708=Moral Philosophy According to Immanuel Kant

Kantian Ethics in a Nutshell

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Philosophy
 Philosophical Theories & Ideas
 Major Philosophers

Table of Contents

A Problem for the Enlightenment

Three Responses to the Enlightenment Problem
The Problem With Utilitarianism
The Good Will
Duty vs. Inclination
Knowing Your Duty
The Ends Principle
Kant’s Concept of Enlightenment

By
Emrys Westacott
Updated on August 31, 2019

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is generally considered to be one of the most profound and original
philosophers who ever lived. He is equally well known for his metaphysics–the subject of his "Critique
of Pure Reason"—and for the moral philosophy set out in his "Groundwork to the Metaphysics of
Morals" and "Critique of Practical Reason" (although "Groundwork" is the far easier of the two to
understand).

A Problem for the Enlightenment

To understand Kant’s moral philosophy, it's crucial to be familiar with the issues that he, and other
thinkers of his time, were dealing with. From the earliest recorded history, people’s moral beliefs and
practices were grounded in religion. Scriptures, such as the bible and the Quran, laid out moral rules
that believers thought to be handed down from God: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery, and
so on. The fact that these rules supposedly came from a divine source of wisdom gave them their
authority. They were not simply somebody’s arbitrary opinion, they were God's opinion, and as such,
they offered humankind an objectively valid code of conduct.

Moreover, everyone had an incentive to obey these codes. If you “walked in the ways of the Lord,” you
would be rewarded, either in this life or the next. If you violated the commandments, you'd be
punished. As a result, any sensible person brought up in such a faith would abide by the moral rules
their religion taught.

With the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries that led to the great cultural movement
known as the Enlightenment, these previously accepted religious doctrines were increasingly
challenged as faith in God, scripture, and organized religion began to decline among the intelligentsia—
that is, the educated elite. Nietzsche famously described this shift away from organized religion as “the
death of God.”

This new way of thinking created a problem for moral philosophers: If religion wasn’t the foundation
that gave moral beliefs their validity, what other foundation could there be? If there is no God—and
therefore no guarantee of cosmic justice ensuring that the good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys
will be punished—why should anyone bother trying to be good? Scottish moral philosopher Alisdair
MacIntrye called this “the Enlightenment problem.” The solution moral philosophers needed to come
up with was a secular (non-religious) determination of what morality was and why we should strive to
be moral.

Three Responses to the Enlightenment Problem

 Social Contract Theory—One answer to the Enlightenment Problem was pioneered by
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who argued that morality was essentially a set
of rules that human beings agreed upon amongst themselves in order to make living with one
another possible. If we didn’t have these rules—many of which took the form of laws enforced by
the government—life would be absolutely horrific for everyone.
 Utilitarianism—Utilitarianism, another attempt to give morality a non-religious foundation,
was pioneered by thinkers including David Hume (1711-1776) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1842).
Utilitarianism holds that pleasure and happiness have intrinsic value. They are what we all want
and are the ultimate goals that all our actions aim toward. Something is good if it promotes
happiness, and it is bad if it produces suffering. Our basic duty is to try to do things that add to
the amount of happiness and/or reduce the amount of misery in the world.
 Kantian Ethics—Kant had no time for Utilitarianism. He believed in placing the emphasis on
happiness the theory completely misunderstood the true nature of morality. In his view, the basis
for our sense of what is good or bad, right or wrong, is our awareness that human beings are free,
rational agents who should be given the respect appropriate to such beings—but what exactly
does that entail?

The Problem With Utilitarianism

In Kant’s view, the basic problem with utilitarianism is that it judges actions by their consequences. If
your action makes people happy, it’s good; if it does the reverse, it’s bad. But is this actually contrary to
what we might call moral common sense? Consider this question: Who is the better person, the
millionaire who gives $1,000 to charity in order to score points with his Twitter following or the
minimum-wage worker who donates a day’s pay to charity because she thinks it's her duty to help the
needy?

If consequences are all that matter, then the millionaire’s action is technically the "better" one. But
that’s not how the majority of people would see the situation. Most of us judge actions more for their
motivation than by their consequences. The reason is obvious: the consequences of our actions are
often out of our control, just as the ball is out of the pitcher’s control once it's left his hand. I could save
a life at the risk of my own, and the person I save could turn out to be a serial killer. Or I could
accidentally kill someone in the course of robbing them, and in doing so might unwittingly save the
world from a terrible tyrant.

The Good Will

Kant’s "Groundwork" opens with the line: “The only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will.”
Kant’s argument for this belief is quite plausible. Consider anything you think of in terms of being
"good"—health, wealth, beauty, intelligence, and so on. For each of these things, you can also likely
imagine a situation in which this so-called good thing is not good after all. For instance, a person can be
corrupted by their wealth. The robust health of a bully makes it easier for him to abuse his victims. A
person’s beauty may lead her to become vain and fail to develop emotional maturity. Even happiness is
not good if it is the happiness of a sadist torturing unwilling victims.

