Hume and the Ethics of Virtue Essay -- Character Morals Aristotle Pape

I make out that Humes ethics can be characterized as a righteousness ethics, by which I mean a realise according to which character has priority over satisfy and the principles governing action virtuous character guides and constrains virtual(a) deliberation. In a traditional useful or Kantian ethics, character is subordinate to practical deliberation justness is needed only to motivate virtuous action. I begin by outlining this approach in Aristotles ethics, then draw relevant parallels to Hume. I argue that virtuous character in Aristotle is understood in terms of self-love. A true self-lover enjoys most the exercise of the characteristic human powers of judging, choosing, deciding and deliberating. A virtuous agents self-love enables sizing up practical situations properly and exhibiting the virtue called for by the situation. But if an agents character is defective, the practical situation will be misapprehended and responded to improperly. I argue that though Hume claims moral judgments ar the product of sympathy, they are actually the result of a complex process of practical consideration and deliberation. Although Hume writes as though anyone can be a judicious spectator, on that point is reason to think that persons of calm temperament, who enjoy deliberation and have a facility for it, are more likely to perform the corrections in sentiments that may be necessary. If this is so, an agents character has priority over his or her practical deliberations. I am interested in the general foreland of how to characterize Humes ethics, in particular, in whether Hume can be travel ton to offer some interlingual rendition of a virtue ethics. Let me first explain what I undertake a virtue ethics to be. For a virtue ethics, the central question is What kind of perso... ... I bring home the bacon the text of L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., rev., ed. P. H. Nidditch, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978.(9) I shall be concerned only with the Nicomachean Ethics (cited as EN). I follow the translation of Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1985.(10) For a more detailed discussion of this interpretation of akrasia, see my Aristotle on the Conflicts of the Soul Toward an Understanding of Virtue Ethics, in A. Reath, B. Herman, and C. Korsgaard, eds. (note 4, above).(11) I do not mean to deny here that the virtuous person engages in deliberation or that she has formed particular practical principles as a result of deliberation. Nor do I wish to deny that she deliberates properly, in contrast to her non-virtuous counterparts. I mean only to uncover the non-rational conditions that cause her and former(a) agents deliberations to be as they are.