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Essay On Virtue Ethics

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Virtue Ethics: The ethics of being. This week in our course in Ethics lead us to the topic of Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics. Aristotle is thought of to be the first to write about the concept of Virtue Ethics, but humanity has realized its existence before Aristotle by just living their everyday life in society. The virtues of honesty, courage, and dependability were sought after in social interactions while their respective vices of dishonesty, cowardice, and unreliability were less attractive. In living amongst one another-- much to the same scope of what is discussed in Professor Nancy Rosenblum 's Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America-- virtues hold their relevance in how we treat one another, and the actions of our …show more content…

As I have said before Virtue Ethics are only important because we interpret and witness the virtues of others everyday in our life, and right there is where Virtue Ethics diverge from the other theories: Virtue Ethics deal with life. If Virtue Ethics are the ethics of being, then they are the ethics that describe people; but not a person in one specific situation (as used in the hypothetical situations that defended our prior theories), but all that person’s actions used to calculate their levels of virtue. That neighbor making noise late at night is not morally evil, and the neighbors that keep to themselves could also not be perfectly virtuous, but neighbors and society are in fact determined to be in a balancing act between the two... according to Virtue Ethics. I also noticed that the Social Contract theory from last lesson is very much connected to Virtue Ethics, and even more related to the topic of good neighboring. Professor Rosenblum in the podcast spoke about this concept of Reciprocity. A neighbor engaging in reciprocity with another neighbor-- in such cases as the act of lending a ladder when it is requested, and the person that received the ladder engaging in reciprocating that neighbor’s action by helping the neighbor that offered the ladder with a similar act to repay the person for their initial virtuous deed-- is an act of the Social Contract’s mutual benefit. If Social Contract is to specifically

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