By contrast, goodwill, says Kant, is always good—in all circumstances. What, exactly, does Kant mean
by goodwill? The answer is fairly simple. A person acts out of goodwill when they do what they do
because they think it is their duty—when they act from a sense of moral obligation.

Duty vs. Inclination

Obviously, we don’t perform every little action from a sense of obligation. Much of the time, we're
simply following our inclinations—or acting out of self-interest. There's nothing intrinsically wrong
with that, however, no one deserves credit for pursuing their own interests. It comes naturally to us,
just as it comes naturally to every animal.

What is remarkable about human beings, though, is that we can, and sometimes do, perform an action
from purely moral motives—for example, when a soldier throws himself on a grenade, sacrificing his
own life to save the lives of others. Or less dramatically, I pay back a friendly loan as promised even
though payday isn't for another week and doing so will leave me temporarily short of cash.

In Kant’s view, when a person freely chooses to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to
do, their action adds value to the world and lights it up, so to speak, with a brief glow of moral
goodness.

Knowing Your Duty

Saying that people should do their duty from a sense of duty is easy—but how are we supposed to know
what our duty is? Sometimes we may find ourselves facing moral dilemmas in which it's not obvious
which course of action is morally correct.

According to Kant, however, in most situations are duty is obvious. If we're uncertain, we can work out
the answer by reflecting on a general principle that Kant calls the “Categorical Imperative.” This, he
claims, is the fundamental principle of morality and all other rules and precepts can be deduced from it.

Kant offers several different versions of this categorical imperative. One runs as follows: “Act only on
that maxim that you can will as a universal law.”

What this means, basically, is that we should only ask ourselves, How would it be if everyone acted the
way I’m acting? Could I sincerely and consistently wish for a world in which everyone behaved this
way? According to Kant, if our action is morally wrong, the answers to those questions would be no.
For instance, suppose I’m thinking of breaking a promise. Could I wish for a world in which everyone
broke their promises when keeping them was inconvenient? Kant argues that I could not want this, not
least because in such a world no one would make promises since everyone would know that a promise
meant nothing.

The Ends Principle

Another version of the Categorical Imperative that Kant offers states that one should “always treat
people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to one’s own ends." This is commonly referred to
as the “ends principle.” While similar in a way to the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you," it puts the onus for following the rule on humankind rather than accepting the
strictures of divine influence.

The key to Kant’s belief regarding what makes humans moral beings is the fact that we are free and
rational creatures. To treat someone as a means to your own ends or purposes is to not respect this fact
about them. For instance, if I get you to agree to do something by making a false promise, I am
manipulating you. Your decision to help me is based on false information (the idea that I’m going to
keep my promise). In this way, I have undermined your rationality. This is even more obvious if I steal
from you or kidnap you in order to claim a ransom.

Treating someone as an end, by contrast, involves always respecting the fact that they are capable of
free rational choices which may be different from the choices you wish them to make. So if I want you to
do something, the only moral course of action is to explain the situation, explain what I want, and let
you make your own decision.

Kant’s Concept of Enlightenment

In his famous essay “What is Enlightenment?” Kant defines the principle as “man’s emancipation from
his self-imposed immaturity.” What does this mean, and what does it have to do with his ethics?

The answers go back to the problem of religion no longer providing a satisfactory foundation for
morality. What Kant calls humanity’s “immaturity” is the period when people did not truly think for
themselves, and instead, typically accepted moral rules handed down to them by religion, tradition, or
by authorities such as the church, overlord, or king. This loss of faith in previously recognized authority
was viewed by many as a spiritual crisis for Western civilization. If “God is dead, how do we know what
is true and what is right?"

Kant’s answer was that people simply had to work those things out for themselves. It wasn't something
to lament, but ultimately, something to celebrate. For Kant, morality was not a matter of subjective
whim set forth in the name of god or religion or law based on the principles ordained by the earthly
spokespeople of those gods. Kant believed that “the moral law”—the categorical imperative and
everything it implies—was something that could only be discovered through reason. It was not
something imposed on us from without. Instead, it's a law that we, as rational beings, must impose on
ourselves. This is why some of our deepest feelings are reflected in our reverence for the moral law, and
why, when we act as we do out of respect for it—in other words, from a sense of duty—we fulfill
ourselves as rational beings.

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Stoics: From Greek to Roman Philosophy
The Stoics are one of five major philosophical schools in classical Greece and Rome: Platonist,
Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, and Skeptic. The philosophers who followed Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
were also known as the Peripatetics, named for their habit of walking around the colonnades of the
Athenian Lyceum. The Stoic philosophers, on the other hand, were named for the Athenian Stoa Poikile
or "painted porch," the roofed colonnade in Athens where the founder of the Stoic philosophy, Zeno of
Citium (344–262 BC), held his classes.

