Virtue Ethics Of Care

Virtue ethics is a theory proposed by Aristotle, used to make moral decisions. When focusing on this theory, we will not center the question around “what should I do?” but rather a more important question, “what kind of person do I want to become?” Aristotle would say that in order to achieve personal excellence, we must practice virtuous acts until they become basically second nature to us. For Aristotle, when viewing other ethical theories, such as Duty and Utilitarianism, he would agree with some of Kant and Mill’s conclusions to a point, but also disagree with them tremendously in other ways. In a way that Aristotle would agree with Kant is the fact that they were both arguing that an act was moral if the individual initiated it with

Care is always about relationships and is associated with identification with other individuals, especially desiring to be a part of their lives. This challenges the idea that ethical judgments be made justly, and purely rational. “Care ethics challenges the idea that ethics should be about following rules, applying abstract concepts of life, or coldly calculating consequences”. (NEET: 4, p16). You can learn to become more skillful by being able to use both reason and emotion in decision-making. There are many essential relationship skills that we should all obtain in order to build happiness in our relationships. Just a few of these relationship skills include active communication, mature conflict resolution, encouragement, pure honesty, being trustworthy, and last but not least, love. Even though all of these examples, along with many others are necessary, I personally believe that the most crucial relationship skill is communication. Whether we want to or not, and whether we are even aware of it while it’s happening, humans are constantly continually communicating with one another. This doesn’t only include verbal communication, but more so importantly, non-verbal communication. If it is unavoidable, and irreversible, then we should become remarkably skillful at it in our interpersonal relationships. Communication also means knowing how to listen to others, while creating a judge-free environment for them to be able to open up to you. These skills require very specific ways of caring for other people, and these are skills that can be learned to do better with practice. Other relationship skills that I find to be immensely vital are empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is feeling compassion, sorrow, or even pity when needed for the suffering that another individual close to you encounters, while empathy on the other hand is putting yourself in the shoes of