Virtue In Our Lives
A key aspect of the Aretaic idea of virtue is the fact that virtue is on a scale, where too much or too little is a vice. This idea is something that connects very strongly to the world we live in today. There is major polarization on most topics in today's world, especially when you're talking about politics, life is increasingly becoming "black and white". There are extremes everywhere and I think most people would agree that humanity is at its worst when it is at an extreme, whether it is political, social, or even something personal. I think that Aristotle and other more modern philosophers like Anscombe argue that the best way to live is somewhere in the metaphorical "gray area".
In G.E.M Anscombe's article "Modern Moral Philosophy" She picks apart some of the Deontic theories because they don't allow for accounting of circumstance, they are too rigid. She talks a great deal about how instead of "morally right" and "morally wrong" we should think in terms of "just" and "unjust". There needs to be some allowance for what the situation is, for there may be cases where doing something illegal, or "wrong" may be for the best and may be the most just course of action. This is what it means to live in the gray area, in my opinion, to do what is best and not what is defined as "right". I think this "gray area" embodies the idea of virtue being on a scale and being to a degree. I agree with the idea that virtue shouldn't just be reduced to whether an action is good or bad, it's not realistic since the world will always present difficult and ambiguous situations. In an ideal world where everything is perfect and nothing is ever horribly complicated, I think Deontic ideas of virtue would be perfect, but the world is not that way in my experience.
I never realized how much these modern notions of virtue appear all around and I think it is important to recognize virtue and what it means to you as an individual.
G.E.M. Anscombe