The Greeks likely developed the philosophy of Stoicism from earlier philosophies, and philosophy is
often divided into three parts:

 Logic: a way to determine if your perceptions of the world are correct;

  Physics (meaning natural science): a structure to understand the natural world as both active
(figured out by reason) and passive (existing and immutable substance); and
 Ethics: the study of how to live one's life.

Although little of the Stoics' original writings exist, many Romans adopted the philosophy as a way of
life or art of living (téchnê peri tón bion in the ancient Greek)—as it was intended by the Greeks—and it
is from the complete documents of imperial period Romans, especially the writings of Seneca (4 BCE–
65 CE), Epictetus (c. 55–135 CE) and Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) that we gain most of our
information about the ethical system of the original Stoics.

Stoic Principles
Today, Stoic principles have found their way into accepted popular wisdom, as goals to which we should
aspire—as in the Serenity Prayer of Twelve Step addiction programs.

Below are eight of the main ethical notions held by the Stoic philosophers.

 Nature: Nature is rational.

 Law of Reason: The universe is governed by the law of reason. Humans can't actually escape its
inexorable force, but they can, uniquely, follow the law deliberately.
 Virtue: A life led according to rational nature is virtuous.
 Wisdom: Wisdom is the the root virtue. From it spring the cardinal virtues: insight, bravery,
self-control, and justice.
 Apathea: Since passion is irrational, life should be waged as a battle against it. Intense feeling
should be avoided.
 Pleasure: Pleasure is neither good nor bad. It is only acceptable if it doesn't interfere with the
quest for virtue.
 Evil: Poverty, illness, and death are not evil.
 Duty: Virtue should be sought, not for the sake of pleasure, but for duty.

As modern-day stoic philosopher Massimo Pigliucci (b. 1959) describes the stoic philosophy:

"Briefly, their notion of morality is stern, involving a life in accordance with nature and controlled by
virtue. It is an ascetic system, teaching perfect indifference (apathea) to everything external, for nothing
external could be either good or evil. Hence to the Stoics both pain and pleasure, poverty and riches,
sickness and health, were supposed to be equally unimportant."

Serenity Prayer and Stoic Philosophy

The Serenity Prayer, attributed to the Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), and
published by Alcoholics Anonymous in several similar forms, could have come straight from the
principles of Stoicism, as this side-by-side comparison of the Serenity Prayer and the Stoic Agenda
shows:

Serenity Prayer Stoic Agenda

God grant me the serenity To accept the To avoid unhappiness, frustration, and disappointment,
things I cannot change, courage to change we, therefore, need to do two things: control those things
the things I can, and wisdom to know the that are within our power (namely our beliefs, judgments,
difference. (Alcoholics Anonymous) desires, and attitudes) and be indifferent or apathetic to
those things which are not in our power (namely, things
God, give us grace to accept with serenity external to us). (William R. Connolly)
 Serenity Prayer Stoic Agenda

the things that cannot be changed, courage

to change the things that should be
changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the
one from the other. (Reinhold Niebuhr)

It has been suggested that the main difference between the two passages is that the Niebuhr's version
includes a bit about knowing the difference between the two. While that may be, the Stoic version states
those which are within our power—the personal things like our own beliefs, our judgments, and our
desires. Those are the things, say Stoics ancient and modern, we should have the power to change.

Updated by K. Kris Hirst

Sources
 Annas, Julia. "Ethics in Stoic Philosophy." Phronesis 52.1 (2007): 58–87.
 Knapp, Charles. "Professor Gilbert Murray on the Stoic Philosophy (Religion)." The Classical Weekly 19.13 (1926):
99–100.
 McAfee Brown, R. (ed) 1986. "The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses."
New Haven: Yale University Press.
 Pigliucci, Massimo. "How to be a Stoic:Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life." New
York: Basic Books, 2017.
 ---. "Stoicism." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
 Remple, Morgan. "Stoic Philosophy and AA: The Enduring Wisdom of the Serenity Prayer." Sobering Wisdom:
Philosophical Explorations of Twelve Step Spirituality. Eds. Miller, Jerome A. and Nicholas Plants:
University of Virginia Press, 2014. 205–17.
 Sellars, John. "Stoic Practical Philosophy in the Imperial Period." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies.
Supplement.94 (2007): 115–40.
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ETHICS

@Ethics is one of the major branches of philosophy and an ethical theory is part and parcel of all
philosophies broadly conceived. The list of the greatest ethical theorists includes classic authors such
as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant, Nietzsche as well as the more recent contributions of G.E.
Moore, J.P. Sartre, B. Williams, E. Levinas. The aim of ethics has been viewed in different ways:
according to some, it is the discernment of right from wrong actions; to others, ethics separates that
which is morally good from what is morally bad; alternatively, ethics purports to devise the principles
by means of which conducting a life worth to be lived. Meta-ethics if the branch of ethics which is
concerned with the definition of right and wrong, or good and bad.

What Ethics Is Not

First, it is important to tell apart ethics from other endeavors within which at times it risks being
confused. Here are three of them.

