The Comparison Of Deontology And Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics is the idea of focusing on one’s personality but not actions the one decided to take. Rosalind Hursthouse (2000) describes virtue ethics in his book as, “Virtue ethics has been characterized in a number of ways. It is described (i) as an ethics which is 'agent-centred' rather than 'act-centred'” (p.25). For example, assume there is a guy who goes to see his hospitalized friend every day. For this situation, most of people may think he goes to a hospital every day because he actually cares about his friend. However, what if he decides to take that action just because it generally would be considered as benevolent. If this is the case, people may not think he is a moral person anymore. The main idea of this theory is that a person makes an action with caring thoughts should be considered as a virtuous person; even though a person takes the right action, lacking in virtue without feeling toward others will be considered to be wrong.
Accorfing to Monika Betzler (2008), “What turns virtue ethics into a distinct normative theory that differs from deontology and consequentialism alike is the idea of human flourishing as an activity, or more generally, as an ideal of how to live well.” (p.7). In the idea of deontology, it advocates that people shouldn’t use others to accomplish self-objectives because it is against the moral. Deontology insists people shouldn’t do anything they don’t want others to do; you need to be honest if you want others to be honest, and you shouldn’t bully others if you don’t want to get bullied. On the other hand, virtue ethics focuses on human being’s natural conditions to become flourish. The most important concepts in virtue ethics is what can make people live well. If people believe something can make their lives better, they should follow their belief to be flourish as human beings.
Personally, I prefer deontology more than virtue ethics since it is moral-focused; human beings need to act based on their feelings. Brad Hooker (2012) states in his book as, To summarise then: the best form of deontology is defined in terms of a plurality of principles of moral reasons.” (p.27). I think people should decide to act in that way with moral reasons. If all people follow deontology, they probably would never act based of their feelings, but just act simple as robots. I believe people should interact each other either in a good or bad way to make life meaningful. Considering self-feeling and also other’s feeling can develop the world better.
Works Cited
- Brad Hooker. (2012). Developing Deontology: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
- Hursthouse (2000). On Virtue Ethics: Oxford University Press, Inc.
- Monika Betzler (2018). Kant’s Ethics of Virtue: De Gruyter Inc.
