Nicomachean Ethics By Aristotle

Without a healthy active mind, a person has trouble deciding and reasoning on his own. Sergio Petraroja explains that, ¡§the powers issuing in the activities that are characteristically human are the powers of reason and free choice¡¨ (Sergio Petraroja, p. 129). Leisure, which is viewed as a state of mind or a way of perceiving experiences, has five major elements that require the aspects of a healthy mind and body. These include: intrinsic motivation, perceived freedom, perceived competence, flow, and playfulness. Intrinsic motivation refers to self-determined behavior that results in the satisfaction of the individual¡¦s internal needs. This point is more focused on maintaining a healthy mind. A person with a healthy mind has the ability to reason, and therefore can determine what it is that intrinsically motivates him. Perceived freedom requires both a healthy mind and body. If one does not maintain a healthy body through recreation, then that person may see himself as having poor health and not possessing certain abilities that allow him the freedom of participating in activities. Perceived competence is an element that also requires a healthy mind and body. This is evident in that, in order for a person to feel they can do something or perform a task, they must possess the appropriate mental competence and physical competence that the act requires of them. Flow is an element that requires a mental capacity. One must cognitively feel

The way in which Aristotle begins Nicomachean Ethics is with the statement “Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision seems to seek some good.” (Aristotle Bk.1, Ch.1). This is a fitting way to begin, as it addresses exactly what the entire book hopes to convey. While at this point in the novel, readers remain unaware what the good that he is referring to means, it becomes clearer and clearer as it progresses why this is such an apt beginning. The Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to the notion that all humans are attempting to seek the ultimate end, which Aristotle describes as happiness, or the Good. If, as he says, everything we do in life is to seek some good, then each action or decision we make brings us closer to the ultimate end.

Recreation is something that not only gives us pleasure, but also helps to renew or recreate the mind and body.

In Book 1 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he argues that happiness is the best good, and the goal of an individual and of those leading and governing society. Here, happiness is understood as both living well and doing well, rather than the convention sense of happiness as an emotion. According to Aristotle, happiness is achieved though actions involving reason and in accord with virtue, or the best of the virtues of there are more than one. In this paper, I will provide a brief overview of the work and its author, then proceed to provide an overview of the ideas expressed and the argumentation supporting them, before finally performing an analysis and critique of the ideas expressed.

A married couple, both addicted to drugs, is unable to care for their infant daughter. She is taken from them by court order and placed in a foster home. The years passed. She comes to regard her foster parents as her real parents. They love her as they would their own daughter. When the child is 9 years old, the natural parents, rehabilitated from drugs, begin court action to regain custody. The case is decided in their favor. The child is returned to them, against her will. Do ethics support the law in this case? Discuss.

When employed labor is involved, productivity in terms of time becomes important, because the employer generally pays the worker in terms of time. For many jobs, then a shift from task-orientation to timed labor occurs, as the laborer’s time becomes the employer’s money. Thus, a separation between work and leisure occurs, as

Aristotle posits Eudaimonia, human flourishing and happiness, as the ‘chief good’ of humanity achieved through ‘reflective activity’ over a lifetime (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, 2002). From my perspective, the reflective activity to which he alludes is the pursuit of leisure.

The world of work and the world of wonder are two worlds that play a prominent role in the lives of humans. In that sense they are commensurable to one another, yet at the same there there is a clear distinction between how the two worlds worlds operate that make them incommensurable. The purpose of this paper is to to argue that the world of work is incommensurable with the world of wonder in certain senses, but commensurable in others. This will be done by providing evidence from Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and works of Plato.

Aristotle lists honor, pleasure, and wealth as the things believed to make humans happy. He believed that because honor could be easily taken away it was superficial and that pleasure, although enjoyable, was merely an “animal like quality”. Wealth was described as a vehicle to achieve greater status. The moderation of the three vices could be achieved but would not, in-itself produce or guarantee eudaimonia. Instead, Aristotle was of the opinion that wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, would better lead person to happiness.

We are a pleasure driven society always waiting to be amused. Self indulgence is a very natural aspect of human life. Does pleasure affect our lives? Will it make us happy at the end? Well, Aristotle will let us know what it means to be happy and have a good life in the Nicomachean Ethics. In the process, he reveals his own account of pleasure as well as other philosophers opposing views on the subject. The author highlights the key them by telling us that pleasure is not the chief good. However, it is an end in itself, which makes it good. In addition, pleasure is also not a process because it doesn’t involve any movement from incompleteness to completeness. According to Aristotle, happiness is

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explores virtues as necessary conditions for being happy. A virtuous person is a person with a disposition toward virtuous actions and who derives pleasure from behaving virtuously. Aristotle distinguishes between two types of human virtue: virtues of thought and virtues of character. Virtues of thought are acquired through learning and include virtues like wisdom and prudence; virtues of character include bravery and charity, which are acquired by habituation and require external goods to develop. As a consequence, not all people can acquire virtues of character because not all people have the external goods and resources required to develop that disposition.

In order to explain the fundamentals of Aristotle's Virtue Ethics, one must acknowledge his primary motive in this study, which is to understand what it means to live well. Unlike

In the book Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle, Aristotle describes various way of living one’s life, the ultimate goal in life, and how to achieve happiness and live the best life. Aristotle describes three different kinds of lives in Nicomachean Ethics. These three lives consists of the life of honor, the life of pleasure, and the life of study. Aristotle, from the first book, insists that the life of study or contemplation is considered to be the best life. He argues that self-sufficiency is required for the life of study whereas the life of honor and pleasure are based upon a need for other people as well as a never ending cycle of pursuing higher goods.

“For we may be said to desire all things as means to something else except indeed happiness, as happiness is the end or perfect state” (page 230, Mayfield). As Aristotle said that our ultimate goal is happiness but in order to reach happiness you have to succeed. “Relaxation then is not an end. We enjoy it as a means to activity; but it seems that the happy life is a life of virtue, and such a life is serious, it is not one of mere amusement. We speak of serious things too as better than things which are ridiculous and amusing, and of the activity of

Relaxation is necessary in one’s day to day active life. A person must work hard but his energy is limited, and if he spends too much of it he will soon feel tired. Even a machine cannot work for a long time at a stretch and it is given rest at regular intervals, otherwise it gets out of order. To move out of our daily hectic schedule life or more specific to relax, we need to perform several activities of our choice to get relax, which also provide amusement, benefit to us. Some of them that I follow are dancing, swimming and watching movies or watching Television.