(i) Ethics is not what’s commonly accepted. Each and all of your peers may regard gratuitous violence
as fun: this does not make gratuitous violence ethical within your group. In other words, the fact that
some action is typically undertaken among a group of people does not mean that such action ought to
be undertaken. As philosopher David Hume famously argued, ‘is’ does not imply ‘ought.’
(ii) Ethics is not the law. In some cases, clearly, laws do incarnate ethical principles: mistreatment of
domestic animals was an ethical requirement before becoming the subject of specific legal regulations is
different countries. Still, not everything that falls under the scope of legal rules is of significant ethical
concern; for example, it may be of little ethical concern that tap water be checked by appropriate
institutions several times a day, although this has of course great practical importance. On the other
hand, not everything that is of ethical concern can or should motivate the introduction of a law: people
should be nice to other people, but it may seem bizarre to make this principle into a law.

(iii) Ethics is not religion. Although a religious view is bound to contain some ethical principles, the
latter can be (with relative ease) extrapolated from their religious context and independently evaluated.

What is Ethics?
Ethics deals with the standards and principles that a single individual lives up to. Alternatively, it
studies the standards of groups or societies. Regardless of the distinction, there are three main ways to
think about ethical obligations.

Under one of its declinations, ethics deals with the standards of right and wrong when referred to
actions, benefits, virtues. In other words, ethics then helps to define what we ought or ought not to do.

Alternatively, ethics aims at discerning which values ought to be praised and which ones ought to be
discouraged.

Finally, some view ethics as related to the search of a life worth being lived. Living ethically means to do
one’s best to undertake the search.

Key Questions
Is ethics grounded on reason or sentiment? Ethical principles need not (or not always) be grounded
solely on rational considerations, ethical constraints seem to apply only to beings that are capable of
reflecting on their own actions as authors such as Aristotle and Descartes have pointed out. We cannot
require that Fido the dog be ethical because Fido is not capable of reflecting ethically on his own
actions.

Ethics, for whom?

Humans have ethical duties that extend not only to other humans but also to: animals (e.g. pets),
nature (e.g. preservation of biodiversity or ecosystems), traditions and festivities (e.g., fourth of July),
institutions (e.g. governments), clubs (e.g. Yankees or Lakers.)

Future and past generations?

Also, humans have ethical duties not only towards other humans that are presently living but also to
future generations. We have a duty to give a future to the people of tomorrow. But we also may bear
ethical obligations towards past generations, for example in valuing the efforts that have been made in
achieving peace around the world.

What is the source of ethical obligations?

Kant believed that the normative force of ethical obligations proceeds from the capacity of humans to
reason. Not all philosophers would agree to this, however. Adam Smith or David Hume, for example,
would rebut that what is ethically right or wrong is established on the basis of fundamental human
sentiments or feelings.
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What Does It Mean to Live the Good Life?

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Philosophy
Philosophical Theories & Ideas
Major Philosophers
By

Emrys Westacott

Updated on February 25, 2020

What is “the good life”? This is one of the oldest philosophical questions. It has been posed in different
ways—How should one live? What does it mean to “live well”?—but these are really just the same
question. After all, everyone wants to live well, and no one wants “the bad life.”

But the question isn’t as simple as it sounds. Philosophers specialize in unpacking hidden complexities,
and the concept of the good life is one of those that needs quite a bit of unpacking.
The Moral Life
One basic way we use the word “good” is to express moral approval. So when we say someone is living
well or that they have lived a good life, we may simply mean that they are a good person, someone who
is courageous, honest, trustworthy, kind, selfless, generous, helpful, loyal, principled, and so on.

They possess and practice many of the most important virtues. And they don’t spend all their time
merely pursuing their own pleasure; they devote a certain amount of time to activities that benefit
others, perhaps through their engagement with family and friends, or through their work, or through
various voluntary activities.

This moral conception of the good life has had plenty of champions. Socrates and Plato both gave
absolute priority to being a virtuous person over all other supposedly good things such as pleasure,
wealth, or power.

In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates takes this position to an extreme. He argues that it is much better
to suffer wrong than to do it; that a good man who has his eyes gouged out and is tortured to death is
more fortunate than a corrupt person who has used wealth and power dishonorably.
In his masterpiece, the Republic, Plato develops this argument in greater detail. The morally good
person, he claims, enjoys a sort of inner harmony, whereas the wicked person, no matter how rich and
powerful he may be or how many pleasure he enjoys, is disharmonious, fundamentally at odds with
himself and the world.
It is worth noting, though, that in both the Gorgias and the Republic, Plato bolsters his argument with
a speculative account of an afterlife in which virtuous people are rewarded and wicked people are
punished.
Many religions also conceive of the good life in moral terms as a life lived according to God’s laws. A
person who lives this way—obeying the commandments and performing the proper rituals—is pious.
And in most religions, such piety will be rewarded. Obviously, many people do not receive their reward
in this life.

