Utilitarianism, Deontology, And Virtue Ethics

There are many ethical theories that shed light on how we should approach certain situations and how to go about our lives. The ones we have gone over are ethical egoism, utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. While they make interesting points, they have several holes that makes them illogical to use in reality, except of course, virtue ethics. A philosopher by the name of Aristotle argued that instead of trying to find out what is the right thing to do in a specific situation, you must ask oneself what type of person do you have to be to get it right all the time. Thus you ultimately must become a virtuous person to truly live the right way. As you might expect, having good character is not something that one is born with. It is …show more content…
The theory that contradicts it the most is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism argues that whatever choice brings about the most “happiness” is the best choice. The problem with that is there are numerous types of situations where you can bring about happiness to people, but bring about unhappiness to other people. Through the process of doing whatever is necessary to obtain happiness, you will most likely commit malicious deeds along the way. This in turn wouldn’t be a reliable way to live your life, as you will not always be a virtuous person. That is why utilitarianism is the complete opposite as instead on focusing on the journey, the destination itself is what’s …show more content…
Ironic as it is, it can be claimed that virtue ethics focuses on only attaining good character traits that show how good one is by performing virtuous acts to build the type of character you wish to be. Morality seems to tell us that those who go in the right direction are those who are selfless and only help others to simply make them happy, but in doing so you are becoming a better person and you are essentially gaining from this. Now whether or not that is selfish, to do good things and to live good to become a better person is entirely up to ones own opinion. Being selfish in this one instant seems much more good than bad. Another complication with virtue ethics could be applying it to ones own life experiences. How can you chose the right choice if you know little to nothing about the topic at hand? There can be many examples of this, but one of the most prominent ones would be whether or not abortion is bad or good. There are far too many pros and cons to be able to decide which is the virtuous choice. Lastly, war would have to be one of the biggest objections to virtue ethics. It may be seen as courageous and selfless to volunteer to fight for your country and to protect your people, but what if the reason you are going to war is not virtuous? Attacking a country for its resources would definitely not be seen as a good act, just a means of survival, which morality doesn’t