Comparing Deontology And Aristotle's Virtue Ethics

John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, Immanuel Kant’s Deontology, and Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics all provide unique perspectives in answering moral dilemmas. In a specific instance, deciding whether or not succumbing to Body Identity Integrity Disorder is ethical, each aforementioned philosopher would use certain justifications from their respective theories to come to a conclusion. Kantian Deontology provides the best, most wholesome explanation in this case.
Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID), as a brief summary, is an unofficially-recognized mental illness which causes its victims to feel incompatibility with a certain part of their body, e.g. men and women who feel the need to go blind, cut of a limb, etc. and impulsively try to do so,

Their hedonistic ideological perspectives, a belief that the good is equal to the pleasant, posit that “actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 47). They further identify happiness and unhappiness as “intended pleasure and the absence of pain” and “pain and the privation of pleasure…” (Mill 47). Using these definitions to address our question of whether or not yielding to Body Identity Integrity Disorder is morally permissible, a discrepancy is instantly established. What is the utility of BIID? Mental capitulation would likely result in satisfaction and the ceasing of cognitive anguish--a patient that follows through with their physically harmful desires would stop having such compulsory behavior. Obvious corporeal repercussions would result in physical pain--therefore, at first glance a Utilitarian observer would condemn BIID--but when we address whether or not mental pain is equivalent to the physical, our solution isn’t as apparent. Mill made a

In attempting to find a moral solution, Aristotle argued that “virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle” (Aristotle 98). This so-called “golden mean principle” involves finding a moral balance; “it is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency” (Aristotle 98). Therefore, for our case, perhaps the solution doesn’t involve only two options (succumbing to BIID or ignoring the compulsions completely), but is found in an average between the two--perhaps therapeutic treatment or prescriptive medicine is the proper resolution. This sounds appropriate to a virtue theory perspective--and may be reasonable--but isn’t necessarily possible. Due to the shortage of severe Body Identity Integrity Disorder cases, more humane alternatives, such as the aforementioned, aren’t common practiced. Aristotle’s claims, fortunately, recognize the limited power of the golden mean principle. In The Ethics of Aristotle, he acknowledges that “it is a difficult business to be good; because in any given case it is difficult to find the midpoint… to [act virtuously] is a rare, laudable and fine achievement” (Aristotle, 99). Acting virtuously, fundamentally, isn’t black-and-white; according to Aristotle there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” solution that humankind