virtuous’ action which is integral to understanding Aristotle’s distinct brand or moral philosophy.

One of the first definitions Aristotle uses as a mean to identify virtue is with a scale system. For Aristotle, virtue is defined as the optimum level between inadequacy and excess of a characteristic or particular trait. At the same time it is important to remember that the ideal point on this scale between inadequacy and excess is not necessarily the absolute mean; rather, virtue often lies closer to one of the two extremes. Aristotle uses the example of war and fighting as an example of such a scale, with cowardice and rashness being the two polar extremes with bravery (virtue) being situated at some ideal point along this range:

Use your promo and get a custom paper on "Aristotle Virtue Theory".

Hence the coward, the rash person, and the brave person are all concerned with the same things, but have different states related to them; the others are excessive or defective, but the brave person has the intermediate and right state (Irwin 42). Thus, in Aristotle’s conception of virtue (which at this point in Nicomachean Ethics is discussed as bravery) is based on finding the optimum and ideal position between the other extremes of the situation at hand. A similar schema could be employed for other virtuous acts such as commerce (where greed and un-rational benevolence could operate as the two extremes); one of the reasons Aristotle uses the example of bravery in terms of fighting and war is to appeal to the readers at the time.

Building from the idea that bravery is a ideal state that is located somewhere between cowardice and rashness, Aristotle then moves on to explore the motivational forces behind virtuous acts (Irwin 44). For Aristotle, virtue needs to be a free choice of determination for the subject. The example he provides is that of the soldier who bravely fights on the front line under the threat of death from his commanding officer (Irwin 43). For Aristotle, bravery (and virtue as a whole) needs to be founded on the idea of a free choice in the subject; virtue as a quality cannot be forced upon someone, it flows from the very core of the individuals spirit.

Related to the concept of free choice and virtue within Nicomachean Ethics is the relationship between virtue and the sensations of pleasure and pain. For Aristotle, pain can clearly not be a component to virtue in terms as it operating as a motivational force. Aristotle makes this clear in discussing pain as one of the motivation of animals: “Now brave people act because of the fine, and their spirit cooperates with them. But beasts act because of the pain […]” (Irwin 43). Similarly, however, pleasure as a motivational force for bravery (such as the pleasure of battle, the blood lust) is not a suitable or determining facet of virtue in Aristotelian thought. Indeed, empirical considerations of pleasure and pain are not features that correspond to the concept of bravery or virtue, instead, for Aristotle: “[genuine bravery …] results from a virtue; for it is caused by shame and by desire for something fine, namely honor, and aversion from reproach, which is shameful” (Irwin 43). To a certain extent, the schema Aristotle develops is based on the separation between pleasure and pain as animalistic sensations, to a pure detached desire for a higher good. At the same time, this desire for a higher good should not be conditioned on the relative pleasure (such as social standing) that will be gained from appearing virtuous. Instead virtue should be sort for virtues sake otherwise the external motivational factors frustrate the determining characteristics of virtue itself.

Another pertinent point in Aristotle’s discussion of virtue in Nicomachean Ethics is the separation between virtue and ‘goods’, which in this case denotes wealth and status through ownership. As Aristotle states:

Those who lack virtue but have these other goods are not justified in thinking themselves worthy of great things, and are not correctly called magnanimous; that is impossible without complete virtue (Irwin 55)

Indeed, for Aristotle virtue has little to do with social status which is based on wealth and the objects of that wealth. The question of virtue and subsequently moral action is absolutely disinterested in the perception of virtue and indeed the striving to be virtuous based on increasing one’s social identity. Indeed, as Aristotle mentions throughout the whole of Nicomachean Ethics, acting virtuously has to be seen as disinterested from both any material gain or when under duress. The man who is virtuous does not seek reward for his acts; instead virtue stems from the application of reason and a desire for a higher ‘good’.

In conclusion, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics represents a milestone in the development of moral philosophy as it attempts to create a practical means in which to deduce moral action. The concept that virtue operates outside the pathological notions of pleasure and pain as well as being a free choice for the subject is integral to Aristotle’s definition of virtue. Similarly, for Aristotle, virtue should not operate as a means to an end, insofar as projecting an image of virtue through wealth or indeed through acting in a virtuous manner for material or social gains. For Aristotle, virtue is an end to itself.

• Irwin, Terence, ed. Nicomachean ethics. Hackett Publishing, 1999.

