Aristotle on virtue, friendship, and concord in the Nicomachean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle said, "The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind" (). According to Aristotle and his Nicomachean ethics, there are two kinds of virtue: intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtues are learned by instruction and moral virtues are learned by practice. According to his theory, we can all be morally virtuous, but it is only by acting rightly that we can become virtuous. Virtue is a disposition therefore and it is something that is apart from our feelings and our senses and, without it, we can never be truly happy. Aristotle does not tell us what dispositions are virtuous and which are vicious, he merely informs us that in order to learn virtue, we must practice virtuous behavior and habits.

People do not normally choose to develop vicious habits. Aristotle did not agree with Socrates' belief that knowing what is right always results in doing it. The biggest enemy when it comes to moral behavior, according to Aristotle, is the failure to act well even when one's own senses and contemplation has told that clearly what is right.

Vicious habits are created when there is a weakness in the person's will, but this does not necessarily mean that the person becomes vicious. This weakness stops them from behaving in conformity with what they have reasoned to be right, but because they have the ability to reason about right and wrong and know what it is, it means that they are not completely vicious. A truly vicious person acts viciously but they have not deliberated or reasoned about right or wrong because they do not instinctively know what it is.

For Aristotle, concord was a rather difficult type of friendship, or an aspect of friendship, and it didn't involve virtue really at all. Concord is something that citizens share. Concord occurs between people who are simply using the friendship as a means to an end -- that is, they hope to benefit from it. We can think about political allies this way; while they are "allies," they may not be friends and if different sides are taken, perhaps these allies will go away. This doesn't mean that concord is bad; concord it what Aristotle believed cities had to have in order to thrive.

Aristotle believed that friendship was what holds communities together, but his Nicomachean ethics holds friendship and concord as two rather distinct things -- or rather, concord can be a "feature" of friendship (Aristotle 6). It

Socrates' Phaedo was meant to be used by Socrates to prepare the soul for death and this necessitated that the reader believes that the soul and the body are two disparate entities. When the human body dies, the soul would detach and go on living. This is why Socrates thought it important to put emphasis on the soul in life and not on the body. Furthermore, giving the body attention while living was fruitless because it was always being deceived what it is perceiving (65b). Cebes brings up the fear that many people have and that is that when the soul leaves the body, it simply flies away and vanishes as if it were a breath or smoke (70a).

To offer proof as to why he believes that the soul exists, Socrates states that like the dead in the underworld came from the living, the living also comes from the dead coming back from the underworld. If we are to consider this true, then the soul has got to exist somewhere between living to dead and then dead to living. The living can only come back from death if there is the existence of a soul. He gives other example like larger things coming from smaller things and slower coming from faster, etc. (70e). If we are to understand this correctly, it means that Socrates believes that everything, including the soul's existence, works in a cyclical fashion.