Most Sensible Classic Category

After going through the readings for the week and trying to figure out which of the classic categories most fits how I make moral decisions and which one is more sensible, I learned that like most things, there is a grey area in which I use rationale from all 3 when making a fair amount of my decisions.

I would have to say that I think the most sensible is Virtue Ethics, since it argues that ones actions should reflect the character of said person.  If you want to believe that you are a moral person you must do moral things.  Whether or not somebody is watching.  In a perfect world I would think virtue ethics would be all that was needed.  But even Aristotle and Plato, the two philosophers most commonly mentioned in reference to the virtue eithics, realized argued that there was a constant battle for balance in the virtue ethics because certain virtues could lead to non virtuous activities.  An overabundance of courage could lead to recklessness.  Even the virtue of justice or even what the word just means is a thought that Plato cannot fully wrap his head around in The Republic.  Often times seeming to be almost sarcastic in the way he describes human nature as it relates to why people are just or why people truly obey the laws of society.  Claiming they do so more out of fear of having unjust things done to them than in actually wanting to follow the laws.

Where it relates to my own life, I found the duty based ethics to be my primary "go to" category.  The example of whether or not to speed on the way to class was particularly interesting to me since I live forty five minutes from campus on a good day and usually have to park a few blocks away due to the serious lack of parking during the current construction.  On almost a daily basis I have to use duty based ethics along with a dash of consequential ethics.  Duty based ethics is what our country and most modern Republics are founded upon.  Individual rights require a respect from other individuals in order to be fully attained.  I can have the right to not be stolen from or beat up but if there is a person in society that does not follow that way of thinking, my rights actually mean very little.  Having said that, I understand that speeding is against the law.  But as a former police officer, I also know that the chances of a police officer pulling me over in a major metropolitan area for going about 6-7 miles over the speed limit are almost non existent.  I still use duty based ethics to not go faster than what I refer to as the "unwritten speed limit", but use consequentialist ethics to determine if the risk is worth the reward of not only being on time to class, but not being the guy who shows up late, sweating, and having to knock on the door of the class while everybody stares. 

There are certainly times when I use Virtue ethics while making decisions but those are usually decisions that meet two requirements.  First is that it is a serious issue being dealt with.  Life or Death or something similar.  Second is that it is not something that will necessarily effect me directly.  Meaning that if I want to do what I think is best for other people who are in serious need, I tend to use Virtue Ethics.  My best example would be my time in the military, specifically my time spent deployed to the Middle East.  I was tasked with leading other soldiers and had to make decisions that often would have no bearing on my life whatsoever but would no doubt have very lasting impacts on others around me.  I would do my best to maintain the balance that Aristotle and Plato spoke of and that St. Thomas Aquinas took even farther with his four laws.  My soldiers and I went out of our way to not cause harm to anybody unless it was blatantly clear that they meant to do us harm.  I personally went out of my way not to send my soldiers out somewhere without proper guidance, training, or preparation in order to keep them from being injured.  By balancing courage and recklessness, just and unjust, at that moment the best or at least the most suitable classic category was virtue ethics.

So I guess after all of this ranting, I've come to the conclusion that what is most sensible or what suits me best has more to do with my environment than me.  I would fully expect the moral compass of somebody living in a worse neighborhood than mine or a worse country than ours to not point the same direction as mine when I sit in my house in this country.