The Moral Life Of Aristotle 's Nicomachean Ethics

Next, I will show the 4 kinds of persons that Aristotle believes exist, they’re the virtuous, strong-willed, vicious, and weak-willed persons. The first person is the virtuous person, Aristotle believes that a virtuous person is a person that behaves in a highly well-mannered way. A virtuous person knows how to act as a mean within the deficiency (too little) and excess (too much). “Hence virtue is a sort of medial condition because it is able to aim at and hit the mean.” (2.6 1106b27-1106b28) The virtuous person often does things through habit and continuous practice rather than having someone teach them because it can’t be taught. “From this, it is also clear that none of the virtues of character comes about in you naturally, since nothing natural can be habituated to be otherwise.” (2.1 1103a18-1103a19) Virtuous persons don’t let things overcome who they truly are, meaning their attitudes are at an even level when it comes to pleasures and pains. Virtuous persons can’t let things get the best of them, which is why the mean is so important because it gives balance and clear judgement.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, at an absolute basic sense, aims at the title of this course: the good life. In an age where philosophy and ethics were not largely developed, Aristotle aims to provide a universal standard for human flourishing and happiness, or the good life. His main argument is that all of our actions and goals are aiming towards human flourishment, but that each action falls into a range of virtues, where excess is one extreme and deficiency is the other extreme. The virtue that we all strive for, he states, is in the middle of these. For example, temperance is a universal human virtue, with pleasures and pains as the excess and deficiency. He states that virtues can be developed and learned over time and through practice,

Aristotle’s work, The Nicomachean Ethics, consists of numerous books pertaining to Aristotle’s Ethics—the ethics of the good life. The first book discloses Aristotle’s belief on moral philosophy and the correlation between virtue and happiness.

Aristotle believes that there are some virtues that are more basic than others. Take for example “Pride was supposed to be the worst of all(Weston, Aristotle).” In this example he talks about pride being the worst of all ad the most evil, and he also brings up virtues such as self-control and that it would be a different kind of virtue. I think that he also has a message that all human actions point to one thing and that is the highest best/good in human life. Over all I think Aristotle’s theory would be: the right way to act and a

In Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, Aristotle attempts to lay out a code of ethics. Instead of providing a set of rules on how people should behave, he contrarily focuses on the type of person people should become. Essentially, Aristotle is attempting to, not only provide philosophy, but practical advice. In book three of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explores the concept of moral virtue as a conscious choice by defining and describing the differences between voluntary and involuntary actions. However, as he defines and describes the differences between voluntary and involuntary actions, he realizes that it would be difficult to decide how far one would have to go in choosing to do a given act rather than enduring a given penalty. Thus, he

As the main idea of book three—moral virtue, Aristotle starts his discussion from point out the issue of moral responsibility, which can be considered as a basis of moral virtue, because if a man cannot be responsible for the action he did, then theoretically the discussion is superfluous. For example, the person was carried by the wind; then his behavior does not have any moral significance. Therefore, Aristotle wants to make a distinction between the voluntary actions and the involuntary actions, that is, for the moral responsibility to draw a piece of their territory, as a basis to talk about other

Aristotle lays down two key ideas with in his theory of “Human Nature”. The first idea is the ethnic qualities of man, which included the features of thought and body and is a development for contemplative excellence. The Second part of this theory is Aristotle gives the outlook that life with contemplations is the basis of a truly good life. This includes his views of how human incentives and the role of one’s qualities will lead one to living the good life. In “The Politics” Suzie Sparague introduces Aristotle’s well thought out argument, in which Aristotle argues that specific conceptions of “Human Good.” At the same time as the reader gets to this part of the book he/she is probably wondering what Aristotle means by human good. Human good as seen through the eyes of Aristotle is the ability to be morally sound, or to be just in the actions we make as humans.

Aristotle wrote the first book ever written about ethics titles “The Nicomachean Ethics,” and it is still one of the greatest and most influential. Its purpose is to teach us to be virtuous rather than to understand what virtue is. (Aristotle, 2009)

Aristotle segregates virtues into two categories and they are moral and intellectual. Aristotle believes that moral virtues is a product of habits, while intellectual virtues come from learning or life experience. He stated that since “nothing…can form a habit contrary to its nature” (Book II, 1), virtues are only possible to form by habits. For intellectual virtues, it can only be perfected over a period of a time, as well with experience. A more concrete point that will solidify this conclusion is that virtues are first learnt, then it will be presented, and the everyday life experience of the virtue is in diversified position and situations will lead a way for development. Aristotle as well goes in detail not just defining virtues theoretically,

Writing Assignment #1 Virtue Ethics Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics theory is based upon the use of moral decision making. Virtue Ethics depends solely on the individual. This theory was brought about in Ancient Greek times. Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics is based around the question “what kind of individual should I become?”

Aristotle’s view of ethics is unique to many other branches of ethical theory in a variety of ways. To understand what Aristotle considers to be a morally virtuous life, one must first evaluate what virtue means in the given context. Aristotle’s understanding of ethics is centered on the idea of personal character. This type of ethical reasoning has come to be known as, “virtue ethics”. Virtue ethics places emphasis on the character of the individual who is acting. Virtue ethics deems certain personality traits and behaviors as “virtuous” and then evaluates human behavior based off virtuosity. Virtuous behaviors are considered the in-between points of two opposite traits or behaviors. For example, the character trait of courage is between rashness, on

In the book Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle discusses the nature of ethics and its connection to human existence. He later turns to the nature of virtue, which he sees as traits that allows people to live well in communities. He finds that to be happy social institutions are necessary, therefore the thought that there is a moral person cannot exist apart from the political setting that one develops their virtues for a good life from. After Aristotle found ethics a part of politics, he found that moral virtues and intellectual virtues are different from one another. Intellectual virtues can be taught but moral have to be lived in order to learn and together they are to sought to bring a happy life (Aristotle, pg. 508).

Aristotle’s virtue theory states that the point of ethics should be to build a good and moral character with the virtues of generosity, self-control, patience, etc. It states that the golden midway of virtues are the building blocks to a good character, capable of making moral and just decisions. Aristotles claims that human naturally follows the vices of deficiency and excess, and one must use self-control and will power to overcome

In Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the idea of moral virtue. Aristotle emphasized the importance of developing moral virtue as the way to achieve what is finally more important, human flourishing (eudaimonia). Aristotle makes the argument in Book II that moral virtue arises from habit—equating ethical character to a skill that is acquired through practice, such as learning a musical instrument. However in Book III, Aristotle argues that a person 's moral virtue is voluntary, as it results from many individual actions which are under his own control. Thus, Aristotle confronts us with an inherently problematic account of moral virtue.

First, Aristotle claims virtue should be a state that makes a human good and makes him function well. In Nicomachean EthicsⅡ.5, he concluded that ethical virtue is a state of the soul. On the basis of this conclusion, he starts to discuss what kind of state is ethical virtue. Then, as a premise, he defines every virtue should make its possessors be in a good state and perform their functions well. The virtue of a horse, for example, makes the horse excellent because it is good at galloping, at running, and at carrying its rider. In the case of human being, therefore, the virtue is the state that makes a human being good and perform his or her function well.