Why Be Virtuous?

[regular.joe]

To be, or act virtuous is better then to not be, or not act virtuous. It doesn't matter why.

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

It doesn't matter why.

The why matters a great deal. The why is not simple a motivation, but a definition. Each of the statements above indicates a different meaning of what virtue actually is. Defining virtue through one of the above statements will lead a person to different moral choices when confronted with an ethical dilemma.

Take heroic self-sacrifice (woman falls on grenade to save the lives of strangers). Plato, Ockham, and Kant would all say that this is a virtuous act. Rand would say it's an immoral act, since any act that ends one's own life is the ultimate abdication of self-interest. Singer would say that it's not necessarily virtuous - it depends on the degree of greater benefit that flows out of the survival of those several strangers rather than the survival of that one heroic self-sacrificer.

The question of why be virtuous is essential to the question of how to be virtuous.