I wanted to lay out what I take to be the three main reasons to be a Neo-Aristotelian. For those who are interested in reading further, I highly recommend Reasons Without Rationalism and Knowing Right From Wrong by Kieran Setiya.
Broadly construed, the Neo-Aristotelian approach to ethics (NA) can be characterized by the claim that ethical and moral truths are truths about the nature of a given form of life. For instance, how a human being should act is simply a matter of how a flourishing instance of human life would act.
Neo-Aristotelianism offers the best account of the following subjects:
1. Moral-Knowledge
A viable account of our moral-knowledge must explain how our moral attitudes are reliably and non-accidentally true. The requirement for non-accidental reliability is needed in order to avoid the possibility of a mere coincidental sort of reliability that is insufficient for knowledge. For instance, suppose I were to take a pill that randomly determined my dispositions to form certain moral attitudes. In this case, even if my moral attitudes still happened to be reliably true, they would not count as knowledge because their reliable was merely accidental.
To qualify as knowledge, moral truths must, in some appropriate sense, help explain why we form reliably true moral attitudes or be explained on the same basis. Many popular forms of moral naturalism and non-naturalism characterize moral truths in a way that prevents them from directly explaining our moral attitudes and, consequently, cannot adequately account for our moral knowledge.
By contrast, Neo-Aristotelianism can meet the demand for non-accidental reliability in the following way: Generic truths about the nature of a given type can provide a non-necessitating explanation for truths about tokens of that type. One truth about human nature is that human beings normally form moral attitudes that reflect the practical dispositions of a flourishing human being. Since human nature determines ethical/moral truths and explains the moral attitudes of individual humans, it is no accident that those moral attitudes are reliably true. Consequently, Neo-Aristotelianism provides a satisfactory account of moral knowledge while many popular alternatives do not.
2. Moral Motivation
The second reason to endorse Neo-Aristotelianism is similar to the first. A core aim of any plausible ethical theory is to account for how and why moral truths as such explain our actions. An adequate theory must explain how it is possible for us to act morally because an action is the morally right thing to do. Even if an ethical theory can account for why we should act morally, it may nevertheless fail to provide a satisfactory account of why we do act morally.
For example, suppose I have an irreducible, non-natural moral reason to help someone in need. If the only reason why I am motivated to help people in need is because humans were naturally selected to have such a motivation, then irreducible, non-natural moral reasons themselves have no impact on why we act, even when we do act for moral reasons. In other words, even if we act for the right reasons, those reasons may play no role in an explanation of our practical motivations. We should prefer a theory which explains how it is no mere coincidence that we can be motivated by our moral reasons to act.
Neo-Aristotelian ethics provides this explanation by identifying the explanation of our practical motivations with the goodness of those motivations. The reason why an individual is moved to help someone because they are in need is, or can be, because human beings, by their nature, form such practical dispositions. Since, according to NA, acting for good reasons is just a matter of acting for reasons that a good instance of the human life form would act for, NA allows moral truths to explain why we act for good reasons.
3. The Standards Of Practical Reason
A plausible constraint on standards that determine what counts as a good F of some kind is what Kieran Setiya has called The Difference Principle:
“If Fs are a kind of G, and being a good F is not simply a matter of being an F that is a good G, there must be something in the distinctive nature of Fs to explain or illuminate the difference.”
With respect to human actions, the relevance of difference principle arises due to the fact that our motivations for acting are, at a minimum, human character traits. In the absence of further considerations, the standards for evaluating human character traits are determined by what traits are natural for human beings as such. In light of the difference principle, unless something about the nature of practical reasoning provides a unique standard for distinguishing good motivations for acting from bad motivations, they should be distinguished by appealing to human nature. In short, if NA is false, practical reason must supply a unique evaluative standard for practical motivations. The nature of practical reason provides no such unique standard, so NA is true.
Ethical rationalists have objected to this claim on the grounds that practical reasoning as such is constitutively directed towards what agents take to be good to do. If this were the case, good practical motivations would be determined by the nature of practical reasoning as such. However, ethical rationalism is false. It is perfectly possible for an agent to act for no reason at all or for a reason they do not take to be good. For instance, I might head to the cafe because it is my lunch break. In acting because it is my lunch break, I do not need to take my reason for acting to be good. Nevertheless, I am clearly still acting intentionally. Therefore, it is not the case that practical reason is constitutively directed towards what agents take to be good to do.
In conclusion, the difference principle, along with reflection upon the nature of practical reason, establishes that practical motivations should be evaluated, like other character traits, on the basis of human nature. Having good practical motivations and acting well are a matter of how a good human would act.
The three points presented above provide what are, to my mind, powerful evidence in favor of Neo-Aristotelianism. By providing a unified account of moral knowledge, moral motivation, and the standards of practical reasoning, NA succeeds where many popular alternatives fail.
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