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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...
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…
Works Cited
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Hackett Publishing Co., 2nd edition, 2000.
Plato. Five Dialogues. Hackett Publishing Co., 2nd edition, 2002.
If this was the case, and this transformation of reasoning did occur, then that person would be truly virtuous. There are many strengths to Aristotle's argument, as well. One of the main strengths is the discussion of the two kinds of virtue - the kind that comes from habit, and the kind that comes from learning. This would work to demonstrate why some people change so much as they grow
These [bad effects of pleasure and pain] are the reason why people actually define the virtues as ways of being unaffected and undisturbed [by pleasures and pains]" (1104b21-25) It is not imperative to remain indifferent or unaffected by both pleasure and pain to be virtuous, it is only essential that we have the right feelings of pleasure and pain at the right time. Therefore, he goes on defining virtue as
It is therefore important to understand first off Aristotle's thoughts on human nature in order to understand his opinions on ethics and virtue. That human beings are social beings is something familiar to us nowadays as it was in Aristotle's time. Consequently, ethics and virtue were part of human nature and so every living being was supposed to live by what is righteous. This is another characteristic separating us from
Aristotle is inclined to view human interaction as something which incites one to desire the happiness of his relational partner as the chief end of the relationship. This is a point which is absolutely essential to the conception of goodness which Aristotle holds as most valuable. He identifies a self-love, as it were, as one of the most important elements in forging a meaningful and positive relationship to the
Aristotle vs. Mill The Greek philosopher Aristotle and John Stuart Mill agreed that the objective of morality was the pursuit of general happiness and the good life in society and in the individual. But they deviated in the concept of, and the manner of arriving at, "the right thing to do," especially in reference to friendships. Mill held that actions are right in the proportion that they tend to promote that
Put another way he contends that the reasoned man must expect the unexpected, while relying on his own memories and senses to determine eventual effects. Rules must apply only when they have been proven repeatedly and are therefore a sound representation of what might happen. Cause and effect to Hume are those things, which explain the causal relationship of events, and things. Causal relationships are determined by our individual set