Utilitarianism Vs Virtue Ethics Essay

In philosophy, there are many different ethical theories on which we are believed to reason in everyday decision making. Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Aristotle all developed theories in which they believe we should follow in order to live full ethical and moral lives. Kantianism, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics are all unique theories, but with careful consideration, we can conclude that although virtue ethics generalizes the idea of a well rounded moral individual, There are still many issues that make it just as unreasonable and impractical as the other theories.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a view codified by John Stuart Mill who was a student of Jeremy Bentham who originally introduced the concept. The

This means is that you are not only responsible for what you actually do to maximize happiness, but you are also responsible for the things you didn’t do to maximize happiness and even for times when you didn’t prevent others from minimizing happiness. This means that if you are a studying to be a professional athlete or dancer, this can be viewed as morally bad. During all the time that you use to build on your skill and polish up your craft, you could have been using the time to give back to local nursing homes for example. All the money that you used on training sessions and dance lessons could have all been given to charity. The issue here is that the theory can be too demanding and doesn’t allow people to pursue their passions. Because of negative responsibility, this would imply that most of our time, if not all, would be spent towards maximizing the world’s overall happiness, even though that might mean minimizing yours.
 Another issue is that some people could simply be wrong about what true happiness is. What if we raised our children off of utilitarianist principles. What if I had 10 children and asked them what they wanted to eat or drink for dinner. They would probably respond with asking for chips, candy, and soda. Although as a health conscious parent, I may not want them to eat the junk food, because there are ten of them and one of me, I would be morally wrong for denying

Throughout time and culture, there have been different thoughts on what actions are considered to be virtuous. For instance, in ancient Greece, they valued the virtue of pride, while medieval Christians at the same time, valued the virtue of humility (Garrett). It is culturally insensitive and prejudice to say that one virtue is better than the other. To many, virtues are things that should be universalized for all people at all times. So how then can one decide which approaches in life are virtuous? Another issue with virtue ethics is the difficulty in applying this theory to specific moral dilemmas. Aristotle’s theory tells us be virtuous and act as a virtuous person would. That can be very open ended in practical moral dilemmas. What about a case of abortion, or the use of drugs? Being a well-rounded, virtuous person is not enough instruction for modern day ethic issues. Although this theory is helpful to the society, possessing many virtues does not fully help you choose the moral way of going through