Marginalized Knowledge: An Agenda for Indigenous Knowledge Development and Integration with Other Forms of Knowledge

Introduction
Virtue ethics is a tradition, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle. It is also referred to as aretaic ethics, from Greek word arête, which means excellence or virtue. Other moral theories try to work out what the right or good thing to do is. According to utilitarianism or consequentialism; the right thing to do is to balance the consequences of an act in terms of the pain it inflicts about or the pleasure it promotes. Put differently, consequentialism maintains that for an act to be morally good or ethical, a great number of people must benefit from it and the lesser number must suffer from it. This is the case of majority rule kind of ethics. From a utilitarian point of view, the fact that the consequences of an act will maximize well-being of a greater number of people, and then the act is morally acceptable (minimize pain and maximize pleasure). For a deontologist, the act is morally justifiable if it meets the following three criteria:

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  It can be universalized; that is, act in such a way that by your own wills the maxim of your actions can be made into the universal rule. For example; if by your own will; you will that everybody (anywhere in the world) who finds a wallet which belongs to someone else they know should keep the wallet and use whatever is in it for themselves; then that will be fine. This is the Golden rule in practice.
  
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  Rule-based ethics: this implies that according to Kant’s deontic ethics one does what one’s is bound to do, then everything else is fine. For example; it is everyone’s duty to tell the truth. One is in a situation whereby telling the truth will endanger the lives of other; a deontologist will only look at one’s obligation to tell the truth in order to arrive at the conclusion that your actions were ethically justifiable.
  
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  Lastly, a deontologist will also look at the intention of the doer; if the intention was good then the act is morally defendable or justifiable. For example, a doctor who brings about the death of a mother of six, while his intention was to remove a cancer cell in the womb of this woman. Obviously, we would assume, that the intention was good, but the results were unforeseen and undesired therefore the doctor must be praised for his good intention.
  

For virtue ethicists this is not the case; what matters most is not primarily the result of a specific act; it is not also what counts as man’s duties or how acts can be universalized or not. For virtue ethicists, what counts is the character of the doer. Virtue ethics is the view that the foundation of morality is development of good character traits. Put differently, according to virtue ethics, the heart of morality is not found in actions or duties but in the person or agent performing the action(s). The personal character of a person is what matters. Ethics has to do with moral questions and these could be summarized into two moral questions. That is: “How ought I to act?” And the question of character that is: “What kind of person ought I to be?” Our concern here is with the question of character.

In simple terms for Aristotle, virtue is the mean between two vices, excess and deficiency. Aristotle suggests that virtue involves finding the proper balance between two extremes. For example, excess is for Aristotle, having too little of something. For instance, a woman has just moved into the new house; she fears mice, and she soon realized that there is a mouse in her new home. She plants ratex, clue on the floor, she goes around looking for cats from her neighbours; she buys traps all for one reason she wants the mouse dead. Let us agree under normal circumstances that this is regarded as fear of mice, in its extreme, and thus excess for Aristotle. The fear of mice for this woman is exaggerated. I am, therefore, arguing that Aristotle is advocating harmony and balance not mediocrity. On the other hand, to fear not that which is feared by every human is regarded by Aristotle as deficiency. In this way a balance between corwardness and foolhardiness is courage. Courage is, therefore, in Aristotle’s ethics a virtue or the mean between two extreme positions.