Virtue Ethics Criticism

There are many criticisms towards virtue ethics – the most notable are self-centeredness, action-guiding and moral luck. To get a deeper understanding of these criticisms, I will explore two of these criticisms: self-centeredness and moral luck and then discuss a virtue ethicist’s reply to the objection of moral luck.

First, we will discuss self-centeredness in relation to virtue ethics. Virtue ethics outlines how to live the best life possible and focuses solely on an individual’s character. The argument that virtue ethics is a self-centered moral concept is due to the fact that morality should be about other people. Virtue ethics is more focused on having good character because it makes the individual feel better about themselves rather than doing good things and having good character to benefit others (Athanassoulis, 2014). For example, per virtue ethics, someone may give money or resources to the homeless in order to make them feel better about themselves rather than donating to help increase the quality of life for the homeless people.

Second, we will address the argument that virtue ethics leaves our fate up to luck. In life, there are many things that are

Their family has continuously instilled in them a virtuous lifestyle and helped them attain a good education. In all aspects of their life, they act virtuously due to their upbringing. Alternately, an unvirtuous person may have been born to a family that lived their life without concern for their character or the well-being of others. The unvirtuous person may not have been able to obtain a good education and may have been influenced by other unvirtuous people and been a subject of their environment. Referencing the argument above, is it fair to praise the first person for their virtuous nature while condemning the second, even though both had no control over their