Julia Annas Approach To Virtue Ethics

1) Explain the role of defect and excess, and intermediate/mean in Aristotle’s definition of virtue to someone outside the class. Write about what happens.

Defect and excess are opposite virtues that are related to extremes. Defect is a lack of something, for instance a lack of courage. To put it on Aristotle’s words a person that “flies from and fears everything” is considered a coward, this person could be destroyed by defect.

Excess is having more than necessary, this virtue applies to personal characteristics and to possessions. For example, an excess of proudness, this excess of confidence can put a man in a wrong position because no admitting a mistake can cost the person than just admitting he committed a mistake. In other words, neither

defect nor excess are good virtues because extremes can put a person in danger.
The intermediate means that men are better off if they stand in an intermediate position related to the extremes, for which is not good to go to defect or excess but to stay in the middle, and being in the middle is praised and it becomes a way of success.

Now, being successful is a mean or virtue. However, Aristotle describes that feeling defect, excess, or intermediate at the right moment towards the right people or the right things, its characteristic of virtue and virtue is a mean, then is okay.

2) What are two things that you find helpful or useful in Julia Annas’ approach to virtue ethics (developed on bottom p. 68-74 of her article)? What is one weakness of her approach, or something that you think could be improved in it?

I very much like her approach, I found it very realistic and formulated to be applied in today’s word. One of the things I found useful is that you cannot achieve virtue without considering the right action and the developmental process.

State of character= virtuous person + right action + developmental process

Julia Anna states that the beginning builder has to pick a role model and repeat the actions until he works on his own understanding. This is the way how we have work on perfecting our moral virtue, we listen to our parents, pick our favorite teacher, best friend and listen and learn from them until we create a character that is our own, so we became to make our own

decisions.
Second thing I found very useful is that “learning contains aspiration to improve”. Moreover, If I believe that we are always learning then we are always improving ourselves. This is somehow related to Aristotle’s theory which contains that we continuously learn from experiencing.
Now the weakness to her approach is how do I know who is fully virtuous? Maybe an elderly, but does he consider himself fully prepare to mentor someone?
3) In two weeks (Week Seven) we will be talking about forgiveness. As a way of beginning to think about this topic, what do you think it means to forgive? Do you think forgiveness is a virtue? In answering the latter question, explain how you are defining virtue. For example, if you are using Aristotle’s definition of virtue, what are the two extremes between which forgiveness would be the mean (or is it an extreme and therefore a vice--explain)? Cite sources where appropriate.
To forgive means to forget what someone has done to you and to never permit bad feelings affect your relationship with the person, and most importantly to never leave those feeling affect your life. And yes, I believe forgiveness is a virtue. Virtue is a state of character that embodies the good actions of a person, actions that have a positive result. Those actions, for the “beginners”, become the example to follow when building up its own virtue.
Excess: Tolerance
Mean: Forgiveness
Defect: Blame