But devout believers are confident that their piety will not be in vain. Christian martyrs went singing to
their deaths confident that they would soon be in heaven. Hindus expect that the law of karma will
ensure that their good deeds and intentions will be rewarded, while evil actions and desires will be
punished, either in this life or in future lives.

The Life of Pleasure

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was one of the first to declare, bluntly, that what makes life
worth living is that we can experience pleasure. Pleasure is enjoyable, it’s fun, it’s...well...pleasant! The
view that pleasure is the good, or, to put I another way, that pleasure is what makes life worth living, is
known as hedonism.

The word “hedonist,” when applied to a person, has slightly negative connotations. It suggests that they
are devoted to what some have called the “lower” pleasures such as sex, food, drink, and sensual
indulgence in general.

Epicurus was thought by some of his contemporaries to be advocating and practicing this sort of
lifestyle, and even today an “epicure” is someone who is especially appreciative of food and drink. But
this is a misrepresentation of Epicureanism. Epicurus certainly praised all kinds of pleasures. But he
didn’t advocate that we lose ourselves in sensual debauchery for various reasons:
  Doing so will probably reduce our pleasures in the long run since over-indulgence tends to cause
health problems and limit the range of pleasure we enjoy.
 The so-called “higher” pleasures such as friendship and study are at least as important as
“pleasures of the flesh."
 The good life has to be virtuous. Although Epicurus disagreed with Plato about the value of
pleasure, he fully agreed with him on this point.

Today, this hedonistic conception of the good life is arguably dominant in Western culture. Even in
everyday speech, if we say someone is “living the good life,” we probably mean that they enjoying lots of
recreational pleasures: good food, good wine, skiing, scuba diving, lounging by the pool in the sun with
a cocktail and a beautiful partner.

What is key to this hedonistic conception of the good life is that it emphasizes subjective experiences.
On this view, to describe a person as “happy” means that they “feel good,” and a happy life is one that
contains many “feel good” experiences.
The Fulfilled Life
If Socrates emphasizes virtue and Epicurus emphasizes pleasure, another great Greek thinker, Aristotle,
views the good life in a more comprehensive way. According to Aristotle, we all want to be happy.

We value many things because they are a means to other things. For instance, we value money because
it enables us to buy things we want; we value leisure because it gives us time to pursue our interests.
But happiness is something we value not as a means to some other end but for its own sake. It has
intrinsic value rather than instrumental value.

So for Aristotle, the good life is a happy life. But what does that mean? Today, many people
automatically think of happiness in subjectivist terms: To them, a person is happy if they are enjoying a
positive state of mind, and their life is happy if this is true for them most of the time.

There is a problem with this way of thinking about happiness in this way, though. Imagine a powerful
sadist who spends much of his time gratifying cruel desires. Or imagine a pot-smoking, beer-guzzling
couch potato who does nothing but sit around all day watching old TV shows and playing video games.
These people may have plenty of pleasurable subjective experiences. But should we really describe them
as “living well”?

Aristotle would certainly say no. He agrees with Socrates that to live the good life one must be a morally
good person. And he agrees with Epicurus that a happy life will involve many and varied pleasurable
experiences. We can’t really say someone is living the good life if they are often miserable or constantly
suffering.

But Aristotle’s idea of what it means to live well is objectivist rather than subjectivist. It isn’t just a
matter of how a person feels inside, although that does matter. It’s also important that certain objective
conditions be satisfied.

For instance:

 Virtue: They must be morally virtuous.

 Health: They should enjoy good health and reasonably long life.
 Prosperity: They should be comfortably off (for Aristotle this meant affluent enough so that
they don’t need to work for a living doing something that they would not freely choose to do.)
 Friendship: They must have good friends. According to Aristotle human beings are innately
social; so the good life can’t be that of a hermit, a recluse, or a misanthrope.
  Respect: They should enjoy the respect of others. Aristotle doesn’t think that fame or glory is
necessary; in fact, a craving for fame can lead people astray, just as the desire for excessive wealth
can. But ideally, a person’s qualities and achievements will be recognized by others.
 Luck: They need good luck. This is an example of Aristotle’s common sense. Any life can be
rendered unhappy by tragic loss or misfortune.
 Engagement: They must exercise their uniquely human abilities and capacities. This is why the
couch potato is not living well, even if they report that they are content. Aristotle argues that what
separates human beings from the other animals is the human reason. So the good life is one in
which a person cultivates and exercises their rational faculties by, for instance, engaging in
scientific inquiry, philosophical discussion, artistic creation, or legislation. Were he alive today he
might well include some forms of technological innovation.

If at the end of your life you can check all these boxes then you could reasonably claim to have lived
well, to have achieved the good life. Of course, the great majority of people today do not belong to the
leisure class as Aristotle did. They have to work for a living.

But it’s still true that we think the ideal circumstance is to be doing for a living what you would choose
to do anyway. So people who are able to pursue their calling are generally regarded as extremely
fortunate.

