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apollianaIn the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle gives an allegedly circular account of what makes an action virtuous:
(1) An action is virtuous if it is the one that the virtuous person would do.
and
(2) The virtuous person is one whose actions bespeak the right amount of all the good qualities of character.
This, as it is, is not circular. The alleged circularity lies in the interdefinition of 'virtuous person' and 'good action': the good actions are those the virtuous person would do, and the virtuous person is the one who does good actions.
The latter circularity need not be a problem for a moral theory, unless we want a moral theory that defines what is morally good in non-normative terms (i.e., in the way that utilitarianism aims to do). But it also bespeaks the objection most commonly made to Aristotle's ethical theory, as well as to similar theories: that we must already know what is virtuous according to the moral theory in question in order to be able to apply this moral theory. That is, it doesn't define virtue in such a way that an amoralist, or a skeptic about normativity, could understand it.
One worry about Aristotle's moral theory is that it takes a great deal of not simply intellectual but social and emotional perceptiveness to see that x might be too much bravery, or might be boorish, etc. And clearly not everyone is capable of perceiving these differences. The theory cannot equip a virtue-blind (or mean-blind) person to suddenly see virtue, or the mean.
That said, its non-reductiveness might be part of the--in my limited teaching experience, huge--appeal of this theory. ("Why has ethics even continued? Did Mill and Kant not read Aristotle?" they asked. "Yes, I'm sure they did," I replied.) It does not try to reduce rightness to pleasure or to the non-logically self-contradictory. Yet it does explain what makes right actions right: they express 'mean' character traits (which are themselves virtuous). 'The mean' is actually a very clever way of giving concreteness to--if not quantifying--the normative element in virtue without eliminating it.
(1) An action is virtuous if it is the one that the virtuous person would do.
and
(2) The virtuous person is one whose actions bespeak the right amount of all the good qualities of character.
This, as it is, is not circular. The alleged circularity lies in the interdefinition of 'virtuous person' and 'good action': the good actions are those the virtuous person would do, and the virtuous person is the one who does good actions.
The latter circularity need not be a problem for a moral theory, unless we want a moral theory that defines what is morally good in non-normative terms (i.e., in the way that utilitarianism aims to do). But it also bespeaks the objection most commonly made to Aristotle's ethical theory, as well as to similar theories: that we must already know what is virtuous according to the moral theory in question in order to be able to apply this moral theory. That is, it doesn't define virtue in such a way that an amoralist, or a skeptic about normativity, could understand it.
One worry about Aristotle's moral theory is that it takes a great deal of not simply intellectual but social and emotional perceptiveness to see that x might be too much bravery, or might be boorish, etc. And clearly not everyone is capable of perceiving these differences. The theory cannot equip a virtue-blind (or mean-blind) person to suddenly see virtue, or the mean.
That said, its non-reductiveness might be part of the--in my limited teaching experience, huge--appeal of this theory. ("Why has ethics even continued? Did Mill and Kant not read Aristotle?" they asked. "Yes, I'm sure they did," I replied.) It does not try to reduce rightness to pleasure or to the non-logically self-contradictory. Yet it does explain what makes right actions right: they express 'mean' character traits (which are themselves virtuous). 'The mean' is actually a very clever way of giving concreteness to--if not quantifying--the normative element in virtue without eliminating it.
