"In much of twentieth-century moral philosophy, ethics was rebuilt ... [Once p]hilosophers ... abandoned the idea that things have natures or essences that determine what counts as their flourishing. ... morality [instead] had to be reconstructed in other ways: by appealing either to outcomes (consequentialism), or to rules (deontology), or to agreements (contractualism), or to sentiments (expressivism). The result was an ethics often detached from the way we ordinarily evaluate living things in the world.
"Neo-Aristotelian ethics [by contrast] is a deliberate return to an older starting point. ... [that] revives Aristotle’s central insight: that moral evaluation is a species of natural evaluation. To call a human being good is, in a deep sense, analogous to calling a wolf healthy, an oak tree flourishing, or a heart sound. Morality is not imposed from outside human life by rules or calculations; it arises from the kind of beings we are.
"This approach does not represent a nostalgic return to antiquity. It is a highly contemporary, analytically precise attempt to restore a metaphysical foundation that many modern ethical theories quietly lack. ...
"* Rights, dignity, and human nature
"Modern moral discourse frequently appeals to human rights and dignity, but often without explaining why humans possess them. Neo-Aristotelian ethics provides a grounding: humans have rights because of the kind of beings they are. Their rationality, sociability, and capacity for flourishing make certain forms of treatment incompatible with their nature.
"Thus rights are not abstract moral inventions, but discoveries about what respect for human life requires.
"* A return to realism
"Perhaps the most striking feature of neo-Aristotelian ethics is its realism. Moral judgements are not expressions of emotion or social convention. They are claims about how a certain kind of being ought to live in order to flourish.
"To say that cruelty is wrong is, on this view, as objective as saying that a plant deprived of sunlight is unhealthy. Both are evaluations grounded in the nature of the organism.
"This realism reconnects ethics with biology, psychology, and anthropology. It restores continuity between our understanding of life and our understanding of morality.
"* Conclusion: ethics restored to its natural home
"Neo-Aristotelian ethics offers a powerful alternative to modern moral theories that struggle to explain why morality has the authority it does. By returning to the idea that humans have a nature and that flourishing is measured against it, it makes moral evaluation intelligible in the same way that natural evaluation is.
"Ethics becomes neither rule-worship nor outcome-calculation, but a reflection on what it means to live well as the kind of creature we are.
"In doing so, neo-Aristotelian ethics does not merely revive Aristotle. It restores to moral philosophy a metaphysical foundation that allows morality to be seen, once again, as part of the natural order of things."
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