HS104_Virtue Theory

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:02]okay so in this clip we are trying to advance further to the territory of virtue theory we have already seen um very elaborately at least how decision making happens in the case of deontology and utilitarianism now virtue theory is one of the earliest theoretical frameworks that we have with us and it starts with the philosopher named aristotle and it would be difficult to really talk about virtue theory separately by ignoring aristotle's larger ideas okay larger philosophical system so uh to to keep the simplicity however i am going to you know link some of these ideas that aristotle propounded uh with his larger philosophy so he starts with uh the fact that at least in the world view of the ancient greeks uh the fact that everything in this universe that exists has got a purpose in its life in its sustenance okay and in the case of human beings the purpose okay of life as to why we are here is related to the idea of becoming virtuous okay so aristotle mentions several virtues such as wisdom courage fortitude liberality and so on and so forth and there are context both professional as well as well as personal context where people can be virtuous okay so how do we really imagine aristotle's virtual theoretical framework and one good way to start is by imagining normal metaphysical issues such as properties and entities so uh here you have a bear some some kind of entity bear say substrata or some entity without any properties at t1 imagine say for example the birth of a baby the moment it comes into existence it has got a body it has got some [Music] kind of consciousness but very minimal and as time progresses the baby or the substrata the entity starts to acquire properties and attributes okay so very similar to the way we have entities in the world and as they sustain in their existence they start to gain more and more properties okay so aristotle claims these properties or attributes as virtues okay so at the at time t nk the n plus k we have a set of attributes to the entity so this is how typical in metaphysics we imagine properties and entities that there is some sort of bare entity that you know takes in attributes as it progresses so for example we have this bottle here and the bottle is actually a bare entity with the color blackness so once it is there it starts to have properties and it can contain water it's another property is heavy it's another property and so on and so forth so uh in this way if we try to imagine human existence what happens is that we all know in a certain sense that existence is at least conceptually prior to predication of attributes or predication of properties okay now in some examples it's true with uh almost all artificial objects as well as natural objects say for example when i say the apple is red it's the apple that comes into our mind first and redness is a quality or a property or an attribute that's predicated pose for a moment and ask is the apple really red okay so that's the that's how we can sort of separate properties with the entity now redness happens because of it being in a particular context human beings perceive that kind of frequency in the optical spectrum and it's a whole lot of physics there that explains that the apple has this property redness it's being in that context that it is red for an animal that's color blind or a human being that's color blind the apple may not be red but in the context the apple has got that property so and in you know as the apple advances sustains in its life it may have other properties like ripeness etc etc so very similar to the life of human beings the apples life gets meaning by acquiring more and more properties into its inner core or the entity as as we call it so we are born existence happens and then we all of a sudden think after a while and i'm talking about 10 or 20 years once we make sense of the world we start to acquire properties like wisdom courage okay confidence these are all virtues okay and for aristotle the purpose of life depends on fulfilling certain virtues that are part of a context okay and i'm going to explain how he sort of um does justice to this world view so uh this is how we can imagine say for example a baby is born here we have a couple of babies at t1 uh it's an empty set there's nothing really there other than say a minimal level of consciousness and a minimal level of perception and the baby is really helpless it needs help by others and it needs care so on and so forth as we progress uh you know there is maybe in say 10th year or so aristotle says it may pick certain virtues certain properties similar similar to the case of an entity that picks property like an electron or a or a proton okay these dispositional properties uh make the individual or the baby in this context act in a certain way okay so uh these properties are added in our mind and these properties then as we know these are virtues guide us in certain situations as to behave in a particular way so here this is my own example so you can replace it with anyone's say for example just in this case in this baby just assume in in this baby's case is assumed that it picks honesty honesty comes in at t sorry at t n plus k patience comes in and t n plus k plus m something else say care comes in and so on and so forth after 30 years or so or 25 years or so they become full grown ups okay not just the the visual properties okay um the the properties of the object but also you know the properties of the mind so aristotle is talking about these properties of the human mind okay so we are not talking about tall or short or you know how much mass or things like that but you know virtuous attributes okay so uh contexts are important in deciding what virtues are available and what virtues are good in a particular individual's case in that context