The Meaningful Life

Recent research shows that people who have children are not necessarily happier than people who don’t
have children. Indeed, during the child-raising years, and especially when children have turned into
teenagers, parents typically have lower levels of happiness and higher levels of stress. But even though
having children may not make people happier, it does seem to give them the sense that their lives are
more meaningful.

For many people, the well-being of their family, especially their children and grandchildren, is the main
source of meaning in life. This outlook goes back a very long way. In ancient times, the definition of
good fortune was to have lots of children who do well for themselves.

But obviously, there can be other sources of meaning in a person’s life. They may, for instance, pursue a
particular kind of work with great dedication: e.g. scientific research, artistic creation, or scholarship.
They may devote themselves to a cause: e.g. fighting against racism or protecting the environment. Or
they may be thoroughly immersed in and engaged with some particular community: e.g. a church, a
soccer team, or a school.

The Finished Life

The Greeks had a saying: Call no man happy until he’s dead. There is wisdom in this. In fact, one might
want to amend it to: Call no man happy until he’s long dead. For sometimes a person can appear to live
a fine life, and be able to check all the boxes—virtue, prosperity, friendship, respect, meaning, etc.—yet
eventually be revealed as something other than what we thought they were.

A good example of this Jimmy Saville, the British TV personality who was much admired in his lifetime
but who, after he died, was exposed as a serial sexual predator.

Cases like this bring out the great advantage of an objectivist rather than a subjectivist notion of what it
means to live well. Jimmy Saville may have enjoyed his life. But surely, we would not want to say that
he lived the good life. A truly good life is one that is both enviable and admirable in all or most of the
ways outlined above.
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An Introduction to Virtue Ethics

How an ancient approach to ethics was revived in recent times

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Philosophy
Philosophical Theories & Ideas
Major Philosophers
By

Emrys Westacott

Updated on February 13, 2018

“Virtue ethics” describes a certain philosophical approach to questions about morality. It is a way of
thinking about ethics that is characteristic of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers,
particularly Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But it has become popular again since the later part of the
20th century due to the work of thinkers like Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Alasdair
MacIntyre.

The Central Question of Virtue Ethics

How should I live? This has a good claim to being the most fundamental question that you can put to
yourself. But philosophically speaking, there is another question that perhaps has to be answered first:
namely, How should I decide how to live?

There are several answers available within the Western philosophical tradition:

 The religious answer: God has given us a set of rules to follow. These are laid out in scripture
(e.g. the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran). The right way to live is to follow these
rules. That is the good life for a human being.
 Utilitarianism: This is the view that what matters most in the world in the promotion of
happiness and the avoidance of suffering. So the right way to live is, in a general way, to try to
promote the most happiness you can, both your own and that of other people– especially those
around you–while trying to avoid causing pain or unhappiness.
 Kantian ethics: The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant argues that the basic rule we
should follow is neither “Obey God’s laws,” nor “Promote happiness.” Instead, he claimed that
the fundamental principle of morality is something like: Always act in the way that you could
honestly want everyone to act if they were in a similar situation. Anyone who abides by this rule,
 he claims, will be behaving with complete consistency and rationality, and they will unfailingly do
the right thing.

What all three approaches have in common is that they view morality as a matter of following certain
rules. There are very general, fundamental rules, like “Treat others as you’d like to be treated,” or
“Promote happiness.” And there are lots of more specific rules that can be deduced from these general
principles: e.g. “Don’t bear false witness,” or “Help the needy.” The morally good life is one lived
according to these principles; wrongdoing occurs when the rules are broken. The emphasis is on duty,
obligation, and the rightness or wrongness of actions.

Plato and Aristotle ‘s way of thinking about morality had a different emphasis. They also asked: "How
should one live?" But took this question to be equivalent to "What kind of person does one want to be? "
That is, what sort of qualities and character traits are admirable and desirable. Which should be
cultivated in ourselves and others? And which traits should we seek to eliminate?

Aristotle’s Account of Virtue

In his great work, the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers a detailed analysis of the virtues that has
been enormously influential and is the starting point for most discussions of virtue ethics.
The Greek term that is usually translated as “virtue” is arête. Speaking generally, arête is a kind of
excellence. It is a quality that enables a thing to perform its purpose or function. The sort of excellence
in question can be specific to particular kinds of thing. For instance, the main virtue of a racehorse is to
be fast; the main virtue of a knife is to be sharp. People performing specific functions also require
specific virtues: e.g. a competent accountant must be good with numbers; a soldier needs to be
physically brave. But there are also virtues that it is good for any human being to possess, the qualities
that enable them to live a good life and to flourish as a human being. Since Aristotle thinks that what
distinguishes human beings from all other animals is our rationality, the good life for a human being is
one in which the rational faculties are fully exercised. These include things like the capacities for
friendship, civic participation, aesthetic enjoyment, and intellectual enquiry. Thus for Aristotle, the life
of a pleasure-seeking couch potato is not an example of the good life.
Aristotle distinguishes between the intellectual virtues, which are exercised in the process of thinking,
and the moral virtues, which are exercised through action. He conceives of a moral virtue as a character
trait that it is good to possess and that a person displays habitually. This last point about habitual
behavior is important. A generous person is one who is routinely generous, not just generous
occasionally. A person who only keeps some of their promises does not have the virtue of
trustworthiness. To really have the virtue is for it to be deeply ingrained in your personality. One way to
achieve this is to keep practicing the virtue so that it becomes habitual. Thus to become a truly generous
person you should keep performing generous actions until generosity just comes naturally and easily to
you; it becomes, as one says, “second nature.”

