In the same way, Virtue Ethics still adheres to universally accepted principles and abides by the rules but uses practical wisdom (phronesis) to discern how and when to correctly apply these virtues and principles. Virtue Ethicists are not legalists who abide by the rules regardless of consequences, yet do not live without a moral anchor which determines how they live. Virtue Ethics determines that the situation greatly determines to what end of the continuum a virtue should be applied.

While vacationing in a small, sleepy, quiet coastal town in Maine, you take your dog for a walk at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning. You come to an intersection with a stop light. Looking carefully in all directions you don’t see any cars. Then you notice a sign next to the stoplight that says:

JAYWALKING FORBIDDEN

Violators subject to fine

Village of Sleepy Cove

Immediately after you read the sign, you look up and see that the stoplight has turned red.

Would it be wrong of you to cross the street against the stoplight in the above circumstances? If so, why? If not, why not?

According to Virtue Ethics, it would be wrong for you to cross the street against the stoplight. Because there is a sign to tell you not to cross the street, doing so would be blatantly going against what is being asked of you. When practicing virtue ethics, you’re supposed to be morally correct, and a “good person”

For example, if a Nazi soldier were to arrive at your doorstep and ask if you knew where your Jewish neighbors were, not realizing that you had been hiding them in your attic, would it be acceptable to lie? If someone were to simply apply the truism that you should “always tell the truth” you would foolishly tell the Nazis of the whereabouts of your Jewish neighbors. If you possessed phronesis, however, you would be able to discern that truth telling in this situation would carry grave consequences for your neighbors and likely yourself and so you would therefore tell the Nazi soldier that you were unaware of your neighbors whereabouts.

A virtue such as honesty is not the tendency to do what is “honest” or “morally desirable,” but it is in fact a character trait. It isn’t the same as being a coffee drinker, or a puzzle lover, this it runs deep in your blood. Stanford says, “to possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset.”

A virtue ethicist would focus less on lying in any particular instance and instead consider what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie said about one’s character and moral behavior.

For Aristotle, the moral virtue represents excellence. So the moral life is more than just staying out of trouble, it’s exemplifying this virtue.

An honest person is not someone who does honest things without cheating. If a person acts in an honest way because he thinks honesty is the best policy, or the fear of getting caught, this is not an honest person.

Honest people value honesty. They surround themselves with honest friends, honest co-workers, and teaches this to his family. They stay away from dishonesty, and are pleased when honesty wins.

However, this also means that when a person does a good deed, more than once, or a few times, it doesn’t necessarily mean this person has virtue. It all comes back to moral vs. rules.

The concept of Virtue Ethics is most commonly attributed to Aristotle and Plato. These greek philosophers laid the foundation for virtue ethics with the key concepts of arete (excellence or virtue), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom), and eudaimonia (flourishing). These philosophers would argue that Virtue Ethics is more of a product of who you are rather than what you do. Ethical decision making is derived more from your character than a set of rules or consequences.

Virtue Ethics remained the predominant philosophical theory in the West for  centuries until at least the nineteenth century. Its resurgence is credited to Anscombe who published her work on Virtue Ethics in her 1958 article “Modern Moral Philosophy” which criticized Mill’s utilitarianism and Kant’s deontology.