Virtue theory is an ethical system which emphasises a holistic approach to being a good person, rather than a consequentialist or deontological one. As the idea of morality is centred on the moral agent, rather than the actions they perform, value statements such as “It was good that he did so.” are only meaningful when considering what kind of a person the action made the agent. It is essentially a pragmatic effort to deal with the valuable characteristics of individuals in their society without appealing to absolute morals. Due to this any evaluation of virtue theories must be from the frame of reference of the society it applies to, so for us how useful they are as a model of our contemporary morality. The modern world is a pluralistic one, not one that Nietzsche would describe as being ‘dogmatic’. Subcultures with different sets of values exist within an umbrella of ‘Western culture’, despite the best efforts of Jihadists and bigoted religious evangelicals alike. A better model, therefore, is one which provides room for this in the virtues of people, and of Nietzsche and Aristotle the better model is without a doubt Nietzsche.

The first major difference between Aristotle and Nietzsche is the contrast between the central tenets of their views. In Aristotle’s ethical system, it is considered undeniable that being a happy person is the ultimate aim for everyone. ‘The good life’, or eudaimonia pursued for its own sake, an ‘activity or series of actions of the soul’. This is argued for on the grounds that with our activities we strive for consequences, but that these consequences are for further consequences, not as ends in themselves. From this Aristotle deduced that either there is an infinite regress of intention until death, or that people strive for something worth striving for in itself. However Aristotle is vague on the details of this good life, but justifies himself on the grounds that ‘questions of conduct and expedience have little fixity about them when as questions of what is healthful.’, although he does lay out a series of arguments in favour of eudaimonia rather than Plato’s perfect good, pleasure or other such arguments. However, of the two options Aristotle gives, the nihilism of infinite regress seems quite acceptable.

This is in sharp contrast to Nietzsche, who holds that a prized person is one with strength of will. Happiness seems to be inconsequential when compared to a person’s ability to construct or to force others to see as he does. Unlike Aristotle, who was firmly entrenched in the aristocracy of his time, Nietzsche was an outcast both from German academic and social circles – a sick man who took to the Alpine air in order to alleviate the symptoms of his illness. Rather than see the world in terms of gravity or momentum, he instead prescribes a totally alien way of seeing things. Nietzsche sees life as an organic process, a struggle between wills in which one will overpowers another. An example given is that of a parasitic tropical plant, with climbs up, lives off and gradually suffocates another, exploiting it in order to thrust the most beautiful of flowers above the canopy.

At first these seems a horrible distortion of what is actually going on, however it is perfectly possible to say that Nietzsche only made this case in order to show us that all of our readings of reality – even supposedly objective ones such as science, are in fact just subjective ones with pre-existing suppositions. Is this fair of him? On the one hand logically everything we do does seem to be unjust, but at the same time to leap from that to “everything is as wrong as everything else” does seem like a step too far. Somehow I doubt we’d be able to live our lives not know if water would boil when heated, or if two different people watching the same football match will have the same result. But at the same time this does seem to be one of Nietzsche’s moments of intuitive genius. Pre-supposing the emotivism which developed a century after him, Nietzsche seems to be pressing for the view that with some things there is no objective position, just a series of points of view. While I’m not sure if I’d take his flower example into, say, a debate on the fundamental particles that exist, I do believe that his position is perfectly defendable when discussing art of morality.

Compared to Aristotle, with his teleological basis for the nature of man, I find Nietzsche’s position to be the stronger of the two. Aristotle presupposes a purpose for mankind which I find it quite difficult to agree with, especially in a world dominated by the idea that our genes are random and deterministic. However the question still remains whether the magnanimous man is essentially a teleological or a political creature. Aristotle’s virtues require a level of freedom and therefore a level of wealth that is impossible under certain circumstances. Craft, skill and manual labour have no place in Aristotle’s view of things, and so he acts as if people have a nature more fixed than it is reasonable to suppose, unlike Nietzsche. In conclusion Nietzsche’s vision of mankind is the more reasonable of the two, although it may not be the more desirable.

