Decisions are, unfortunately, things that we all must make. Whereas we can defer our molecular biology, physics, economics, or theology to trusted experts, we cannot defer our decisions to ethicists. This poses a problem for anyone operating off moral intuitions alone.
Around roughly 350 BCE Aristotle’s lectures on ethics at the Lyceum were composed into a guide towards good action. Today it remains a relevant and revered treatise on ethics. In it, I believe, lies a practical ethical guide for modern laypeople that leads to healthier and happier living.
Many noteworthy philosophers have written extensively about Aristotle’s ethical system making various modifications to its axioms and numerous revisions. In all the secondary content on Aristotle’s ethics, it isn’t difficult to find praise for the systems practical upshots.
Aristotle’s system self describes as a practical guide to good behavior and achieving human happiness. While deontological and consequentialist systems still reign supremely popular within the field of ethics as systematic guides that identify powerful normative arguments for morality, they lose in practical application.
While the average person might be able to grasp the concepts of deontology and consequentialism at a Birds Eye view, they would almost certainly struggle to apply or tease out the implications of these systems in their own lives. Imagine explaining the concept of shrimp welfare to an uncle at a thanksgiving table; this conversation would almost certainly convince him that you were mentally unsound. Consequentialist and deontological systems, within the field of ethics act as powerful engines for analyzing conduct and solving deeply intricate dilemmas. But, the places these systems win over philosophers, their intricacies, are precisely the reasons they loose touch with the vast majority of the populous. Most foundational texts and the modern scholarship in either deontological or consequentialist ethical frameworks would appear daunting to the vast majority of first year college students—forget about anyone reading, with no classical training, after a day of laboring or childcare. The field of ethics is often times criticized for being disconnected from the realm of action by laypersons. These accusations aren’t baseless and shouldn’t fall on deaf ears.
Philosophy panders to itself, the vast majority of academic philosophers write for each other and about disputes within the field. This is the norm across academic disciples and, for the sake of advancing a discipline, aught to be. This pandering might be sufficient at the front of a field (think of quibbles across proponents of different spectroscopic methods in drug discovery) but cannot be in ethics.
Where the sciences have practically correct, even if deeply flawed, explanations that can easily be explicated to children, ethics has few. This problem is where, I’ll argue, virtue ethics shine.
The beauty of virtue ethics is in its practical call to actions that are predicated on premises that, even today, we would recognize as intuitive and common knowledge.
The impetus of Aristotle’s ethics can be grasped through reading Nicomachean ethics. Nicomachean is a short, concise, and practical guide to action. In brief, it explains the foundations of a system that rests upon human flourishing or happiness (an end that even the most stereotypical solipsist can understand). Virtue Ethics pave a path towards happiness or flourishing though acting in accordance with a mean. The practical application of the system is so simple that anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of a “mean” can understand its prescriptions. In addition to simplicity, virtue ethics lends itself to action.
Aristotle harps on the importance of practical wisdom, which after the habituation of virtue comes to guide the actions of the practitioner. The more one practices virtue, the easier being virtuous becomes for said agent.
The social processes of reinforcement and punishment also highly accord with virtue ethics. Actions deemed virtuous in Nichomachean are the sorts of actions that yield rewards in practice (honestly, generosity, bravery, etc). The conduct that is becoming of Aristotle’s virtuous man is conduct that will, almost immediately, bear fruits in the lives of any one of its practitioners. Practice of virtue ethics harmonizes highly with tangible rewards in work, family, or social settings.
Virtue ethics are not a flawless guide to action. Serious problems plague the system including the misery of moral saints and accusations of circularity. While these problems pose difficulties to the philosophers working within the system, they are not particularly pressing for the common person who shan’t fear becoming a moral saint and probably possesses several unreflective positions that, if examined, would be found to blatantly contradict each other. Essentially, the major problems of the system aren’t relevant to the systems practice in the day to day course of an average persons life.
When academics look to solve problems, we frequently neglect the plausibility of our solutions. Many times, when we advance a position and patch it to par for a journal or peer we lose the opportunity to captivate the common man. In the field of ethics this is a damning loss. The world would be better if more people followed moral systems that built upon moral intuitions and provided paths toward navigating dilemmas. The field of ethics, as it stands is utterly undigestible to anyone looking for an answer to the simple question of how they should act. True as it may be that in some cases the answer is complicated or contested, in the vast majority of situations it isn't meaningfully so. Thusly, I posit that seeing as world would be a better place if we had more people who operated under any ethical framework, virtue ethics should be a default referral to any of our friends making a first pass at ethics.