Epic battles in practical ethics: Virtue ethics vs Consequentialism

Aristotle, right, and John Stuart Mill, left

(For two previous examples of “epic battles in practical ethics,” see here and here.)

There are three great philosophical frameworks to think about ethics (and a number of minor ones and variations thereof): deontology (i.e., rule-based), consequentialism, and virtue ethics. In this essay I will not consider the first one, the most famous examples of which are the Ten Commandments and Kant’s categorical imperative (“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”). Consequentialism is often brought up in discussions of virtue ethics, usually as the “obviously” better alternative. Yet, many people seem to be very confused about what both consequentialism and virtue ethics actually entail, so let me attempt to clear some of this confusion.

Let me begin with a very basic point about consequentialism: it is not the same thing as utilitarianism. To be precise, utilitarianism is one type of consequentialist philosophy. There are others. The term “consequentialism” was introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot, within the context of her criticism of modern ethical approaches like deontology and utilitarianism, and her support for a new virtue ethics.

In fact, consequentialism is an umbrella term that includes utilitarianism, egoism (e.g., Ayn Rand’s Objectivism), and altruism (as in the contemporary movement known as Effective Altruism). Which means that the first mistake is to contrast virtue ethics with consequentialism: which consequential philosophy is one referring to? Because utilitarianism, egoism, and altruism are very, very different from each other. In the rest of this post I will therefore restrict my focus to utilitarianism.

The first, most fundamental, and arguably most misunderstood difference between virtue ethics and utilitarianism is that the latter asks the typical question framing modern moral philosophical approaches: what is the right thing to do? Virtue ethics, by contrast, asks a very different question: how do I become a better person?

Another way to understand this is that utilitarianism (and all forms of consequentialism, and deontology) aspires to be a universalist moral philosophy, adopting a view from nowhere, so to speak, and…