Virtue Ethics: An Overview

Virtue ethics is concerned with pursuing a certain type of morally inclusive excellence. Aristotle called it eudaimonia, which can be roughly translated as 'happiness', or 'human flourishing'. For present purposes, this approach to ethics can be thought of as exhibiting four basic attributes. Its primary attribute is a strong emphasis on the importance of certain generally accepted virtues of character; indeed it is through honing and perfecting these virtues that an individual becomes truly ethical. Secondly, a strong emphasis is placed on the existence of an active community that nurtures these virtues. Thirdly, virtue-ethics theory makes clear that in the moral life one cannot rely merely on rules or guidelines, in addition an ability to exercise sound moral judgement is requisite. Finally, the successful identification and emulation of moral exemplars or role models is essential for the dissemination of morality within the aforementioned nurturing community.

The remainder of this article will describe virtue ethics from these four perspectives: the role of the virtues, the role of community, the role of moral judgement, and the role of exemplars.