Aristotle argues that each moral virtue is a sort of mean lying between two extremes. One extreme
involves a deficiency of the virtue in question, the other extreme involves possessing it to excess. For
example, "Too little courage = cowardice; too much courage = recklessness. Too little generosity =
stinginess; too much generosity = extravagance." This is the famous doctrine of the “golden mean.” The
“mean,” as Aristotle understands it is not some sort of mathematical halfway point between the two
extremes; rather, it is what is appropriate in the circumstances. Really, the upshot of Aristotle’s
argument seems to be that any trait we consider a virtue as to be exercised with wisdom.

Practical wisdom (the Greek word is phronesis), although strictly speaking an intellectual virtue, turns
out to be absolutely key to being a good person and living a good life. Having practical wisdom means
being able to assess what is required in any situation. This includes knowing when one should follow a
rule and when one should break it. And it calls into play knowledge, experience, emotional sensitivity,
perceptiveness, and reason.
The Advantages of Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics certainly didn’t die away after Aristotle. Roman Stoics like Seneca and Marcus
Aurelius also focused on character rather than abstract principles. And they, too, saw moral virtue
as constitutive of the good life– that is, being a morally good person is a key ingredient of living well
and being happy. No-one who lacks virtue can possibly be living well, even if they have wealth, power,
and lots of pleasure. Later thinkers like Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and David Hume (1711-1776) also
offered moral philosophies in which the virtues played a central role. But it is fair to say that virtue
ethics took a back seat in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The revival of virtue ethics in the mid-late 20th century was fueled by dissatisfaction with rule-oriented
ethics, and a growing appreciation of some of the advantages of an Aristotelian approach. These
advantages included the following.

 Virtue ethics offers a broader conception of ethics in general. It doesn’t see moral
philosophy as confined to working out which actions are right and which actions are wrong. It
also asks what constitutes well-being or human flourishing. We may not have a duty to flourish in
the way we have a duty not to commit murder; but questions about well-being are still legitimate
questions for moral philosophers to address.
 It avoids the inflexibilities of rule-oriented ethics. According to Kant, for instance, we
must always and in every circumstance obey his fundamental principle of morality, his
“categorical imperative.” This led him to conclude that one must never tell a lie or break a
promise. But the morally wise person is precisely the one who recognizes when the best course of
action is to break the normal rules. Virtue ethics offers rules of thumb, not iron rigidities.
 Because it is concerned with character, with what kind of person one is, virtue
ethics pays more attention to our inner states and feelings as opposed to focusing
exclusively on actions. For a utilitarian, what matters is that you do the right thing–that is,
you promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number (or follow a rule that is justified by
this goal). But as a matter of fact, this is not all we care about. It matters why someone is
generous or helpful or honest. The person who is honest simply because they think being honest
is good for their business is less admirable that the person who is honest through and through
and would not cheat a customer even if they could be sure that no one would ever find them out.
 Virtue ethics has also opened the door to some novel approaches and insights pioneered by
feminist thinkers who argue that traditional moral philosophy has emphasized abstract
principles over concrete interpersonal relationships. The early bond between mother and child,
for instance, could be one of the essential building blocks of moral life, providing both an
experience and an example of loving care for another person.

Objections to Virtue Ethics

Needless to say, virtue ethics has its critics. Here are a few of the most common criticisms leveled
against it.

 “How can I flourish?” is really just a fancy way of asking “What will make me happy?” This may
be a perfectly sensible question to ask, but it really isn’t a moral question. It’s a question about
one’s self-interest. Morality, though, is all about how we treat other people. So this expansion of
ethics to include questions about flourishing takes moral theory away from its proper concern.
 Virtue ethics by itself can’t really answer any particular moral dilemma. It doesn’t have the tools
to do this. Suppose you have to decide whether or not to tell a lie in order to save your friend
from being embarrassed. Some ethical theories provide you with real guidance. But virtue ethics
doesn’t. It just says, “Do what a virtuous person would do” which isn’t much use.
 Morality is concerned, among other things, with praising and blaming people for how they
behave. But what sort of character a person has is to quite a large extent a matter of luck. People
 have a natural temperament: either brave or timid, passionate or reserved, confident or cautious.
It is hard to alter these inborn traits. Moreover, the circumstances in which a person is raised is
another factor that shapes their moral personality but which is beyond their control. So virtue
ethics tends to bestow praise and blame on people for just being fortunate.

