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THE VIRTUE-ORIENTED TRADITION

Perhaps the most well known of all virtue-oriented ethicists is the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). According to Aristotle, we all desire personal happiness (eudaimonia), or "a state of well-being, thriving, or flourishing" and we become happy persons by exercising our distinctively human capacities of thought and action. A happy person, says Aristotle, is a reflective personthat is, a person who is able to establish an order of priority among his or her personal, professional, and political activities.

What enables the happy person to act rationally, notes Aristotle, is the virtue of practical wisdomthat is, the ability to strike consistently a rational midpoint between emotional excesses or defects. Without practical wisdom, we act rashly or timidly instead of courageously, or ostentatiously or niggardly instead of generously, or arrogantly or obsequiously instead of with proper self-respect.

Unfortunately, it is one thing for us to recognize our need for practical wisdom and quite another for us to cultivate this virtue. In fact, Aristotle repeatedly cautions that acting in a practically wise manner is no easy achievement:it is the expert, not just anybody, who finds the center of the circle. In the same way, having a fit of temper is easy for anyone; so is giving money and spending it. But this is not so when it comes to questions of "for whom?" "how much?" "when?" "why?" and "how?" This is why goodness is rare, and is praiseworthy and fine.3

Given that goodness is so hard to achieve, critics understandably object that an ethics of virtue is an impractical guide for action in a society that is both heterogeneous and individualistic. People have different values, and they often insist on marching to the beat of their separate moral drummers. They increasingly reject practical wisdomthe ability to determine what is worth wantingin favor of mere clevernessthe ability to get what one wants simply because one wants it. For example, an individual may not care whether it is good, in general, for infertile couples to pay fertile women for their gestational services. Instead she or he may judge the so-called Tightness or wrongness of this practice (called contracted or surrogate motherhood) solely in terms of how much the infertile couple want a child genetically related to them. For this reason alone, say the critics, we cannot afford to guide our actions by subjective ideals; we must instead guide them by objective rules. Unless everyone's rights, general responsibilities, and specific duties are precisely delineated, too much will be left to individual judgment.

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