Is Aristotle a Virtue Ethicist?

The chapter explores whether we should take Aristotle to be a virtue ethicist, understood as distinct from consequentialist and deontological approaches. For Aristotle the decisive questions whether virtue is prior to ethically good action or vice versa is equivalent to the question which mean is prior, the one characterising virtue or the one characterising good action. I argue that Aristotle would not seem to be a virtue ethicist because a) the definition of virtue in EN 2.6 tends towards priority of action, even if it also attributes an important role to the wise person, and b) an examination of the role of the good person in EN 3.4 confirms the priority of the good action over the virtuous state that aims at such actions. Aristotle’s status, however, need not be permanent: if virtue ethicists were to leave our classification of ethical systems aside to emphasise more what is distinctive about their approach — a sustained study of virtue — Aristotle would rightly be their forerunner.