Virtue
arete · virtues · excellence
A stable disposition to act, feel and perceive well — Aristotle's hexis, acquired by practice rather than instruction. Virtue is not a rule followed or an intention held but a settled state of character that makes the right action reliable.
In practice
Nobody becomes honest by resolving to be honest. They become honest by telling the truth in the twenty small cases where a lie would have been easier and cost nothing, until the twenty-first is not a decision.
The common mistake
Treating virtue as a rule or an intention. Aristotle's claim is that it is a disposition formed by repetition, which is why exhortation fails and why the question is always what you are practising rather than what you have decided.
Ask what a person should do and you get ethics as a rulebook. Ask what a person should become and you get a different discipline, with a different failure mode: not the wrong decision but the wrong character, arrived at without deciding anything.
The classical account
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II makes the structural claim. Virtue is a hexis — a stable disposition, not a feeling or a capacity — and it is acquired the way crafts are: we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate actsAristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1103a31–b2. The comparison is to building: one becomes a builder by building. The apparent circularity — how can you do just acts before being just? — Aristotle answers at II.4: the act must be done knowingly, chosen for its own sake, and from a firm character, and the learner satisfies only the first.. Each virtue is a mean between excess and deficiency, relative to the person and the situation rather than arithmetically — courage between cowardice and rashness. And the mean is identified by the judgement of the practically wise person, not by a formula, which is either the doctrine's realism or its evasion depending on who is reading.
Plato had argued in the Meno and Protagoras that virtue is a kind of knowledge, and hence teachable and unified — you cannot have one virtue without the rest. The Stoics went further: virtue is the only good, and health, wealth and reputation are indifferents. Aquinas synthesised the Aristotelian account with the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, distinguishing virtues acquired by habituation from those infused by grace (Summa Theologiae I-II qq. 55–67) — a distinction that matters precisely because it marks where the classical account was held to run out.
The modern revival
Elizabeth Anscombe (1958) restarted the field with an attack. Modern moral philosophy, she argued, is built on a concept of moral obligation that survives from a law conception of ethics whose lawgiver has been abandonedAnscombe, G. E. M. (1958). 'Modern Moral Philosophy.' Philosophy 33(124). Her three theses: moral philosophy should be laid aside until we have a psychology of action; the concepts of moral obligation and moral ought are survivals from a legal framework and should be jettisoned; and the differences between the English moral philosophers from Sidgwick onward are of little importance., leaving 'ought' doing work nothing entitles it to do. Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) developed the positive programme: virtues are dispositions that secure the goods internal to practices, and moral judgement requires a tradition and a narrative unity of life that modernity has dismantled. Philippa Foot (2001) and Rosalind Hursthouse (1999) grounded virtue in facts about what it is for a living thing of a kind to flourish.
The objection: situationism
The strongest empirical challenge holds that the stable character traits virtue ethics requires may not exist. Gilbert Harman (1999) and John Doris (2002) assembled the social psychology: Milgram's obedience studies (1963), Darley and Batson's seminary students (1973)Darley, J. M. & Batson, C. D. (1973). 'From Jerusalem to Jericho.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27(1). Seminarians on their way to give a talk — for some, on the Good Samaritan — passed a slumped figure in a doorway. Whether they stopped was predicted by how much of a hurry they had been put in, and not by the subject of the talk. and Isen and Levin's dime studies (1972) all suggest trivial situational variables predict behaviour better than any trait. If so, character is not what produces action, and an ethics organised around character is organised around a fiction.
Two replies carry weight. Rachana Kamtekar (2004) argues the experiments test ordinary subjects against a conception of traits far cruder than Aristotle's — a virtue is a practically wise disposition responsive to reasons, not a behavioural regularity insensitive to context. And Aristotle himself held full virtue to be rare, so finding that most people lack it is not a refutation. Against that, several of the classic situationist studies have had difficulty replicating, which weakens both sides of the argument rather than either.
What it rules out
It rules out resolution as a method — deciding to be patient does not produce patience. It rules out judging character from a single action, in either direction. And it rules out the rulebook conception of ethics as complete, since no rule specifies how much, when, toward whom, and that is where nearly all the difficulty is.
It does not rule out rules. Rules are how the learner acts before the disposition exists, which is Aristotle's own answer to how anyone begins, and situationism's real lesson is that the reliable move is to change the situations you place yourself in rather than to trust the character you believe you have.
Sources
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). 'Modern Moral Philosophy.' Philosophy 33(124). · Aquinas, T. (c. 1270). Summa Theologiae I-II, qq. 55–67. · Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Books II and VI. · Darley, J. M. & Batson, C. D. (1973). 'From Jerusalem to Jericho.' JPSP 27(1). · Doris, J. (2002). Lack of Character. Cambridge University Press. · Foot, P. (2001). Natural Goodness. Oxford University Press. · Harman, G. (1999). 'Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology.' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99. · Hursthouse, R. (1999). On Virtue Ethics. Oxford University Press. · Kamtekar, R. (2004). 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character.' Ethics 114(3). · MacIntyre, A. (1981). After Virtue. Duckworth. · Milgram, S. (1963). 'Behavioral Study of Obedience.' Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67(4). · Plato. Meno; Protagoras.
Concept web
Open the full webQuestions
What is virtue?
A stable disposition to act, feel and perceive well. Aristotle called it a hexis and held it is acquired by practice rather than instruction — we become just by doing just acts, as we become builders by building.
What is the doctrine of the mean?
Aristotle's claim that each virtue is a mean between an excess and a deficiency — courage between cowardice and rashness. The mean is relative to the person and situation, not arithmetic, and is identified by the judgement of a practically wise person rather than a rule.
Can virtue be taught?
Plato argued in the Meno that virtue is knowledge and therefore teachable. Aristotle disagreed: intellectual virtue comes by instruction, moral virtue by habituation. On his account exhortation does not work, and repetition does.
What is the situationist objection to virtue ethics?
Harman (1999) and Doris (2002) argued that experiments like Darley and Batson's seminary study (1973) show trivial situational factors predict behaviour better than character traits — so the stable dispositions virtue ethics requires may not exist.
Who revived virtue ethics?
Elizabeth Anscombe, in 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958), arguing that moral obligation is a survival from a law conception of ethics without a lawgiver. MacIntyre (1981), Foot (2001) and Hursthouse (1999) built the positive account.