Aristotle 's Philosophy On Good

Aristotle starts off in his essay explaining the definitions of Good, Primacy of Statecraft and the study of Ethics. He defines good as where all things are to be aimed, for example health. He then defines Statecraft as citizens of a state, a country, and of the world need to do good for their own good but more importantly for the good of the state. He also characterizes various types of good. Finally, the definition on study of Ethics. This talks about the pure excellence of justice that involves the disagreements and agreements of uncertainty and certainty. Aristotle also talks about happiness and where a certain

Aristotle is a dichotomist, which means that he believes that human beings consist of two major elements, the body and the soul. The body is the physical matter that one can see, where the soul is the feelings and desires one has; the things you cannot touch. Aristotle believes that we have three major elements of the soul which are pleasures, desires, and feelings. These elements are where we find our virtues. In book one of The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses that virtue is the highest human good. This being said, there are two qualifications that the highest good must have, “The good must be something final and self-sufficient,” (Aristotle, 10). By final Aristotle means that which is in desirable in itself, and not sought for the sake of something else. By self-sufficient Aristotle means something that does not depend on other’s bestowing it. Aristotle gives us the sense that he believes that politics is about the human good and one cannot begin to practice politics or political science well; unless one has the idea of what the good actually is. In book one; with many arguments to support his theory, he tells the reader that the good is intellectual and moral virtue. One of his arguments is he believes that you need a moderate amount of both health and wealth to be able to fully develop the virtue. He sees these two aspects as a form of equipment because if one is constantly ill or does not have a sufficient amount of money there will be many obstacles in reaching

The philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant express the sources of virtuous and dutiful actions in a similar, yet different way. Both philosophers agree that an action has moral worth, when it is preformed for its own sake. However, the difference contains a more significant meaning. Aristotle believes that pleasure can be included when preforming an action; while Kant believes that a duty is preforming the right action without the need of inclinations.

Aristotle believes happiness is the purpose of life because, a human, when giving reasons and opinions to why they make the decisions between numerous choices, people will conclude to the same ideas, which is whatever choice allows that person to achieve the most happiness. Aristotle rightfully concludes that, the support of our decision making is that people will base their moral decisions off the amount of happiness they receive compared to the trouble of performing the action. The center of our decision-making must be a state of character within us, in this case, that weights our delights against our burdens. Aristotle also states finding balance is key, but hard to obtain. Anyone can become angered, gives or spends money, with the right motives, at the right time, the right person, but it is not for everyone, and he says it is not easy. He says goodness is altruistically hard to find. Thus, according to Aristotle, “It is difficult to live the virtuous life primarily because it is often difficult to find the proper mean between the extremes.”

Aristotle suggests politic science is the master science and all other science guiding people to what they should and should not do. Politic Science envelops all science and help mentor individuals to the ultimate good.•

Aristotle searches his answer to the question, what is happiness? In order to find his answer, he places constraints on what can count as happiness and searches the function of a man He proclaims good must be something final, and self-sufficient. Good is seen different in different activities and art, but it is resent for the sake of which everything is done. Aristotle searches what the good than is in each. In medicine it is health, in strategy victory, in architecture in a house and so on from all the other arts but in every task it describes the end of that task, since the point in all of them is for the sake of the end that everything is done. Thus, if there is something that is the end of all the things done by human action this can be the predictable of, “good.”

Subsequently, Aristotle recognizes the good because of pleasure associated with it; for Kant this is insignificant. All that matters is our duty, and all pleasure that comes along with it is not good in itself. However, for Aristotle, the very mark of good action is that we also experience pleasure in doing it--even if the rational principle is the most important part. In the end, Aristotle would probably agree with Kant that it is more important for an action to be morally correct than pleasant. Yet, for Aristotle we must develop habits that lead to a good state of character out of which we act well, whereas for Kant we act well by developing a good will that refers outside of ourselves, to a moral law.

How similar are Aristotle’s and Kant’s accounts of moral goodness? Throughout antiquity philosophers have deliberated over the nature of morality postulating questions such as; how should one act, what are the characteristics of a good person, and subsequently what the motivations for pursuing such a path are. Two of the most influential thinkers of all time, Aristotle and Immanuel Kant have provided contrasting conclusions to the question of what is means to be a good person. Aristotle’s reasoning centred on the idea of; “the exercise of virtue, or excellent human (social) functioning” and Kant’s in; “the grounding of moral obligation in practical rational nature”.

In the ideal state, the ideal ruler will be a philosopher ruler who will possess the knowledge of goodness. This knowledge of goodness will stem from a nature of truthfulness, an unwillingness to falsehood, and from love of truth.

“The duty to promote the highest good is not a particular duty at all, but the sum of all our duties derived from the moral law” (Rohlf, 2010). We have a choice to want to conceive the highest good; we must want to achieve it. We must truly want to achieve that highest good. Both Kant and Aristotle would say that each of their thinking’s is flawed. Aristotle’s ethics as a system of morality is not recognized by Kant. “Morality, for Kant, had to be self-legislating or autonomous: it must be what a purely rational will would legislate for itself” (Lear, 1988, p 155). Kant’s thinking about morality is more personal than it is for Aristotle. Aristotle’s is personal because it is for yourself, your

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book: On the Good he comes to the conclusion that the good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue. In order to understand how he came to this conclusion, we must retrace and further understand his arguments.

Aristotle points out that men look at the apparent good but may not have control over their appearance. I disagree with this argument because we are all responsible for our actions and the end results of them. All men are aiming for happiness in the end and when they do good motives, in the end what will appear to him is something good. The appearance ultimately depends on the person’s character. For example, if someone forgets their wallet in a store, someone who has a kind heart will try and find the person or report it, while someone who is not kind will either take the money out the wallet, not return it to the person or report it. The apparent good will appear different for these two people because of their different characters.

Having a “good” life can be described by general qualities of trust, love, compassion, respect, and loyalty. As Aristotle has similarly interpreted, doing good and just actions are only just if the intent to be good is present. Doing unjust actions is only considered unjust if the intent follows the action. This theme or idea to me, seems to be common knowledge and reason that should be universally accepted as the way to live a good life. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines happiness as the “good” for every human being, consisting of virtues that make up or characterize the human soul. Through the notion of happiness as an end in itself, a clear understanding of the true meaning can be acquired. According to Aristotle, any activity seeks out an ultimate end. This ultimate end or goal is happiness, and this can be interpreted through the idea that happiness is never used as a means to another

Aristotle is right in rejecting the life of pleasure because the ultimate goal in the life of humans is happiness. The pursuit of pleasure can interfere with nobility and virtue. Aristotle considers the feeling of happiness as an activity rather than a state and therefore for a person to live well as happily, he/she needs to possess the right virtues to lean towards a specific disposition or a specific way of life. As well, Aristotle is right to reject the pleasure as the highest good (Annas 366). This is because while pleasure is without any doubt good, it cannot be regarded as the highest good and therefore not the only good. Various examples can be drawn from the world to indicate that pleasure is not the highest good. For instance, more

When talking about Aristotle and his argument for the claim that is the excellence in rational human function about being the ultimate good is, to Aristotle he believed we should aim for life and action. As to say for one to have function and activity, the good and the will is brought upon that to make it a function. To discover human good, we need to figure out the function of a human being. Just a bus driver, an artist, a student and in general, for all things that have a function or activity, but then with the questions can man not have a function? A 'life of the rational element' also has two meanings, we must state that life in the sense of activity is what we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of the term”. He states that