An area of comparison is that they both believe that people can be of unequal worth. However Nietzsche, unlike Aristotle, sees there as being different sets of acceptable behaviour for people of different worth. Aristotle on the other hand sees everyone as able to train themselves and their virtues into becoming a better person, Nietzsche disagrees. Possibly due to his Lamarkism, Nietzsche gives the impression that the vast majority of people are simply things to be exploited, unable to progress into anything better. Aristotle makes it clear that having the right virtues is more important that having willpower, because a virtuous person will behave in the right ways out of habit, but a person who relies on willpower only has to slip up once in order to be a bad person. Nietzsche though holds willpower to be of the utmost importance, as a person with willpower can go through things a weaker one cannot, can bend other people to his will and, most vitally, can cope with more of the truth than others. This is not to say that Aristotle leaves no place for willpower – he makes it clear that a person shown to be curbing their emotions and using willpower is to be greatly congratulated. This will act as a reward and encourage them to try and behave in the same manner and practice being virtuous more often until it has become habit.

Out of the two, I believe that Aristotle’s advice is more prudent. Nietzsche’s is simple too cold, cruel and sociopathic to get anyone anywhere, whereas Aristotle gives us a simple guide for how to behave. Further more he is a lot less dismissive of people than Nietzsche is, and it is taken as a given today that every individual is valuable.

But both of the two philosophers tell us that people are fundamentally unequal. Aristotle, unsurprisingly for someone whose contemporary social order is based on the ownership and exploitation of slaves, takes this as a given. Nietzsche, on the other hand, repeatedly argues against the ‘new ideas’ of socialism, democracy and communism which emerged from the Enlightenment. He thinks that they are both wrong in their arms and assumptions but also, and more crucially for Nietzsche, erroneous in that they are mediocritising and debase the value of individual people. However Nietzsche thought people were still unequal, only that those systems dragged the best down to the level of the rest.

The end product of Aristotle’s system of virtues is the magnanimous man. As people are essentially social creatures, the magnanimous man is the one who gets the utmost from being part of a social context. He has friends of equal worth, is liberal with money when he feels circumstances would make it benevolent (for, according to Aristotle, to be great one must have the material assets to do great things). He encounters danger and trouble with tranquillity and firmness, while also holding distain for those who are unjust and mean.

On the other hand the primary virtue of Nietzsche’s moral, or rather amoral, conclusion – the Free Spirit, is how much truth they can handle. Nietzsche sees them as accepting, even embracing, of the demands put on them by having to forge their own morality. Amicability is replaced by the ravages of solitude, openness by mask wearing. The uncaring attitude of the magnanimous man is in sharp contrast to the ‘Ganges like thought’ of the new philosopher.

The problem of freedom is pressing for both, especially Nietzsche as he hopes that the free spirits will be able to make a new moral code for themselves. However the differences between the two’s approach is considerable. Nietzsche responds by blurring over, partly due to an ambiguity in the term ‘responsibility’ (in German ‘Veranwortlichkeit’) and its role in the arguments over freedom. Essentially Nietzsche’s ideas seem to rely on the existence of free will for individuals; something although Nietzsche said free will is only thought to exist because of the ease with which nearly anyone can disprove it. However for him to say that someone is responsible for such and such can mean that they deserve punishment/reward for it, and to be that Nietzsche does give blame to those who he sees as deserving of punishment for their actions is for me evidence that he believes that they ought to have responsibility for their actions, and so were free to make them. Nietzsche uses the terminology of freedom in a positive manner in describing the Free Spirit as he seeks to unsettle his audience with the uncanny idea that autonomy and free will are achievements of great difficulty, rather than matters of fact.

What is interesting to take from this, then, is how Nietzsche views individuals who have acted as no more than tongues for their time, or products of their ancestors, with great distaste. An example of this is the Master/Slave morality distinction he makes. To Nietzsche Judaism and its progeny have managed to succeed at the expense of older forms of ethics, those that he views as more ‘aristocratic’, but are still clamped to the life denying manner of their origin. Nietzsche analyses religion as a psychological feeling and as a social incentive, but one that impedes the flourishing of most people. However he does see Slave Morality as a useful opiate for the masses, teaching them self control and allowing them to tolerate their miserable existences.

But is this fair of Nietzsche? Many theologians have criticised him for attacking a simplified view of religion. For example he completely discounts the role suffering plays in many monotheistic faith systems, such as Catholicism. However even if Nietzsche is wrong in his criticisms, his method shows an embracing of a historiographical method that Aristotle finds impossible to do due to the constraints of his context. For this we should praise Nietzsche above Aristotle, while at the same time discounting the aims of his essay when there are better criticisms of religion to be found.

