Another example would be deciding whether to lie or tell the truth. Virtue ethicists would consider whether donating is the kind of action that a virtuous person would do. Utilitarians (see Chapter 5) would consider whether a donation would produce better consequences if they donated than if they did not. For example, given an opportunity to donate to a charity, deontologists (see Chapter 6) would consider whether there is an ethical rule that required them to donate. It is not that following rules is not important it is more the sense that being ethical means more than simply following the rules. In philosophies of virtue ethics, rather than an emphasis on following rules, the emphasis is on developing oneself as a good person. For Chinese philosophy, both Daoist and Confucian, virtue means being in harmony with the Cosmic Dao. For Buddhism, virtue is understood in terms of a life oriented toward the eightfold path that leads to the end of suffering. For Aquinas, it is to be understood within the context of Christianity and natural law. For Aristotle, this is to be understood in terms of striving for the mean between extremes in the context of a well-ordered political community. Each will be presented as a different way of understanding what it might mean to live as a good person. It examines four ethical systems that revolve around the concept of virtue: Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Aquinas’s Christian version of Aristotelian virtue ethics, Buddhist virtue ethics, and Daoist and Confucian virtue ethics. This chapter explores a variety of approaches to the question of moral virtue and what it means to be a good person.
3 How Can I Be a Better Person? On Virtue Ethics