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Ethics for me emphasizes the character in a person rather than rules or consequences. I realize that every action that we take or word that we may say falls under Ethics. I feel by identifying individual’s habits and behaviors will assist in tell what kind of Ethics and morals this individuals has. By understand what your habits and behaviors are, will allow you to reach ‘the good life’, these habits and behaviors are virtue ethical as Aristotle states (Nash, 1999). This type of ethical theory will allow individuals to show more personality and reveal more of the person’s qualities.
Aristotle’s ethics emphasizes the value of reason and virtue for good moral character, as I have to agree with him. Virtue Ethics After reading Aristotle’s work on ethics and thinking about it for a few days, I realized that everything action we take and word we say falls under Virtue Ethics. Virtue Ethics for me emphasizes character rather than rules or consequences. Identifying habits and behaviors that allow people to reach “the good life”, these habits and behaviors are virtues.
This type of ethical theory will allow people to show more personality and bring out more of the persons qualities. Aristotle’s ethics emphasizes the value of reason and virtue for good moral character. It also elevated the world of reason to a level where other societies did not have it. Every activity has a final cause, the good at which it aims, and Aristotle argued that since there cannot be an infinite regress of merely extrinsic goods, there must be a highest good at which all human activity ultimately aims. (Nic.
Ethics I 2 p124-125) This end of human life could be called happiness but is it really happiness? Neither the common thinking of pleasure, wealth, and honor nor the rational theory of forms provide a satisfactory account of this, since even people who gain the material goods may not be happy. According to some of the readings from Aristotle, things of any variety have a characteristic function that they are properly used to perform. The good for human beings, then must be an activity of the soul that expresses genuine virtue or excellence. (Nic. Ethics I 7 p128-129) We should seek a ife in full compliance with the balanced nature and the pleasure of needs and the acquirement of material goods are less of a meaning than the accomplishment of virtue. Happy people will display personalities that are balanced between reasons and needs. This means that true happiness can be attained only through the development of the virtues the make a human life complete. Aristotle argues that every action we take has a reason… Aristotle Ethics Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics provides a sensible account for what true moral virtue is and how one may go about attaining it. Aristotle covers many topics that help reach this conclusion.
One of them being the idea of mean between the extremes. Although Aristotle provided a reliable account for many philosophers to follow, Rosalind Hursthouse along with many others finds lose ends and topics which can be easily misinterpreted in Aristotle’s writing. Aristotle explains his concept of “mean between the extremes” by the following quote: “In everything that is continuous and divisible it is possible to take more, less, or an equal amount, and that either in terms of the thing itself or relatively to us; and the equal is an intermediate between excess and defect” (Book II. , p. 1747 l. 25-28). Here he defines human virtue as an arrangement or disposition to behave in the right manner or as a mean between the extremes (excess and deficiency). However, later he continues to add how this mean or intermediacy is not the same for every person. A mean, according to Aristotle is determined by one’s needs and capacity. Not everyone has the same mean hence; everyone does not have the same needs or capacities. The mean, Aristotle goes on to explain, is relative to the person, not the object.
It has to be relative to not only you as a person, but also relative to your situation, not just your opinion. “If ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little- too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic exercises. ” (II. 6, 1747 l. 36-39) According to Aristotle, there is a right answer or an objectively correct mean for everyone when you take into account their situation. Aristotle tries to aint a… Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle’s great work in moral philosophy, addressing such concepts as the good life, virtue, weakness of will and moral responsibility. In Nicomachean Ethics Book I chapter 7, Aristotle gives a thorough examination of ‘the good’ and just what it consists of. Along the way he discusses the relationship between happiness and the human function and the nature of virtue. Is final conclusion, that the human good is “the soul’s activity that expresses virtue”1 is a bit obscure, but his preceding argument is very thoroughly constructed.
Aristotle begins his inquiry into ‘the good’ by proposing that the good is “that for the sake of which the other things are done. “2 Ends pursued for some further purpose, such as wealth, can be said to be incomplete, because they have not yet reached the final goal. And there must be some final goal, or else action would be pointless???as Aristotle points out in chapter 2, if something is not sought for its own sake, there must be some final end, otherwise all such action would “go on without limit, making desire empty and futile. 3 Surely, Aristotle argues, the good must be something complete, that is not desired for some further end. So it seems that the good is the most complete end, which is pursued wholly for itself and at which all other action aims. Aristotle claims that the most complete end is that which is “always choiceworthy in itself,”4 which is just to say that the most complete end is intrinsically valuable. Aristole Aristotle in the first page of Book 1 Nicomachean Ethics tells us basically for every activity there is some measure of good, but a certain difference is found among the endings of these activities.
He goes on to say “there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. ” He goes on to say that there are such arts that fall under a single power all things to do with bridle making and all those related fall under the art of riding, and every military action would fall under strategy, for it is sake of the former that the latter is pursued.
Everything we do has an end and it is something we desire; if we do not choose something for the sake of another thing this must be the good and the chief good of what we choose. Aristotle following this line of thinking throughout the Nicomachean Ethics, he gives us insight on how to choose friends, virtue, courage, temperance, virtues concerned with money, justice, anger, and socialization just to name a few.
In short, Aristotle is giving us the basis for the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule; using these as a guide on how we should live our life. Aristotle named the following as virtues; courage, friendliness, temperance, truthfulness, liberality, wittiness, magnificence, shame, pride, justice, good temper, and honor. These virtues were viewed by ancient Greece as human qualities necessary for people to live well together, they were seen by Aristotle as a means between the extremes.