1. Why Should I Be Moral? Because of My Character! Virtue Ethics

9. Examples of the mean

11. Moral Heroes and Heroines

21. Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) Plato ( 428 – 347 BC E) Homer (disagreement – just a very long time a go!) Ambrose (338 – 397 CE) Augustine ( 354 – 430 CE) Gregory (540 – 604 CE) This thinker stressed the concept of Eudaemonia (well being). The thinker spoke in terms of Moral and Intellectual Virtues and said that human beings flourished when they struck the mean between excess and deficiency in any of the virtues. For this thinker the ethical life was the life of virtue whereby a person learnt to be good even though ‘the good’ was not absolute This thinker believed in an ideal world of “good” and “virtue”. Yes a person can be good, this thinker said, but their goodness was really a poor reflection of the “perfect good” that lay in what was called “the world of Forms or ideas”. This thinker said that this world of ideal good and perfect virtue was like life outside of a cave. What we call “good” is just a pale reflection of that life Well it all began with this person. Said to be the author of two epic poems set against the backdrop of Troy, this apparently blind poet speaks of courage, physical strength, cunning and friendship. Whilst betrayal and deceit were seen as the opposite of friendship, friendship during war made life bearable and was therefore prized. This poet prized honour and virtue above all else. These thinkers translated the Greek Tradition of Virtue into an approach to ethics that Christianity could accept. One of them stressed the need for sexual virtue (on account of a little problem he had with his libido). For 1400 years these two thinkers set the stage for Christian ethics and made sure that Virtue lay at its heart

22. Aquinas ( 1225 – 1274 CE) Søren Kierkegaard ( 1813 – 1855 CE) Stanley Hauerwas (b. 1940 CE) G. E. Anscombe ‘ Modern Moral Philosophy’ 1958 Alasdair MacIntyre ‘ After Virtue’ 1981 This thinker wrote a book in this year called “After Virtue”. In it the thinker argued for practical ethics rooted in the “real world” and pleaded for human communities to be at the centre of ethical life. The thinker claimed that stories (and telling stories) has the power to create communities of virtue – where good is celebrated and bad frowned upon. This thinker is one we have yet to study. He’s a Christian Theologian who wrote a book in this year called “Resident Aliens”. Basically, this ethicist believes that Christians should live as if they were in heaven. Those around them should notice how different they are from the rest of the crowd. Christians, living by strong virtues like faithfulness, should be like resident aliens - radically different. This thinker was very extreme in the way that they went about thinking about ethics. The person spoke of ethics involving a “leap of faith” at a time when other philosophers were talking about reason and rationality. For this person, the most ethical person was Abraham – who listened to God, ignored reason, and took a leap of faith into the dark. This thinker is known as an existentialist. This thinker was one of the first Christian Theologians to really reflect on virtue from a Christian standpoint. To the cardinal virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom, this thinker added three theological virtues: Faith, Hope And Charity Like St. Paul, he stressed that Love was the greatest virtue of all These thinker wrote an article in this year that really set moral philosophers thinking about virtue once more. The thinker said that moral philosophy since the enlightenment had thrown the baby out with the bath water and had become too obsessed with reason. The thinker pleaded for a return to Aristotle and the Virtue tradition.