Virtue Ethics vs. Kantian Duty: What Makes a Person Ethical?

Introduction: Framing the Ethical Question

Kant and Aristotle provide a moral framework for what it means to be a good person. They focus on the intentions of a person and how those intentions make all the difference in whether a person is acting morally or not. Since morality serves as the foundation for ethics, according to these philosophers, it stands to reason that ethical behavior is that which is intended to fulfill a moral purpose. Thus, in answer to the question "What does it mean to be an ethical person?" this paper argues that a system of virtue ethics is the best response: honesty, integrity, and compassion are the signs of an ethical person, and such a person will consistently exhibit and display these qualities.

Aristotle and Kant on Intention and Morality

Both Kant and Aristotle take into consideration the intention of one's actions when they discuss the morality of behavior. For Aristotle, there is an intellectual virtue and a moral virtue.¹ In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle shows that some virtues we learn through habit and action — these are the moral virtues — and some we learn through instruction — these are the intellectual virtues. Both are formative and have an impact on how or why individuals behave a certain way. Virtue itself is an exercise and not so much a law — that is, not a universal law as might be found in the deontological ethics promoted by Kant.

Kant argues for the existence of a universal maxim, a universal ethic that should guide behavior.² This argument represents the deontological side of the question: what it means to be an ethical person is best determined by whether or not one conforms his or her behavior to the universal ethical law. All that is needed is to know what the universal ethic is. For Aristotle, the question of what it means to be an ethical person is approached much differently — by way of what one thinks and how one acts, with the measurement being the virtuous ideal itself: the nature of conformity of action to purpose. When action is oriented to purpose, ethical behavior is achieved. For Kant, ethical behavior is achieved when action is oriented to duty. The difference between the two is that one focuses on human purpose and the other on human duty.

Either framework can be useful in discovering what helps us to be our best selves. Simply engaging in the act of asking questions about what it means to be honest and ethical is a first step toward finding an answer — a question that is never asked can never be answered. However, if one wants to characterize ethical behavior, Aristotle's conception is the stronger choice because he puts forward the idea that ethical behavior is found in the character of an individual, manifested in thought, word, and action. Kant, by contrast, maintains that ethics is deontological — that a study of the rules and an adherence to them is the gist of what constitutes ethics.