John Smith Character Analysis

Why be moral? is the story of Smith, a successful cheater. John Smith has cheated his entire life, this including school, as well as in the work place. Just to name one way (out of many examples) that John use to cheat, this included cheating on spelling test. However, later on in life due to the evolution of spell check and other valuable tactics he had learned, he soon found he did not need to know how to spell to a great extent. Though many would look at the act of cheating as immoral, John actually learned invaluable skills from doing this so many years (Hettche, 2014). However, at the end of the day - John is not living a good life based on the following premises: (1) If Smith is caught the consequences of his actions could be severe based on the level of cheating. (2) If Smith is caught one time and thereafter decides to never cheat again, his character will still be questioned by those around him – no matter the case.
These two premises concludes with: John is not living a good life because eventually his cheating may cause him to get into trouble, …show more content…
Cultivating the right virtues are affected by different factors beyond control of the selected individual. This includes education, family, friends and society (Athanassoulis, 2014). As stated before, a virtue ethicist would say, “Act as a virtuous person would act (Athanassoulis, 2014). The question here is - in what sense? Not all individuals have the same idea of what virtue ethics consist of. You cannot simply reject a person’s idea of what they consider to be virtuous because this is more than likely based on one of the following factors mentioned above: educational background, family values, friends and the society they are associated with. This concludes with the question and the reason why this theory was objected based on moral luck, “When is it appropriate to praise or blame an individual, and under what circumstances? (Athanassoulis,