Virtue Ethics: Ancient and Modern, Scholarly and Pop

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Virtue EthicsAncient and Modern,Scholarly and
Pop

• CS 4001

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Ethics and peoples lives

• Ethics and character
• Virtue ethics The rebellion against an ethics of
  action
• Secular and religious roots virtues and vices
• Ethics as personal therapy the Graeco-Romans
• Existentialism a modern ethics of personal style
• Virtue ethics and pop culture
• Question Is your personality an ethical property?

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Ethics and peoples lives

• Rebellion The argument against action as a basis
  for ethics
• Actions are low-level details. Ethics should be
  about personal virtues and character
• If philosophers had anything valuable to say, we
  would consult them, not pop therapists
• Secular and religious roots
• Religious traditions Compassion, charity,
  forgiveness, etc. as character properties, not
  actions
• Aristotle Ethical behavior arises from
  cultivation of habits
• Metaphor of personal fitness
• Ethics as therapy Graeco-Romans
• Seneca and Cicero Letter writing, oratory and
  Roman honor
• Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius The stoical
  approach to life
• Existentialism Being a person making choices
• Meaning of life is personal effectiveness (will
  to power)
• Sartre personal freedom implies having no excuses

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Pop ethics personal effectiveness

• The wisdom literature (according to Covey)
• Morality in scripture
• Aristotle, Marcus Aureliuss Meditations
• Emerson and Thoreau. etc.
• Self-improvement as cultivation of character

• Most self-help literature
• How to work a room
• Dressing for success
• Winning friends and influencing people
• Never be lied to againetc.
• Self-improvement as technique

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Seven habits of highly effective people

• Stephen F. Covey
• Be proactive
• Begin with the end in mind
• First things first
• Seek win-win
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the saw

Nietzche
Will to power

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Therapy and ethics, revisited