The first part is due to Aristotle, the second part is due to Plato. I do not think that the difference was settled. People tend to follow one or the other paradigm.

The virtuous agent is one who tends to act in accordance with virtue, but a virtuous agent is not perfect and can make mistakes or even occasionally succumb to temptation. Virtue is the prior notion.

Karl Pfeifer, thanks! But where did this notion of virtue come from? From the moral exemplar, as Zagzebski and Anscombe suggest? But where did they get the notion of virtue from? By this reasoning, could virtue have been anything at all? (becoming arbitrary)

Louise Moakes For the origins of the concept of virtue, and of moral concepts generally, I favor an evolutionary account. However, now that we have such concepts, I think there is a logical or conceptual priority of the concept of virtue over the concept of actions in accordance with virtue. The story of how such concepts originated and how we learn them can be different. But to use that story as answering the logical question would be to commit the genetic fallacy.

Certainly, we cannot solve the dilemma conclusively with human reason. But what seems to me plausible and reasonable with regard to values and highest values in distinction to the empirical world is this (if one follows New Kantianism in its corresponding separation): No ethical ought can be derived from empirical being. Nothing is right just because it is. Why should it be morally automatically right that big fish eat little fish, especially if one is a little fish? Values and resulting propositions of a moral ought can only be founded from other (higher) propositions of ought, they are therefore in the last consequence only capable of (religious or formal logical) confession and not of cognition (if this premise is followed, then we almost inevitably end up with a moderate ethical relativism).

But if nothing is right just because it is, then nothing seems right or virtuous just because someone does it. "Zeitgeist" would probably agree from time to time ... Just my 2 cts.

I think I want to go back a little bit.

Socrates thought that knowledge was the good, and that the good once known generated virtuous acts; having known the good it would have been impossible to escape and therefore a moral error would depend on the absence of knowledge.

The virtuous agent who performs virtuous gestures has therefore already come to understand the good (for himself and others) and this depends on the character, on how he was educated, on the personal reflective attitude.

Socrates' first principle was "never do injustice", and was flexible to the situation, as shown by the example of Cephalus restitution of the arms, Book I Republic.

Although I like the question, it seems to become a shaky or perhaps a false dilemma. Are we to think of persons as embodying a singular virtue such as courage or justice (or piety)? Don't they need the whole package (as Plato seemed to wrap a package of four in the Republic)?

If we are with Aristotle, the neo-virtuous person (a youth) does an act because she recognizes someone else as a virtuous role model and wants to make herself in that image and thinks that the role model would make a particular choice. Thus, the neo-virtuous is practicing to build a habit.

The already virtuous persons need not think about (a) the virtuous thing to do; they probably think about what is best to do. I doubt that they have to think about (b): which choice is more virtuous.

They need not think about (a) because they perceive it right off--the way N. R. Hanson says trained scientists see phenomena after training, and because they have the whole package of virtues. However, a fully virtuous person may need to think about (b) because virtues come in degrees (some people are more courageous than others and some more just and some more self-restrained, etc.). But wouldn't be strange to ask oneself "Which choice demands more courageous?" Does "Which choice is more ethical?" make sense?

Some authors have suggested that the question is bogus in Euthyphro because the Gods would not do any bad action (as Socrates seemed to say in the Republic when he outlawed poetry from the ideal state). PS. I do not know how to post an essay on Researchgate, but would like to. Can you tell me how to do it? Email = [email protected] Ed Erde

https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2018/10/absurd-wisdom-an-apology-for-euthyphro/

In my opinion, the matter is to be in practice the morality and the virtue; all the others are superfluous and without a termination.

@Louise Moakes I think Pfeifer is right that virtue is the prior notion. I would also add that human nature is prior to virtue because virtues are for perfecting a nature (that is the telos). If humans had wings, those who were better flyers would have a kind of virtue or excellence (arete). But humans don't have wings, and so that kind of virtue is not applicable to us. However, once you throw God out and have non-rational and blind processes (evolution) determine human nature I think ethics is effectively gutted. This is because now the only telos left (if we want to continue to talk that way) is survival. But all sorts of things we would normally condemn in ethics classes can be justified in the name of survival. In addition, human reason, as a product of evolution, might be helpful for survival but that is no guarantee it will be helpful in philosophical domains. As Richard Joyce once said “[O]ur moral beliefs are products of a process that is entirely independent of their truth, which forces the recognition that we have no grounds one way or the other for maintaining these beliefs. They could be true, but we have no reason for thinking so.” Richard Joyce, The Evolution of Morality (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006), 211. Finally, it is not even clear that something resembling genuine freedom of choice, which is a pre-condition for morality, can emerge through the process of evolution, when evolution is understood in an atheistic and materialist way.

What was first: the egg or the hen? Dear Louise, we are at a time when the pandemic puts us faced with enormous ethical dilemmas in relation to economic, political and scientific values, discussing the ways in which crises and the lives of its citizens can be addressed in a society, therefore moral sensitivity, bioethic reasoning and scientific knowledge are tested in the face of crisis-time decision-making , fear, anguish, despair, of what we do, what act is virtuous, who does it per se? And who says he's virtuous? From what is said morality and the human act for Aristotle is what is in the soul is a way of being or an activity. And since activity is better than the way of being, and the best activity than the best way of being, and that virtue is the best way to be, then the activity of the virtue of the soul is the best. But happiness was also the best; then happiness is the activity of a good soul. Aristotelian virtue is the source of the best actions and passions of the soul; it is able to provide us to perform the best acts and to act, well and always better, according to the right reason that is chosen from an intellectual provision called prudence; responsible for uniting knowledge and action. Being virtuous is learned by exercising good habits, with training, with experience and time to exercise in them. Moreover, actions according to virtue will in themselves be pleasant if virtuous man judges righteously; this is how happiness for the Estagirita lies in living and acting well being the activity of the good man, for himself: good, pleasant and happy, so it is directly related to the virtue and actions of the virtuous man.

Everyone has their own way of thinking and understanding that it is virtue and virtuous act, what it is about is what kind of human beings we are and what is the legacy to future generations.

I agree there are things prior to virtue, the acquisition of memory would be one of these I suspect. For example, I am led to believe that before we had trial by jury we had trial by combat. The concepts of property and ownership also in all likelihood arose before our predecessors discovered a need for virtue. Hard lessons and good recall might have encouraged the habituation of a temperament consistent with virtuous behaviour and by inference virtuous thinking - if we follow Occam’s principle in searching for a likely cause that is. In my reckoning the virtues have been created over the generations painstakingly through the struggle and sacrifice of our ancestors who gave shape and substance to human society and, by trial and error created the standards, the rights and duties, which govern us.

الفاعل الفاضل يفعله لانه فعل فاضل تأمر به الاديان السماوية