The following paper argues in favor of Aristotle’s virtue ethics over Kantian deontology. In Kantian deontology, to be ethical is to follow one’s duty by acting on only the rules which one can at the same time rationally will that those actions become universal laws, while in Aristotelian virtue ethics, to be ethical is to develop and internalize virtuous habits until one fully becomes virtuous themselves. In turn, the ethical question of ‘What should I do?’ that deontology asks becomes ‘What should I be?’ with virtue ethics, placing emphasis on internal motivations rather than external actions. I prefer virtue ethics for the reason that virtue ethics seems to promote rather than neglect the development of the agent’s character. Though deontology
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Though, humans are already equipped by nature with the ability to learn how to become virtuous and how to perfect that skill. To attain virtues, we must “…learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e. g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre,” and as we cultivate these virtuous skills through habitually exercising them akin to how we learn other skills in life, “…so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” However, the nature of virtue is characteristically different from how we attain other skills, “for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately,” essentially meaning that other skills yield objects that in themselves are enough to name that person skilled, but for virtues, though the virtue performed itself may be morally good, the person performing may not be virtuous themselves. It is not enough that the virtue simply be performed, but that the one performing the action is doing so under certain conditions when one does
Though, humans are already equipped by nature with the ability to learn how to become virtuous and how to perfect that skill. To attain virtues, we must “…learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e. g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre,” and as we cultivate these virtuous skills through habitually exercising them akin to how we learn other skills in life, “…so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” However, the nature of virtue is characteristically different from how we attain other skills, “for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately,” essentially meaning that other skills yield objects that in themselves are enough to name that person skilled, but for virtues, though the virtue performed itself may be morally good, the person performing may not be virtuous themselves. It is not enough that the virtue simply be performed, but that the one performing the action is doing so under certain conditions when one does