Aristotelian ethics

Aristotelianism is centrally concerned with the good life, and with the moral and intellectual virtues as constituents of such a life. Therefore, Aristotelian practical philosophy characteristically relates claims about what ought to be done to claims about what is good for human beings.

In this, Aristotelianism differs from such modern moral philosophies as utilitarianism, contractarianism, and Kantianism. Nonetheless, there are also considerable differences between ethicists who characterize their own theories as Aristotelian. Those who elaborate a non-naturalistic particularism sometimes seem to disagree fundamentally from those who base Aristotelian practical philosophy in a universalistic account of human nature, Amongst the latter, the disagreements between those who do and those who do not express their universalism in terms of natural law are often striking.