so similar to the apple acquiring redness in the human visual field a baby for example if it is [Music] say traversing time and then it speaks loyalty and then tn plus k beats something else that's like say courage and goes on to pick say courage and owner and so on and so forth aristotle says oh here is an individual that's contextually suitable for becoming a soldier okay so these are the virtues that a soldier should have so it's loyalty courage honor valor and so on and so forth the uh virtue of putting one's own life before the life of others so you know many philosophers give this example of a soldier jumping ahead uh to take a bullet uh you know to save someone else something of that sort so these are virtues that are available in that context but it is cultivated in individuals as they progress in time okay uh and these are cultivatable so when obviously it's clear that when we are born we don't really have these properties okay so uh in a similar way we can say that doctors lawyers you know people who are teachers and so on each of these contexts prescribes certain virtues and the the game isn't really acquiring those virtues okay so acquiring those virtues will help us behave in the correct way so uh as an example um you know we go back to the greek thought process the whole philosophy behind you know purpose of existence meaning of life etc now the greeks believed that not just aristotle but a whole lot of others along with him his teacher and his you know disciples the meaning of life is [Music] in fulfilling these virtues and here is the example from the movie troy uh you know if if you remember both the speeches given by hector as well as achilles and in here is brad pitt but in the actual scenario the character of achilles gives a speech before uh getting onto the beach and conquering troy says that you know there is a bit of implicit uh greek philosophy available in that it's not explicitly available in the script but you know if you read through the script you will see that for aristotle courage is an ultimate virtue the soldier should have and the the bravery that that a soldier shows in battle and while showing that bravery or courage if the soldier is killed let's assume then aristotle says that uh through that act of valor the soldier acquires immortality okay in the same way plato also has said that there are universal forms and human beings are always in search of objective universal forms and the taste of mathematics is immortality in that sense because we are trying to know what is eternal right 2 plus 2 is equal to 4 is an eternal truth so we are tasting that and in the same way plato claims that beauty is an eternal form and pursuit of beauty the eternal form of beauty through these uh available beautiful objects around us it's also a taste of immortality that's why people are after beauty after mathematics after courage and uh after war because these things sort of brings in a taste of immortality so this whole speech by achilles is uh you know tangentially touching upon virtue theory where you know being virtuous and in this particular context of a soldier being courageous makes him or her you know taste immortal eternal uh sort of concepts and that's the whole purpose of life right and according to both plato and aristotle the purpose of life is in elevating our uh mere standard of life as an animal okay from from sort of moving this standard of life as an animal to a much more eternal and uh you know uh [Music] divine so so to speak plato claims that human beings is midway between animals and the gods so you know we are we are trying to become like goats and reach for it by tasting mathematics tasting beauty tasting these virtues okay and that's the whole meaning of life available to us there is nothing else to really aim for okay so this is a small snippet that you have um that i've added to you know related to the larger context of greek philosophy now aristotle gives multiple virtues and you don't have to really learn all this but the crucial point in here is that uh all of these are part of a spectrum okay so so between rashness and covert is we have courage okay so that's the golden mean theory by aristotle that we go go for the middle path the golden mean and say we have between shyness and shamelessness we have modesty so the correct virtue is the one in the middle not the excess not the deficient okay and you know if you sort of search for in the internet you will see a lot of this frequency type of exes as well as deficient virtues and the one in the middle is the right one and the right virtue that we should aim for so that our lives are made meaningful okay now going on to the contextual issues obviously you might have already had in your mind about conflict of virtues for example uh what's the right word you to have in a particular context depend may depend on uh something that's more valuable to you okay so uh conflict of virtues of often happens in this way that you know sometimes we say that humility is the right virtue we should be modest humble and so on and so forth but at other contexts we also say that there's nothing wrong in being proud about one's achievements being proud about one's self okay so uh you may have context where the virtues are in conflict with each other okay and people might also say that there's no need to be really shy uh but then people may also say that you know shamelessness is a virtue sometimes but shamelessness is not always a virtue in certain context and the same and the same case goes with shyness okay and and there are other virtues where the extremities become virtuous at certain point of time so this is one way to open up the issue that within the frequency the mean and the excess and the deficient uh there may be conflicts in different context okay so it is virtuous to become proud of oneself in a particular context