Welcome back to my Medical Ethics Series for the sixth installment! This is the third part of the Normative Ethics section, an area focused on what rules we should follow. Last time we explored Deontology, and now we will be finishing with Dr. Beyda’s favorite, Virtue Ethics. Let’s get to it!
Virtue Ethics
A truly ancient branch of ethics, Virtue Ethics comes from the time of the Greeks, and is most popularly associated with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. This branch of normative ethics is not the same as Deontology or Utilitarianism, which ask us about the rules and outcomes, respectively. Rather, Aristotle asks us an important question…What kind of person should I be? Let’s see what his answer is.
What Kind of Person Should I Be?
Virtues and Vices
We have all heard about virtues and vices, but to Aristotle they aren’t just good vocabulary words, they are the core of what we are pursuing in ethics. When one is virtuous, they are doing an action that is good, in the right amount, for the right reasons. Take the virtue of bravery. When your attending makes a demeaning assumption about your poor medicaid patient’s medication compliance and you step up and say “I don’t know if that’s true,” you are being virtuous. Now, every virtue can be taken too far, or not expressed enough. If you told the attending “you’re wrong, and frankly being elitist and rude”, that’s a bit reckless. If you sit there and say nothing, that’s cowardice. Balanced perfectly in the middle, that’s bravery, or what we call the Aristotelian Mean1. This mean, or perfect amount of virtue expression in a given situation, is what we are pursuing in order to become the kind of person we desire. Anything to the left or right of this, those are our vices.
Ok, but why are we pursuing these virtues? Enter Eudaimonia (yoo-dye-moh-nee-uh).
Eudaimonia
This fun sounding Greek word roughly translates to happiness, or as some scholars put it, flourishing. I believe it makes more sense as flourishing, so we will use that definition here. Eudaimonia is the point of pursuing these virtuous actions. When we act in such a way, we are pursuing or getting closer to having a life that is flourishing, because we are acting ethically. As Aristotle says, “The human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”2 He also believes our function as a human is to act with reason. Therefore, according to him, if we are using logical reasoning to make our actions in accordance with virtue, we will flourish.2
Phronesis
How do we learn to be this virtuous person? Aristotle says there are two ways. One, is learning as a child to have good reflexive moral behaviors, such as being taught to not interrupt others or hurt them. The second aspect is Phronesis, or practical wisdom. When I see a situation that I haven’t been taught is moral/immoral, what do I do with that new knowledge? What do I do with my prior knowledge in applying it? This is practical wisdom, or as we know it in modern vernacular, Prudence. We need both of these traits in order to ever achieve Eudaimonia, as we must start out with a good basis and then always be able to improve upon that base.2
What is the Point?
You might start to wonder why we even pursue virtue. In our other theories there was some basis of duty to others, or maximizing good, but what exactly is the point of flourishing? People seem happiest when they are selfish, focus on themselves, make tons of money, and are in power. Why else do people cheat, lie, steal, and rise to the top of other humans? Flourishing wouldn’t get me there.
The question to ask yourself is, would you be happy? Truly happy? The other definition of Eudiamonia is “happiness” for a reason. Is the rich manipulative arrogant surgeon without real friends who abuses medical students truly happy? Basic reasoning tells us no. He goes to bed a little sad, a little alone, and increasingly mean because of how his life has turned out. While yes, more money might give you the means to be happy, it doesn’t make you happy—that comes from how you live. So, when people say “money doesn’t buy happiness,” this is the silver lining they are referring to. In the same vein, Aristotle himself says that to flourish we need just enough money/resources to be happy, enough time away from work to reflect on life, and close friends1. These are all things even in the modern world we agree on: Maslow’s hierarchy is satisfied, we have “mental health time,” and we don’t let money drive our desires.
So whether or not you think Virtue Ethics is the right answer, it certainly hits on something intuitive.
The Problems
Like every branch of philosophy, Virtue Ethics is not without its flaws. First, it doesn’t actually tell you what to do. Being virtuous seems even more ambiguous than “doing your duty,” or “maximizing happiness.” Second, it would be massively culturally relative, so can virtues really be black and white? Third, if I learn to be virtuous by watching virtuous people, who define virtuous nature, which teaches people to be virtuous in the first place, isn’t this circular? How did they arrive there in the first place? This ambiguity is often cited as too much of a detractor, and is why it (academically) is the least popular of the “big three” Normative Ethical theories.
There are varying defenses of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, or newer variations which have branched off from Aristotle, adjusting for the weaknesses. Examples include Neo-Aristotelian, Agent-based, and MacIntyre’s Virtue Ethics3. But, rather than provide examples of them, or classic defense of Virtue Ethics, I will give an answer that I think Dr. Beyda would provide us, himself being our resident Virtue Ethicist.
Virtual Dr. Beyda’s Defense
Virtue Ethics is the very core of what medicine is, as its nature of virtue guides us and inspires us to be better for our patients. We spend every day making ambiguous decisions over how to treat people, and invoke courage, temperance, and justice in every interaction we have. We will inevitably be wrong at some point, and can reflect on each action as to how to be better next time. Our colleagues, too, are using this, and their triumphs and failures inform us as to how we should be. At the end of the day, there is someone in front of us who needs our help, and we don’t need to overthink trying to do the right thing.
Let’s Sum it all Up
An old and in many ways intuitive theory, Virtue Ethics is the concept of having a flourishing life by doing the right and virtuous thing. Unlike other theories, it’s focused on what kind of person we should be, rather than sets of rules or concepts to follow. As we pursue this flourishing, or Eudaimonia, we try to find the Aristotelian Mean, and express a Virtue, rather than its extremes, the Vices. We pursue this by using our Phronesis, or practical wisdom, to constantly improve upon our mistakes in moral situations. In doing so, we can live a truly happy life, not a facade that leaves us slightly empty at the end of the night. Although targeted for its ambiguity, Virtue Ethics purports to give us more room to grow.3
At last, we have finished with the “big three” of Normative Ethics! It has been a long ride, as we ripped apart the very fabric of what we knew as ethics, and built it back through our Metaethics series, and then returned to give ourselves a framework of what to do in our Normative Ethics. Now we can finally move on to Applied Ethics! This is the stuff we do every day in life, the situations we see, the gritty daily application of all this ambiguity. I am open to suggestions, whether it is situations people would request I analyze, or perhaps even other less popular Normative theories or Metaethical questions. Let me know if you have any requests, and as always, I hope to see you then!
Sources:
1. Aristotle’s Guide to the Good Life. Jared Henderson; 2024. Accessed November 14, 2025. https://youtu.be/GteRElF533Q?si=nvcAygQ-1e0Iuwjl.
2. Aristotle., Ross, W. D., & Brown, L. (2009). The Nicomachean ethics. Oxford University Press.
3. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
Travis Seideman
Travis Seideman is a member of the Class of 2026 at UACOM-P. He attended Northern Arizona University where he studied Exercise Science and Psychology. He is planning on practicing rural Family Medicine and pursuing a fellowship in Sports Medicine.