Introduction: Aristotelian Naturalism – Human Nature, Virtue, Practical Rationality

Abstract

The rediscovery of virtue ethics is often thought of primarily as a new approach to normative ethics: instead of conceiving the evaluation of action in terms of promoting good consequences or adhering to rules of right action, virtue ethicists propose evaluating conduct in terms of an array of virtue and vice terms, such as courageous or cowardly, just or unjust. The revival of this approach to normative ethics sometimes overshadows the fact that it was accompanied by new Aristotelian approaches to issues in metaethics and moral psychology. These approaches take natural goodness, that is, goodness in application to living things, to be the primary locus of value, rather than good states of affairs or goodness of the will. Of special importance to Aristotelians, of course, is the question of what it is to be a ‘good human.’ Aristotelians hold this concept to be logically similar to what makes a tiger a good tiger, with the caveat that humans have distinctive rational capacities and so a distinctive form of natural goodness. This leads to the Aristotelian thesis that the virtues are necessary for being a good human and the promise of an approach to justifying the virtues with important consequences for issues in philosophical anthropology and metaethics.