but it would be equally non-virtuous to become proud of oneself in another context okay uh so that's one issue with the worst theory the other issue is about the contextual scenario leading us to two separate sort of context sub context so to speak personal as well as professional okay so how do we really rate them should we rate the personal virtues such as uh loyalty to a friend okay more than our work uh our you know loyalty to a phone or our you know sincerity to a firm now these are open-ended issues okay aristotle claims that the way we you know put hierarchy of virtues depends on a thought and that thought is how do we really want a context to unfold and in that context what sort of a person do we really wish to become okay so it's not like what i will do okay i mean in a particular context we we as virtue theorists think in this fashion how do we really want that episode to unfold okay we talked about cases of accidents and you know decision making in the case of a old friend etc what sort of episode we want there to happen and what sort of an eye should be there okay if i put myself in that context what kind of words you should be there so we do a kind of uh you know in the method of reasoning related to uh virtue theory what what do we need to do is to look for contextual uh virtues in say for example in professional situations we talk about safety confidentiality etc and uh you know most of these professions put the codes those are virtues uh above the personal virtues that we value okay so imagine a case where a lawyer and his wife are discussing something over a coffee and you know suppose that um his or her spouse the partner asks oh uh is that per is that person really a culprit because the lawyer knows the truth but should the lawyer really disclose it to his or her wife or sorry his or her spouse according to aristotle the contextual virtue in this case that dominates is that even if it's his wife or his or her spouse that is asking for information the integrity of the lawyer comes above you know he saw him become being his or him being a human being with a partner in life okay so confidential confidentiality is rated um about in a loyalty to his or her spouse so the context unfolds in a certain way as i said and you should be able to imagine what sort of a human being i should be if i am in that context okay and the same goes with engineers and soldiers and so on and so forth given a chance what sort of a decision should i take this depends on what sort of a context i am in number one and what sort of a virtue i should emphasize you know is uh appropriate for that context so uh this is typically known as counter factual thinking and encounter factual thinking what we do is we imagine a scenario where certain factors are available and we will think or say sort of simulate okay or do a kind of thought experiment by putting certain virtues in place and a person there so ask the question in this case the case that we discussed about a case of accident on the way to airport what sort of a person would you like to see in such a situation okay and bring in all the virtues both personal professional etc and then you know just make a set of virtues that are available and put a person there imaginary see what he or she would do now would you like to see a person with courage temperance and kindness there at the place of accident or would you like to see a person who is called a coward who doesn't want to stay there because he has some other engagement and you know a person who is not that kind probably is kind in other context but is not having enough courage to be kind at that particular context and the person who is insensitive etc etc so now if we have this contextual analysis with counterfactual thinking we know for sure that we would need uh someone who stops for help because in this counterfactual thinking you might even put yourself in the subject who was uh who who met with an accident okay so if we were the persons uh who were in that accident and if we were bleeding we wouldn't want this person to approach us there we would want this kind of a person to really come and help us so from the point of view of the victim as well as the point of view of a general you know public or a general audience we want this person to approach that scene okay now utilitarians will disagree utilitarians might just say that hang on we will first discuss what are the consequences and if the consequences are beneficial to a larger load by being a power or a coward then maybe it's fine maybe it's fine to skip the scene okay they may just say that but they have a quantitative way of doing that okay so uh and you can you can sort of apply this in other context as well the the context that i discussed and we will bring in more examples now there is a reason why i introduced virtue theory at this point because virtue theory is the uh is the link to the codes of ethics that we talked about uh you know uh in in line with the washington accord for engineers okay and also it sort of opens up a lot of debates about what is responsibility and how do we look at each situation where moral dilemmas are uh available okay so more uh on the next clips but for the time being imagine uh virtue theory in this way that don't think about consequence as utilitarians or don't think about universal objective laws but think about the properties that you would want to see in an individual in that context okay so then pushing those properties imaginarily in that individual play with those those properties put different properties and see how the individual is going to behave in that context okay and the same goes in professional life as well whether you're an employee or an employer or some sort of service provider think what sort of virtues that you would really want to see in your employee or in yourself in that context okay