Have a team of vetted experts take you to the top, with professionally written papers in every area of study.

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Ethics

Aristotle’s Theory Of Virtue Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Ethics , Aristotle , State , Happiness , Order , Pleasure , Virtues , Excess

Published: 03/30/2023

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

There are many different theories as to how a person should lead his or her life. One of the first and most important philosophers to have thought about this in the Western tradition was Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics. In this text, he proposes an ethical theory based on virtues that a person should cultivate in order to be happy, or under a state of flourishment. For him, virtues are habits that one should establish in the mean of two excesses. For example, the virtue of temperance should be developed as a midpoint between pain and pleasure in order to not fall into the excess of self-indulgence. Therefore, habits would be important, as the person should constantly choose the mean until this becomes something that he does without reflection. This would lead him to the state of happiness, or flourishing, that would be the goal of life as seen through ethical action. For Aristotle, virtues are always located between two excesses. He finds two instances or states that oppose each other and establishes the middle as the place where one should try to place one’s self. The two extremes would thus interact with each other in a rational way in order to lead man to his or her true calling; he thinks of this as happiness, or flourishing, in the sense that this state would lead the person to exploit his or her full potential. For example, between pleasure and pain, Aristotle contemplates temperance. Even though many contemporary people would regard pleasure as always being good, for this philosopher, it is not the virtue that one should seek, as it leads to an excess; specifically, pleasure would be the excess that is contrary to pain, both of which should enter into a dialectical relationship in order to find a mean that would be de virtue. Especially, in this case, Aristotle states that pleasure is what one should attempt to avoid in essence, as “Persons deficient with regard to the pleasures are not often found” (Aristotle, 29). Against this, he proposes that “the mean is temperance, the excess self-indulgence” (Aristotle, 29). In this sense, the amount of pleasure or pain that one seeks and receives should always be controlled, to keep it at a manageable, medium level. As one can see, Aristotle believes that ethics should be handled at the level of habits, with actions becoming an almost integrated part of the person’s personality. For him, there should be a constant search for these virtues until the person does them in a natural fashion. As the human is a rational animal, he or she must learn to dominate the more instinctive aspects of his or her personality in order to be virtues and lead a happy life. All the actions in a person’s life should be directed towards achieving this state of happiness. In this sense, he or she should logically consider what the best course of action is, with rationality being the most important aspect of humans for this philosopher. Therefore, this leads him to propose a tempered state of nature, where the intellect controls the passions, be they through excess or deficiency. In this sense, happiness, or flourishing, would be a state, the way of being that corresponds to the person doing that which is in accordance to the different virtues. For Aristotle, this state is only achievable when the person chooses to shy away from the different excesses, in order to be in tune with the medium. Therefore, it would not be a feeling or a tendency, but a description of the way a person is, behaves or perceives his or her acts. Habits would change the way a person feels by reaching this state, in order to produce appropriate feelings. As a consequence, according to Aristotle, people should constantly try to limit themselves in this fashion so as to obtain happiness.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. PDF.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 1230

This paper is created by writer with

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Clothes case studies, free essay on catherine viner, essay on waste management 2, each authors individual philosophy as it pertained to the relationship between god and man or man and fate essays examples, unions and workers essay, line two essay example, free essay on stoicism in the face of troubles, free essay about evolution of the human biocultural adaptive strategy, essay on stereotyping in health care how it can affect patient care, community group experience essays example, strengthening community essay examples, human resource management essays examples 2, the american revolution origins and the constitution essay, the idea of zones of undecidability or the processes of the interstitial in the project house 56 essay samples, example of essay on evolution of printing technology, administrative responsibility essays examples, example of economics essay 7, example of literature review on the coquette, negative cultural impacts from tourism argumentative essay example, good essay on company analysis genus plc, stereotype and surveillance in the the blacklist essay sample, free movie review on castle in the sky, good example of psychiatric nursing admission essay, report on preparation and properties of oxygen, dance choreographer research paper examples, banking revolution in india research papers example, good example of policy synthesis critical thinking, a level research proposal on effects of globalization on small and medium scale businesses in nigeria for free use, free articles of confederation essay example, free patient with chronic bronchitis case study sample, the trump phenomena essay example, example of falsifiability essay, master cylinder essays, palace of versailles essays, turtle essays, actus essays, reus essays, refereeing essays, rebbe essays, social commentary essays, conrath essays, time travel essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline