Virtue ethics - A bit more advanced form of ethics

So, basically, virtue ethics has a main point in the fact that it tries to build people intellectually, where other systems mainly focus on imposing rules.

Naturally, if you teach a person to be smart and kind, you wont need any rules to begin with.

And if you dont teach a person to be smart and kind, imposing rules wont help much.

So the goal of virtue ethics is to work to develop certain virtues, such as intelligence, kindness, non-aggression...

It is mostly a process, and not a set of immediate rules.

For example, instead of telling kids to be generous, you tell them a sad story of a person who struggled greatly due to poverty, and they will be generous without you even telling them to be.

Its kinda like telling people to be smart.  You cant tell people to be smart. But you can create a process to make them smarter.

So, you cannot tell people to be good. But you can make a process to make them good.

So a basic premise of virtue ethics is that being good and smart requires a process and not a simple imposing of rules.

You cannot tell a child "be smart" and expect it to be smart, for example. Same works with being good, kind, generous...ect.

It takes the building of premises in person, which are often more based on emotions than logic.

It takes a journey.

One issue that I see with virtue ethics is that it's circular. According to virtue ethics, good actions are based on what a good person would do. But that's kind of putting the cart before the horse, because you can only judge whether someone is good or bad based on what actions they take.

Thats one part.

I never quite understood well that part of virtue ethics.

I mean, I can think of examples like people saying "what would Jesus do?".

However, it seems like its based on a premise "Everything that Jesus does is good".

But how do you select a good person to copy is again, a logical challenge.

I think its purpose is to be educational and develop virtues more than it is to establish rules.

Virtue ethics do have certain virtues which they prefer, so person who has those virtues is considered good, and developing those virtues in a person is considered a necessary process.

So instead of setting rules such as "dont do X", it creates a process and puts person through that process so person doesnt want to do X even if there are no rules about it.

Yes, but I guess the point is:

Good person does good actions.

So the point is to create a good person, and then there will be good actions as well.

I have two main problems with virtue ethics. Don’t get me wrong, Aristotle is great and all, but his lessons aren’t as applicable in our modern times.

My first critique would be how it doesn’t really tell you anything about what actions are good or not. It’s normally considered to be a part of the three main western philosophies on moral ethics, but I find it two be very different than the other two. You said that this makes it a more refined form of ethics, but I just think it kinda makes it not as helpful when discussing certain moral quandaries, such as the trolley problem. Utilitarianism says kill the one person, and deontology (I think) say about the same, but virtue ethics is just kinda confused.

The second thing that turns me off from it a bit, is the whole “golden mean” aspect. It holds true for some examples, but is there really a reason that you shouldn’t be too smart? Or knowledgeable? People often use generous as and good example, and I do believe this one does work. You don’t want to be a miser, but you also don’t want to be a total pushover. This doesn’t really work for everything though.

This is why I prefer some sort of pseudo-utilitarianism or T.M. Scalnon’s Contratualism, but let’s be honest, no ethical system is really perfect.

Thats because virtue ethics is more about creating a good person who will make good decision even in that problem.

Its not about giving the obvious solution to the problem, as much as it is creating a person who will act to solve a problem.

Even if you say that a good action is to kill 1 to save 5, there still needs to be a person willing to do such action.

Personally, I wouldnt kill 1 to save 5.

Sure, in virtue ethics, there is a principle of justice or even benevolence which might help with that particular issue, but its more about creating a good person than it is about dictating which action person must or must not do.

Good person will do good actions, so the best way to create good actions is to create a good person.

If you create a bad person, then it doesnt matter much if you set rules which ban bad actions.

You make some convincing points. I’m not saying that you’re necessarily wrong, it’s just that I feel like virtue with ethics kinda misses the point of moral philosophy in general. Creating good people that do good things is nice and all, but (in my opinion) that’s not really the problem that most moral philosophers are really trying to solve. I would phrase the question as, “can you find a rule that determines what a person should do in any given scenario”. Virtue ethics is good, but I feel like it misses the mark on that front. It not good to assume that just by becoming a good person, you automatically just “figure out” ethics. I would say that you become good by following a universal truth of ethics, and the real question is, “what is that universal truth”

Usually, the main goal of ethics in humans is that it can be universal and consistent with itself and it's own goals.

So, it needs to be such that everyone can follow it without harming others.

So if you agree with previous statement, this follows:

The only ethics one can actually follow without harming others is the very "do no harm" moral rule, or benevolence as usually understood.

So, to put it simply, "do no harm" is the most perfect moral rule, since it completes the goal of being able to practice it without harming others.

So harms such as killing, pain, or harming person's skills...ect. are all to be avoided so that such rule can be followed.

Of course, there is no actual perfect moral rule, its just that the one based on lack of action is usually the easiest to follow and brings least problems.