Aristotle and virtue ethics in the context of the course

1 Differences between Aristotle and the Utilitarianism and Kantianism
Aristotle asks: What type of person should we be? Or: How should we develop our character? His ethics is focussed on the agent and his character (character-centered ethics). Kant and Mill try to provide – a bit simplified – a decision making procedure. The question there is: What should we do? These ethics approaches focus on action.

2 Relativism?
As virtues are based on the community, the question arises whether Aristotle’s ethics is relativistic.
In defense of Aristotle and virtue ethics, one might argue the following:
- An ethics discourse might be seen rather as persuasive then prescriptive.
- Part of virtue ethics is an inquiry into our human nature; we have to “know ourselves” as humans
- Going beyond Aristotle, one could come up with the standard that virtues should be universal applicable, as a sort of testing method, in order to determine whether a virtue is truly one.