from College Ethics Class 2006

Works Cited
Aristotle, “On Man in the Universe”    Walter J. Black, Roslyn,New York, 1943.
Ross, W.D. “The Works of Aristotle Translated into English” Oxford, 1928.
Kraut, Richard. “Aristotle’s Ethics” The stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/
Kilcullen, R.J. “Aristotle’s Ethics Essay”  1996 <http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y67s08.html#1

Aristotle-Ethics
Mitchell Pennell

Aristotle believes that all human activities aim for what we consider good or the “good life.”(Aristotle) The good for humans is happiness.  The work of the Ethics is to show how best to achieve happiness.  He notes that in order to be happy, humans must live with certain virtues.  A virtuous person  naturally behaves in the right ways, for the right reasons and feels pleasure in behaving rightly.  He does not live by excess or deficiency but rather a state between these two extremes.  Aristotle believes further that voluntary action and choice help determine the best action toward desirable ends.   It is not enough to have the right virtues to live well.  In order to be happy, a person must realize that happiness is the activity of living well. Aristotle distinguishes man from other living things  because man has a rational soul.  Happiness is not an emotional state but a way of life.  Happiness is shown by how we act, not in how we are.  Virtue is the manner of acting as to lead to a happy life.

  Aristotle makes clear at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics that his audience are those people who are already just, courageous, and generous.  Kraut wonders why he “uses such a restricted audience. Why not address those who have serious doubts about the value of these traditional qualities, and who therefore have not yet decided to cultivate and embrace them?”

Aristotle believes that we need both moral virtues and intellectual virtues.   These are states between extremes of excess and deficiency.  Aristotle lists the moral virtues and their corresponding vices: Courage is confidence in the face of fear.  Temperance is not giving in too easily to the pleasures of physical sensation.  Liberality and magnificence are about giving varying amounts of money in appropriate and tasteful ways. Proper ambition is having the right attitude about honor and what is one’s due.  Patience is the appropriate disposition  toward anger. Justice  encompasses all the other virtues.  Without these moral virtues  a person cannot be happy.

I agree with the idea that these moral virtues are needed for a happy life, but I also believe that we already have some of these virtues instilled in us at a young age, we only need to work on improving and strengthening these virtues, as opposed to  obtaining them.

There are five intellectual virtues in order to reason properly about how to behave: Scientific knowledge, intuition and wisdom are used in contemplative reasoning.  Art and prudence are calculative reasoning.  Aristotle cites that these virtues are learned through habit and training.  This seems to make sense.

He illustrates this by writing that there are two stages of development for these virtues.  During childhood, people develop the proper habits and then when their reason is fully developed, they acquire practical wisdom. 

An example: A child, who has learned to walk, is walking beside her mother, and her mother stops at the street, looks both ways, and then cross carefully. (without saying a word), the child, after a few times observing this action, would be conditioned to stop at a street and look both ways before attempting to cross. The child doesn’t stop out of fear of consequences, (like the possibility of pain), but more out of the conditioned routine of crossing the road. It’s only after the child is told of the possible consequences that they realize that they could be hurt.

 He further goes on to state that there are people who suffer from some internal disorder. They lack some internal harmony.  Plato ‘s central idea in the Republic was that the life of a good person is harmonious.(Kraut)  Aristotle states that the virtuous person “sees the truth in each case, being as it were a standard and measure of them.” In this regard he is emphasizing that the “good” person will discover the truth and by living in that way will set  a standard of measure to the rest of the community.  He feels that the best standard is the one adopted by the philosopher and the second-best is the one adopted by the political leader.  

Here I have to interject some feelings about the political leaders of  our time.  There are those who disagree that the current political leaders are the best standard for our country.  We are now living at a time when the country is deeply divided and I must agree. The current leaders of America fight now for the good of the people, but for oil and a sense of gluttony and pride. The current administration tries to tie the national tragedy of 9/11 to the dictatorship of Sudam Hussein, and succeeded in going into Iraq (under these pseudo-anti-terrorist ideals) and arrest the Iraqi dictator. (I agree with the idea that Sudam Hussein needed to be taken out of power, but I am disgusted and angered that the administration tried to tie the terrorist attacks, along with claims of weapons of mass destruction,which were never found, to this certain action.)

I think that the most intelligent citizen should read all opinions and look to history and his own experiences in order to decide who is speaking for him.  Aristotle may have not had such a  diverse population of people or ideas at that time.

  Aristotle continues to emphasize the importance of pleasure to human  life and how we should live.  He believes that a happy life must include pleasure, and therefore he opposes those who argue that pleasure is by its nature bad. A good person will feel pleasure in doing good things.

