Xixi Logic Seminars #32

Speaker: Knut Ågotnes
Date & Time: 26 April 2016 (Tuesday), 13:30 – 15:00
Place: Seminar room #259, Main teaching building, Xixi campus, Zhejiang University

Aristotelian virtue ethics, a moral philosophy for our time?

Aristotle’s ethics focuses on the development of a person’s character. To be a good person is paramount. However, a person’s moral  character consists of his virtues – his sense of justice for instance – that are both competences for acting and motivations for actions. And to live the good life is the ultimate aim for man. The lecture will sketch Aristotle’s theory of the virtues and the good life, and then discuss how it differs from two ethical theories that has been dominant in modern times, utilitarianism and kantianism. Common to both of these is a focus on actions and a tendency to “forget” both the virtues and human nature as a whole. In what way can this “one-sidedness” have unfortunate consequences? Can virtue ethics play a benevolent role here?