Virtue ethics
When it comes to the question of wright versus wrong and good versus bad, I’m a sucker for the ethics of virtue. Being the oldest ethics that we know of, virtue ethics was developed by Aristotle in Ancient Greece. Core to this ethic theory is the virtue. Examples of virtues are courage, honesty, duty and dare I even say love. All great qualities that a person can have. But we aren’t born with those qualities, we must learn them!
Being virtuous is choosing the middle ground between two vices. Let’s take honesty for example. Honesty lies between lying and excessive truth telling. Lying is self-explanatory, but what is excessive truth telling? Excessive truth telling is telling the truth when it’s not appropriate. When you ask someone if he’s gay, he might respond with no because it’s unsafe for him to tell the truth or because he’s simply not ready to come out. Another example is courage, which is the middle between two vices: rashness and cowardliness.
So where is that middle ground? Well, it’s not a fixed point. Virtues are dependable on context. In each situation, the person facing the dilemma has to figure out what the virtue is. Getting back to honesty again. A well known ethical example is your friend is on the run from a murderer and hiding in your house. The murderer asks you if you have seen your friend. Telling the truth would be a vice because it has very bad consequences for your friend.
Let’s take the same situation, but now your friend is running from the police because of a crime he committed. Then, if the police asks you if you have seen your friend, telling them the truth is virtuous because your friend did something bad and should be put to justice (another virtue btw). This seems simple, but in this example there is also the virtue of loyalty. Selling out your friend wouldn’t be loyal to that friend, but depending on the situation could still be the virtuous thing to do.
So how do you find out when it’s a virtue and when not? Aristotle says you’ll learn that by practice, so it becomes a disposition. In your life, you’ll encounter numerous situations where you’ll have to make choices and several virtues play a role. In these situations you’ll act and aim to act virtuous. And most of the time, you’ll fail (slightly). Which is okay, because becoming generally virtuous is a learning process and that requires trial and error. Sometimes you get angry and overreact to a friend. The point here is to learn from it and improve for the next time, so that you give a proper response. This, mind you, doesn’t mean that you won’t become angry. But you don’t overreact. You give proportioned anger depending on the context.
Eventually, by doing this repeatedly, you’ll develop a disposition to act virtuous in situations. You have learned what the proper measure is and how to express that. It becomes more natural to you and you don’t have to think long and hard about it (or miss the mark). But this takes time and in modern days, people don’t give other people a lot of time. People often don’t give people the chance to learn, but expect it right away. Instead of that, give the people around you the time to learn and develop that disposition. Even try to support them in doing so. In the time of Aristotle, people counseled wise men often to learn how to improve. Give the people around you some advice on how to approach a situation more virtuous, or better, show them how to be virtuous in your own actions. But above all, remember it takes time. So give that to them.