  He goes on to conclude that human happiness does not consist in every kind of pleasure, but it does consist in one kind of pleasure--the pleasure felt by a human being who engages in theoretical activity and thereby imitates the pleasurable thinking of God.

 He looks upon pleasure as a good but not The Good.  Selection of pleasures ought not to be made with reference to pleasure itself, but with reference to the activities they accompany. “Since activities differ with respect to goodness and badness, some being worth choosing, others worth avoiding, and others neither, the same is true of pleasures as well.” (Kraut) Aristotle’s discussion of pleasure helps confirm his initial hypothesis that to live our lives well we must focus on one sort of good above all others: virtuous activity.  That is the good by which all other goods are understood.  His analysis of friendship supports the same conclusion.

According to Kraut, Aristotle said that there are three kinds of friendship.  There are those based on utility,on pleasure and on goodness of character.  Friendship based upon goodness of character is the best kind of friendship, because these friends love one another for who they are and not for what they stand to gain from one another.  Other friendships he refers to as imperfect. They are relationships held together because each individual regards the other as the source of some advantage to himself or some pleasure he receives. People are friends in the truest sense when they gladly spend their days together in shared activities, and this close and constant interaction is less available to those who are not equal in their moral development. (Kraut)  “Those who wish good things to their friends for the sake of the latter are friends most of all, because they do so because of their friends themselves, and not coincidentally.” (Aristotle)  Kraut points out that nowhere in the Ethics does Aristotle say that the uniting factor in all friendships is the desire each friend has for the good of the other.

I am a huge advocator for the love of friends.  I have had friendships on all the levels Aristotle wrote about. I have had friends that are my friends simply because the friendship was mutually beneficial, and once that benefit ended so did the friendship. I have also had friendships that have been as strong as, if not stronger than, my relationships with any family member, (or lover).

Aristotle goes on the state that self-love is more important than friendship since only people who treat themselves with appropriate care and respect can achieve proper virtue and happiness.  Our feelings for our friends should reflect our feelings for ourselves.Since Aristotle thinks that the pursuit of one’s own happiness, properly understood, requires ethically virtuous activity and will therefore be of great value not only to one’s friends but to the larger political community as well, he argues that self-love is an entirely proper emotion-provided it is expressed in the love of virtue. It is condemned when it consists in the pursuit of as large a share of external goods-particularly wealth and power. (Kraut)

Aristotle has written of the study of virtue as helpful to people who have been brought up well; but he also finds it designed to serve a larger purpose.  Humans cannot achieve happiness, or even something that approximates happiness, unless they live in communities that foster good habits and provide the basics for a well-lived life. The well-being of whole communities depends on the willingness of some to lead a life devoted to the study and practice of politics and to the expression of those qualities of thought and passion that exhibit out rational self-mastery. (Kraut)

 I agree with the idea of living in a nurturing, helpful community that reinforces good virtues as opposed to self gratification and selfish living. Within the community itself the good virtues would be reinforced. In my own life, I was  involved in boy scouts, where I encountered this reinforcement with other friends as a group effort.

Questions: 1. Is virtue primarily a characteristic of being or a way of acting- or some combination of the two- according to Aristotle?, Do you agree or disagree? why?

 According to Kraut “Aristotle says not that happiness is a virtue, but that it is a virtuous activity. Living well consists in doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition. It consists in those lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of the rational part of the soul.”

Aristotle makes it clear that in order to be happy one must possess other goods as well- such goods are Friends, wealth and power. One’s virtuous activity will be diminished if one lacks an adequate supply of other goods.”

2. Who is Aristotle’s audience? Why does he emphasize certain virtues and ideas over others?, Does he care what everyone thinks about ethics? Why or why not?

 Kraut describes the audience that Aristotle is addressing consists of people who are already just, courageous, and generous, or they are well on their way to possessing these virtues. Aristotle may feel that in order to make progress in ethics, we must already have come to enjoy doing what is just, courageous and generous.

3. You quote Kraut that Aristotle never says all friendships are built on the desire each friend has for each other. Do you think Aristotle believes or disbelieves this idea? Why? Does Kraut think Aristotle should have said this, or is he simply making an observation? Why?

 Aristotle believes, according to Kraut, “A genuine friend is someone who loves or likes another person for the sake of that other person. Wanting what is good for the sake of another he calls 'good will', and friendship is reciprocal good will, . . . “

 When one benefits someone not because of the kind of person he is , but only because of the advantage to oneself, then, Aristotle says, one is not a friend towards the other person, but only towards the profit that comes ones way. He comes rather close to saying that relationships based on profit or pleasure should not be called friendships at all. (Kraut)

NOTE: I did not proof read this document before posting. Any spelling/Grammatical Errors will be adjusted at a future time.