Virtue Vs Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism and Virtue ethics are ethical theories that originates from the works of Greek philosophers that eventually developed many branches throughout human history.

The differences between these two approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way of how these ethical dilemmas are approached ,rather than in the normal conclusions reached.

Virtue Ethics theory, proposed by Aristotle is a self-realization theory that says that “An action is right if it is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstance”. A virtue is a character trait an individual needs to live well. This theory highlights the role of one’s character and virtues for determining ethical behavior. According to Aristotle, the importance is on being rather than doing

But this view seems unattractive to me. I will now defend this claim by saying that people most often behave in a way that satisfies themselves or their groups, whether it is from their family, religion or their ethnicity. For example, most people would prefer giving charity to their own poor relatives than giving someone else they don’t know. Further support for this claim comes from something I can relate to is when most employers hire their employees not on the basis of their qualification but because of their ethnicity or their religion. I’ve just explained why I

For example, this theory supports equal distribution of wealth. I would further add that this theory is a simple way of solving moral dilemmas because it explains our beliefs in terms of “greatest amount of happiness”. According to this theory each individual is considered the best judge of what makes him/her happy.

It’s a rational theory because both long term and short term consequences are taken into consideration. For example, Smoking for a long term or short term. In contrary to the Utilitarian theory, I think that Aristotelians might respond to my arguments in several ways by claiming that actions should be judged by intentions and not results. There are 2 reasons to believe this. Firstly, evil intention which creates a good outcome should not be encouraged. For example, someone finds pleasure in killing someone else. Secondly, good intention which results in an evil outcome must not be condemned. One such example is in the case of the surgeon who has to cut open a patient in order to transplant the organs and thereby save lives of the other needy