This Free Will is used by Nietzsche in a very similar manner as it was by the existentialists of the Twentieth Century, who held that a person is bought into the world without having any definite purpose. Nietzsche’s repeated emphasis of this precedence of existence before essence only strengthens the respect he earned, and has not led to him being seen as a proto-existentialist. It was Nietzsche’s ability to rise above the views of the time and look ahead to the existentialists and the emotivists who came to prominence over half a century after his death that mean attention is justly paid to him, despite the more repugnant aspects of his ideas.

Another difference is that whereas the society that Aristotle aims for is obvious – a glowing and healthy Polis state, the same cannot be said for Nietzsche. He criticises those sceptics who fail to provide anything new and useful for society, only demanding proof for other people’s ideas, but on the other hand Nietzsche lavishes praise on Critics, who he sees as the next best things to real Free Thinkers. He sees the role of critic as a constructive one, aiming at a vision and a useful tool in reaching that as they take decisions on how to get there. Ultimately, however, it is for the New Philosophers to make the society of their choosing, having experimented in moralities first. Rigorous in their thoughts, Nietzsche says that they will look at deliberation as part of experiencing life. This in many ways pre-empts the existentialism of the 1940’s, who said that to be alive was to create values.

The details are horrific though. Nietzsche embraces Lamarckism, calling on Victorian society to breed a new race of geniuses, to create social hierarchies exploiting the herd for the benefit of a minority. Fortunately, however, it is possible to discard this without losing Nietzsche’s valid points. His points on the role of nurture are marked only by their absence, and I hope that in this modern world of genetics we can discard this facet of his thinking without doing too much damage to the rest of it. There do seem to be positive features of this section – his urges for people to redefine themselves seem perfectly in place in a modern world of character types and introspection, while Nietzsche’s embracing of the spirit of the ‘Visigoth strength of will’ will hardly seem out of place with the New Age movement. To expect Nietzsche to rise above the limits of his contemporary society all the time is too much to ask for just one man; - this mistake of his is forgivable.

Which then, of the two, should we prefer today? Immediately the choice seems obvious – Aristotle’s conception of the pinnacle of man would certainly be the more agreeable of the two to spend an hour at the pub with. But is this enough? Can we condemn Nietzsche on aesthetic grounds, or because his conclusions frighten us outside of out moral comfort zones? In my opinion it isn’t in a way conclusive enough to satisfy Nietzsche’s critics. He would be happy with his ideas of the New Philosopher being dismissed as a personal point of view – he says in Beyond Good and Evil of his sceptics – “you’ll be eager to raise that objection, won’t you – then, all the better.” However by rejecting it his designs, those who discard him are forced to accept that such things are a matter of personal preference, and not part of a dogmatic way of things. In effect, snubbing Nietzsche on this point is embracing him on a wider one.

In any case, if you also reflect on modern, pluralistic and tolerating society when you compare the two the flaws in Aristotle’s system become evident. His idea of the magnanimous man is based on a culture with shared aims and practices, in which anyone who rejects those aims can be dealt with by exile of capital punishment. Today, however, such practices are impossible. When criticising the Virginia Tech shooter, the media focuses on the evil harm he did to society and individuals, rather than whether or not his rejection of the general public’s system of morals was wrong. Nietzsche’s existentialism seems to fit a lot more snugly into this way of doing things, although he would no doubt have been highly critical of the modern world. Although I think most people would prefer to be able to embrace Aristotle above Nietzsche in a way that, for example, MacIntyre urges us to, I also believe that as we live in a society of subcultures, doing so is simply impossible, and so Nietzsche is more valuable to us today, and so is therefore the more valuable of the two when addressing the moral society of today.

Yet another of the areas of difference is the role of the community in the virtues of the individual. In the final section of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche addresses the question of nobility directly. According to him real nobility has become damaged and diminished to the point on being indistinguishable “under this heavy, overcast sky of the beginning of the rule of the plebs.” Nietzsche believed that existence without noble individuals would be miserable, inartistic and uncreative – an intellectual wasteland after the levelling of all distinction.