Naturally, virtue ethicists believe they can answer these objections. But even the critics who put them
forward would probably agree that the revival of virtue ethics in recent times has enriched moral
philosophy and broadened its scope in a healthy way.

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Philosophers and Great Thinkers From Ancient Greece

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Paul Biris / Getty Images

Philosophy
Major Philosophers
Philosophical Theories & Ideas
By

N.S. Gill

Updated on March 08, 2018

Certain early Greeks from Ionia (Asia Minor) and southern Italy asked questions about the world
around them. Instead of attributing its creation to anthropomorphic gods, these early philosophers
broke tradition and sought rational explanations. Their speculation formed the early basis for science
and natural philosophy.

Here are 10 of the earliest and most influential ancient Greek philosophers in chronological order.

01
of 10
Thales
Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The founder of natural philosophy, Thales was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the Ionian city of
Miletus (c. 620 - c. 546 B.C.). He predicted a solar eclipse and was considered one of the seven ancient
sages.

02
of 10

Pythagoras
 Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Pythagoras was an early Greek philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician known for the
Pythagorean theorem, which geometry students use to figure the hypotenuse of a right triangle. He was
also the founder of a school named for him.

03
of 10

Anaximander

Circa 1493, Greek astronomer and philosopher Anaximander (611 - 546 BC). Original Publication: From Hartmann Schedel - Liber Chronicorum
Mundi, Nuremberg Chronicle. Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Anaximander was a pupil of Thales. He was the first to describe the original principle of the universe
as apeiron, or boundless, and to use the term arche for beginning. In the Gospel of John, the first
phrase contains the Greek for "beginning"—the same word "arche."
04
of 10

Anaximenes

Anaximines (fl c500 BC), Ancient Greek philosopher. From Liber chronicarum mundi (Nuremberg Chronicle) by Hartmann Schedel. (Nuremberg,
1493). Print Collector/Getty Images / Getty Images

Anaximenes was a sixth-century philosopher, a younger contemporary of Anaximander who believed

that air was the underlying component of everything. Density and heat or cold change air so that it
contracts or expands. For Anaximenes, the Earth was formed by such processes and is an air-made disk
that floats on air above and below.
 05
of 10

Parmenides

Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Parmenides of Elea in southern Italy was the founder of the Eleatic School. His own philosophy raised
many impossibilities that later philosophers worked on. He distrusted the evidence of the senses and
argued that what is, cannot have come into being from nothing, so it must always have been.

06
of 10

Anaxagoras
Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Anaxagoras, who was born in Clazomenae, Asia Minor, around 500 B.C., spent most of his life in
Athens, where he made a place for philosophy and associated with Euripides (writer of tragedies) and
Pericles (Athenian statesman). In 430, Anaxagoras was brought to trial for impiety in Athens because
his philosophy denied the divinity of all other gods but his principle, the mind.

07
of 10

Empedocles

Empedocles, fresco from 1499-1502 by Luca Signorelli (1441 or 1450-1523), St Britius chapel, Orvieto cathedral, Umbria. Italy. De Agostini /
Archivio J. Lange / Getty Images

Empedocles was another very influential early Greek philosopher, the first to assert the four elements of
the universe were earth, air, fire, and water. He thought there were two contending guiding forces, love
and strife. He also believed in transmigration of the soul and vegetarianism.

08
of 10

Zeno

1st century Bust of Zeno. Found in 1823 near the Jardin des Plantes and the ampitheatre. Esperandieu, 1768. Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia
Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr [ CeCILL or CC BY-SA 2.0 fr], via Wikimedia Commons

Zeno is the greatest figure of the Eleatic School. He is known through the writing of Aristotle and
Simplicius (A.D. 6th C.). Zeno presents four arguments against motion, which are demonstrated in his
famous paradoxes. The paradox referred to as "Achilles" claims that a faster runner (Achilles) can never
overtake the tortoise because the pursuer must always first reach the spot that the one he seeks to
overtake has just left.

09
of 10

Leucippus
 Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Leucippus developed the atomist theory, which explained that all matter is made up of indivisible
particles. (The word atom means "not cut.") Leucippus thought the universe was composed of atoms in
a void.

10
of 10

Xenophanes

Xenophanes, ancient Greek philosopher. From Thomas Stanley, (1655), The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and
Discourses of the Philosophers of every Sect, illustrated with effigies of divers of them. See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Born around 570 B.C., Xenophanes was the founder of the Eleatic School of philosophy. He fled to
Sicily where he joined the Pythagorean School. He is known for his satirical poetry ridiculing
polytheism and the idea that the gods were portrayed as humans. His eternal deity was the world. If
there was ever a time when there was nothing, then it was impossible for anything ever to have come
into being.

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