The more one practiced the rites, the more one developed virtue, most importantly the virtue of Ren or benevolence. Ren should be understood not as acts of kindness but as acts of propriety that create virtue in oneself and society.
Practicing the rites virtuously brings each person and society in harmony with the Dao and leads to a good life for all. The philosophy of Daoism has long provided a strong counterpoint to Confucianism. As the name implies, Daoism focuses on harmony with the Dao rather than on human teachings, the opposite of the Confucian emphasis on a system of ritual behavior.
Daoism at times seems to be anti-civilization with its calls for us to detach from the artificiality of social traditions and rituals and to adopt instead a quiet life communing with nature.
At other times, though, Daoism attempts to reform society, especially its leaders:. If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Dao. Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts and the world will govern itself. The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Laozi [ca. The Daoist idea is that separating ourselves from nature is separating ourselves from the Dao and that what most contributes to this separation from the Dao are the social institutions of government, military, and other social hierarchies and power structures.
The Daoist virtue of wu wei involves a life of walking away from the artificial trappings of human pretension and arrogance and shaping your actions according to what others think of you. Instead, a Daoist seeks a oneness with the rhythms of nature, which probably requires walking away from society itself. Deliberately, Daoism does not provide a set of rules and rituals because central to Daoist philosophy is the idea that ritual does not cultivate virtue.
Instead, Daoism provides guidelines on cultivating the virtues of selflessness, moderation, detachment, and humility.
Accordingly, Daoist philosophers did not publish books detailing ritual practices like Confucians did. Instead, Daoists created poetry and stories that show Daoist sages teaching about and exemplifying these virtues. There are two main objections to virtue ethics as an ethical system: its vagueness and its relativism.
First, virtue ethics is too vague and subjective, and does not produce explicit rules for moral conduct that can tell us how to act in specific circumstances. When facing ethical dilemmas, we feel better if we have a clear answer about what to do. Virtue ethics offers general ideals rather than definitive commands. It is far easier to practice the principles of never lying or always being generous. Virtue ethics says there are times when lying is a better course of action and being generous is a worse course of action, and this variability creates uncertainty.
What is more, how can I decide when the virtue applies and when it should not? Telling me to be wise and reflect on the ethical virtues and the situation is offering more vagueness.
To consider this objection, we need to think about the nature of ethics itself. A virtue ethicist could respond by arguing that both are based on the ethical principle of honesty and that if that is so, then cultivating the virtue of honesty will lead one not to lie or steal from others. Virtue ethics provides us with the tools to make ethical decisions in the varying circumstances of our daily lives.
The variability in the behavior of those who practice virtue ethics reflects the variability of everyday life. Second, there are different cultural definitions of human flourishing and virtue. All human cultures have ethical values, but values vary across cultures. So how can we decide which set of virtues is right? Even within a culture, two people will have different views about what the virtues are, and when and how they apply.
Because virtue ethics gives us no specific commands for how to act, each person is left to himself or herself to decide how to act. Virtue ethics is too relative to be a helpful ethical theory. Ethical relativism is a concern. If ethics means anything, it has to have some objective basis and cannot be left entirely up to arbitrary whim. Virtue ethicists are aware of this danger and would respond to it that virtue ethics is based on objective realities of the world and human nature.
The virtues are manifestations of how things are, or should be, outside of cultural or individual subjectivity. Different cultures differ on how ethical virtues should be applied, but every culture values fundamental virtues such as honesty, benevolence, courage, and justice. Differences in how cultures apply virtues may reflect objective differences in their circumstances.
When we interact with another culture, those differences do need to be dealt with, but saying our culture is completely right and the other culture wrong is not a helpful approach. Individuals similarly face the burden of needing to determine how best to apply the virtues, and needing to deal with conflicts with others over how they think is best to apply the virtues. But is this not similar to the decisions we have to make in all aspects of our lives?
Nicomachean Ethics , trans. Roger Crisp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dao de Jing , trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper Perennial. Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, eds. Virtue Ethics.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwall, Stephen, ed. Foot, Philippa. New York: Oxford University Press. Harvey, Peter. Liu, JeeLoo. Russell, Daniel C. The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics. Thus, a person may have learned to be honest on taxes but not yet have learned how to be honest in business or has other priorities when with family.
Expertise also plays a role in that when someone is new to a domain: behavior will be inconsistent as one learns the ins and outs of best behavior. All of us need mentors to help us learn good behavior for particular situations. Virtue is a lifelong endeavor.
The editing of Developing the Virtues was performed under the auspices of the Self, Motivation and Virtue Project, supported by a generous grant from Templeton Religion Trust. Skip to content The Virtue Blog Blogging about the good life. Host of podcast, Sacred and Profane Love. Like this: Like Loading Questions our scholars are asking — part 2 of 2. Can cognitive effort be measured?
Follow Following. The Virtue Blog Join other followers. We "apply" them by asking what these principles require of us in particular circumstances, e. We also apply them when we ask what they require of us as professionals, e. In the last decade, dozens of ethics centers and programs devoted to "business ethics", "legal ethics", "medical ethics", and "ethics in public policy" have sprung up.
These centers are designed to examine the implications moral principles have for our lives. But are moral principles all that ethics consists of? Critics have rightly claimed that this emphasis on moral principles smacks of a thoughtless and slavish worship of rules, as if the moral life was a matter of scrupulously checking our every action against a table of do's and don'ts.
Fortunately, this obsession with principles and rules has been recently challenged by several ethicists who argue that the emphasis on principles ignores a fundamental component of ethics--virtue. These ethicists point our that by focusing on what people should do or how people should act, the "moral principles approach" neglects the more important issue--what people should be.
In other words, the fundamental question of ethics is not "What should I do? According to "virtue ethics", there are certain ideals, such as excellence or dedication to the common good, toward which we should strive and which allow the full development of our humanity.
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