Virtue ethics

Uncommon card · No. 103276

Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, from Greek ἀρετή [aretḗ]) is a theory in normative ethics that prioritizes the development of moral character and dispositions (good habits), contrary to ethical systems that emphasize individual actions, duties, or obedience to divine authority. Virtue ethics is usually contrasted with two other major normative theories: consequentialism, which defines moral rightness by the goodness of an action's outcome, and deontology, which defines rightness in terms of moral duty. Instead, virtue ethics defines rightness in terms of motive, intrinsic to a moral agent and their propensity to behave in a certain way under given circumstances. While it does not necessarily deny the importance of goodness of states of affairs or moral obligations, it emphasizes virtue and sometimes other concepts, like eudaimonia, to a greater extent than other ethics theories.

Read on Wikipedia