However it is obvious that this suffocation of talent and celebration of life will only be felt by the minority who already experience such joys. The majority of people won’t see any such change at all – a comparison would be the change in fashion after the French Revolution, when the elaborate and ostentatious fashions of the Royal Court were destroyed, to be replaced by the same sombre and ill fitting trousers of the country gentry. The majority of people would have noticed no change, unaware of the styles they were changing. So too will the herd be unaware of the genius they are constricting – or even alert of it, but only as a threat. Nevertheless, in order to achieve the splendour of Nietzsche’s virtues a minority will have to use and exploit the majority of people, however he argues that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather the negative feeling we have towards words like exploitation is part of our own adherence to herd morality – and the degradation of noble values. As a consequence of this much of Nietzsche’s work can be read as having the same sort of aims as Mill’s – as a call for the end of the constraints imposed on an individual by the populace.

Aristotle on the other hand seems to suggest that it is happiness as part of the community that is essential for a flourishing individual. In Greek society being exiled from a city didn’t just been the loss of property, but far more importantly the loss of a personal network that helped to sculpt and define who you were. To Aristotle is possible to live a life outside of the environment he enjoyed, however it wouldn’t be a fulfilled one. Further more the kind of virtues that Aristotle makes a case in favour of are ones that help the entire community through benevolence and generosity of spirit, rather than just the individual. While it certainly wouldn’t be fair to say that Aristotle is a communitarian in the modern sense, he certainly suggests that the good of the community is the good of the individual.

However how fair is it to say that the rejection of his hierarchical state is just because of an inability to think outside of the box? Without resorting to arguments of absolute morality, it’s difficult to see how we could refute the claim that repulsion to his ideas is just social indoctrination. At the same time it would also be possible deny any need for moral argument, and say that the bias against it means that practically the world won’t change to fit Nietzsche’s ideals. Still, just because the modern world seems unlikely to embrace his ideals this doesn’t mean that his principles are not sound, which is a contrast with Aristotle’s view, blinkered by his time and place. Since Nietzsche was wise enough to divide his vision for the future and his existentialist views, he seems to outshine Aristotle.

Another difference between them is that Aristotle implies that with good virtue there won’t be impossible situations, and as a consequence of this all situations involving conflict are as a result of bad character. Although he acknowledges that there are grey areas in which we shouldn’t judge an individual – for example if they are acting under duress, he fails to acknowledge that there can be impossible situations, and that it is often impossible to know which choice will be best. This is at odds with much of contemporary thought. Nietzsche even goes so far as to divide morality into three eras – the last of which is the extra-moral period, in which we don’t hold individuals responsible, but rather address the subconscious causes of their behaviour. Aristotle’s virtues can’t take into account a traumatic childhood or other responsibility alleviating factors, which we find to be very important in contemporary society, and because of this I believe that yet again Nietzsche gives a more in-focus picture of morality that is useful to us today.

Hovering above all of this, though, is the questions of how far do all theories of Virtue accurately account for what we consider morality to be today? On the one hand, it takes account of emotions, unlike the deontology or consequentialism of the Enlightenment theories. It is true that it is important to feel as well as do the right thing. It is also fair to say that it we find that the idea of wanting to do well, rather than feeling compelled to do so, is desirable. However it is also acceptable to criticise Virtue Theory for leaving out people who fail to fit into the model it provides; - Happy Jihadists, thriving rapists and socially adjusted national socialists. I find it difficult to believe that any theory which says that mixes people and value judgements can be at ease with this. But then again if I were to look at this from a Nietzschian perspective, my context tells me that they can’t, because they are evil, and I fail to see otherwise. For example certain traits that we now consider to be wrong, such as being a sociopath, can be valuable in an evolutionary sense, as they allow an individual to deal with those who oppose him more permanently, and since those who oppose them are less likely to share genes, ultimately killing them will favour their own genes. On the other hand there seem to be certain, society destroying extremes that Virtue Theory simply can’t handle, like familial cannibalism, or killing ones own children. Certainly, the theory seems strangely ill at ease with the world as we see it.

In conclusion then both theories lay claim to being able to account for the current way society should operate, however where Aristotle is superficial and blinkered Nietzsche is repulsive. Fortunately Nietzsche separated his theories of society and human existence from his idealisation of the future world, which is sure to be rejected out of hand, unlike Aristotle. As a result Aristotle appears as the weaker of the two when considered as how useful it is as a model of our contemporary world. None the less, all theories of Virtue seem to come across certain issues that it finds difficult to convincingly answer. Ultimately Fredreich jacks and slaps the old Greek.