Aristotle believed that by following the doctrine of the mean that it was the correct way to live, he realised that human behaviour is made of two extremes, vice of excess and vice of deficiency and that the middle of these two is the golden mean. For example a deficiency is humility, the excess is vanity and the mean is pride. He also distinguished between two types of virtues, intellectual and moral virtues. Intellectual virtues are taught; such as professions and these can change throughout ones life and the moral virtues are common to all humans these are seen as habits and are the qualities of humans.
There are modern philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre who give different interpretations of virtue ethics. Elizabeth Anscombe is not in favour of modern ethics, because is ignores virtues which are based on goodness. Alasdair MacIntyre argues in his book ‘After Virtue’ that virtues should be emphasised like in ancient societies, and says that the modern world would benefit from looking at values and a persons virtues.
Deontology comes from the Greek word deon which means duty, this theory contrasts with consequentialism as well as teleological theories, because these judge the goodness of an action by looking at the consequences of an action. A deontologist believes in a priori moral statement, they use reason to decide on the moral principles before a situation takes place.
Immanuel Kant was an 18th century German philosopher, he taught that being moral requires not just for one to follow their feelings, but that rational behaviour is also required. In his book Ground work of the metaphysics of morals Kant suggested that the moral law is objective, therefore it is true for everyone and it is said to be “synthetic a priori”, this means that something may be true or false, but is not directly known from past experiences and that it is part of the rational mind.
Kant also believed that moral statements and actions are “categorical imperatives”; they are not dependent on anything else. Kant also introduced the idea of categorical imperative to work out what makes a maxim (good moral rule); for this he formulated three tests. Firstly for a maxim to be true, one must accept that it could end up being a law for everyone, secondly he said that you should never treat a person as a means but only as an end and lastly he said that everyone should live assuming that everyone else with follow the moral law. Therefore in conclusion, Kant argued that being moral means that people should freely choose to follow duty for it own sake and for no alternative reason.
Both virtue ethics and deontological ethics have there strengths and weaknesses. Since virtue ethics is teleological it allows the person in the situation to look at the consequences of an action, unlike deontological ethics which only allows the person to look at the action. A second strength of virtue ethics is that it is flexible; this is because it is not based on absolute rules that can not be broken. Also virtue ethics allows for the virtues to differ between different cultures. Although there are some weaknesses to this theory such as it does not give clear rules on how to act in particular situations like deontology allows one to do. Virtue ethics does not address the problem of people doing bad things who think they are acting virtuously.
A strength of deontological ethics is that Kant appeals to reason and the universal values, he also allows for everyone to be equal, whereas in utilitarianism the minority is segregated against. Although there are weaknesses to this theory, Peter Singer criticised Kant, because he removed emotions from ethics and Singer believes that people feelings are the most important part of the decision making process.
Overall, to a large extent virtue ethics is a better way of resolving an ethically dilemma, because like Peter Singer suggests peoples feelings are a major part of the decision making process during a moral dilemma. Although deontological ethics does have its strengths and it rationalises an events it does not allow for exceptional circumstances.
