Intro to Aristotle's Virtue Ethics
Aristotle is known as one of the big three in Greek philosophy. Like many of his theories, virtue ethics is fundamentally flawed. While Plato modeled the tripartite after the three part of the body and the consequences of one part taking over the other with the head being the chariot, at least Aristotle gave Athenians another way to look at virtues.
Virtues are qualities of excellence. Courage, wisdom, temperance, etc. They are personalities we appreciate in others. Aristotles argues there's two kind of virtues: intellectual and moral virtues. Intellectual virtues reveal human nature--wisdom, contemplation, etc. These are traits solely possesed by humans, according to Aristotle.
In constrast, moral virtues are the traits people need to posses to live well. These traits focus on how we interact with others--self-control, courage, gentleness, etc.
Like the Greeks, Aristotle believed to live a good life, one had to fulfill their purpose. After he observed the world around him and theorizing every living thing seemed to have a purpose, he called this principle teleology or the "study of outcomes". Aristotle believe the purpose of human life is to live according to what made human unique or their essence/nature, intellect and reasoning or eudaimonia, the good life. Modern science has found other animals posses this quality, so the teleology is not how Biology operates anymore.
Aristotle, like Buddha, concluded the concept of the Golden Mean. Virtues and vices weren't on the opposing side of the spectrum. In fact, virtues where the balanced mean between deficiency and excess. For example, Courage is the mean between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of recklessness.
How do we apply virtue ethics? With Karena's dilemma, after thinking up some option, the next step is to identify the virtues that are relevant to a situation. Then, analyze each option using virtues as the evaluation criteria and choose the remaining options.