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The analytical king has spoken on ethics. He gives the student rational tools to build an autonomous ethical structure that has no ancient non-biblical rivals. There are many nonsensical and even immoral notions about women and practical ethics, yet for a man lacking direct revelatory insight, he advances ethical truth to assist those who attempt to deny the God with absolute aseity but desire to live a self-willed moral life.
"We reach our complete perfection through habit." Aristotle says we have a natural potential to be virtuous and through learning and habit, we attain them. Socrates said same the thing. Socrates thought that all virtues are instances of intelligence or Phronçsis. Happenstance is a matter of chance. I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. I read this book for a graduate seminar on Aristotle. A long interesting list.
Like a musical virtuoso. "Intrinsic good" for him is "Eudemonia=happiness." This is what ethics and virtues are for the sake of the organizing principle. Part of the "good life" involves external goods like money, one can't attain "good life" if one is poor and always working. Hexis= "state," "having possession." Theoria= "study." The idea is not to know what virtue is but to become "good." Emphasis on finding the balance of the mean. 2.Relevant emotion or capacity. The practically wise person is somebody who knows how to live in such a way so that their life will turn out well, in a full package of "goods." For Aristotle, Phronçsis is not deductive or inductive knowledge like episteme; Phronçsis is not a kind of rational knowledge where you operate in either deduction or induction, you don't go thru "steps" to arrive at the conclusion.
It is relative to us individually. Eudemonia=happiness. You can have ethics without religion for Aristotle. Ethical virtue is ethical excellence, which is the "good like." In Plato, ethics has to do with quality of soul defining what to do instead of body like desires and reason. Learning by doing is important for Aristotle.
Such as risk of losing one's life. In the animal world, biological beings react to pleasure and pain as usual. Each virtue involves four basic points. Socrates says if you know the right thing you will do it, Aristotle disagrees. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by. Ethics is not precise; the nature of subject won't allow it.
Such as money is good, so one can buy food to eat because "eating is good." In moral philosophy distinction between "intrinsic good" vs. Difference between benevolent acts and a benevolent person. Aristotle surmises that the highest form of happiness is contemplation. All Aristotle's qualifications are based on individual situations and done with knowledge of experience.
Truly virtuous people do not struggle to be virtuous, they do it effortlessly, very few people in this category, and most are in #2 and #3.2.Ethical strength. For example--one should eat 3,000 calories a day. "instrumental good." Instrumental good towards a desire is "instrumental good" like money. This is the critique against Socrates idea that "Knowledge equals virtue." No one can knowingly do the wrong thing.
Phronçsis is going to be that capacity that power of the soul that when it is operating well will enable us to turn out well and that is why it is called practical wisdom. Happens in real life.4.Vice. Being raised well is "good fortune" a child can't choose their upbringing. Ethical weakness is not a full vice either. My way of organizing it, it is Phronçsis that is a capacity that enables the virtues to manifest themselves. We know what is right thing to do but struggle with our desires.3.Ethical weakness.
Virtue can't be a separate or individual trait. Pleasure is a condition of the soul. The distinctions between continent and incontinent persons, and moderate (virtue) and immoderate (not virtuous) persons is as follows:1.Virtue. Such as courage as the "mean." No formal rule or "mean" it depends on the situation and is different for different people as well. Instrumental good means because it further produces a good, "intrinsic good" is a good for itself, "for the sake of" an object like money. Idea of nature was thought to be fixed in Greece convention is a variation.
The way he thought about character of agent, "thinking about the good." In addition, Aristotle talked about character traits. The person acts without regret of his bad actions.What does Aristotle mean by "fully virtuous". What does "good" mean. I think Aristotle's ethics is his most seminal work in philosophy. Humans as reasoning beings must pursue knowledge to fulfill human nature. Pleasure cannot be an ultimate good. Important concept for Aristotle, good upbringing for children is paramount if you don't have it, you are a lost cause. It is not a feeling for Aristotle.
Therefore, Phronçsis is a special kind of capacity that Aristotle thinks operates in ethics. To be good is how we live with other people, not just focus on one individual. Then it becomes habitual like playing a harp. In Aristotle's Rhetoric, he lists several ingredients for attaining eudaimonia. Virtue ethics is the characteristics of a person that will bring about a certain kind of moral living, and that is exactly what the virtues are. Such as fear and pain. Today we think of happiness as a feeling. It must be pleasurable to seek knowledge and other virtues and if it is not there is something wrong according to Aristotle.
If you have good character, you don't need to follow rules. Thus, money is an "instrumental good" for another purpose because it produces something beyond itself. It is a retrieval of Aristotle. Aristotle does not think you have to have a reasoned principle in the mind and then do what is right, they go together. Aretç=virtue, in Greek not religious connotation but anything across the board meaning "excellence" high level of functioning, a peak.
What he means is ethics is loose like "wealth is good but some people are ruined by wealth." EN isn't formula but a rough outline. Thus, Socrates denies appetites and desires. For Aristotle these are not two separate entities. Nothing in his EN is about the afterlife. Aristotle criticizes Socrates idea of virtue, virtue is not caused by state of knowledge it is more complicated.
The virtues are capacities of a person to act well. These are the higher pleasures and so you may have to put off lower pleasures for the sake of attaining "higher pleasures." Phronçsis= "intelligence," really better to say "practical wisdom." The word practical helps here because the word Phronçsis for Aristotle is a term having to do with ethics, the choices that are made for the good. Area of inquirery for EN is "good" this is his phenomenology. Humans are not born with the virtues; we learn them and practice them habitually.
3.Vices of excess and vices of deficiency in the emotions or the capacities. Socrates said material goods don't matter, then he always mooched off of his friends. Such as cowardice is the excess vice of fear, recklessness is the excess deficiency.4.Virtue as a "mean" between the vices and deficiencies. He doesn't believe in the universal good for all people at all times like Plato and Socrates.
When you become a "good person" you don't think it out, you just do it out of habit. In the early 1960's virtue ethics came to fore. Good qualities of a person who would act well. Well depends on the health and girth of the person, and what activity they are engaged in. Means towards these ends. Only if you understand what Aristotle means by phronesis do you get a hold on the concept. Aristotle does not deny pleasure is good; however, it is part of a package of goods.
Basic issue is to find the "mean" between extremes; this is how Aristotle defines virtues. The law is the social mechanism for numbers 2, 3, 4. Best translation for eudaimonia is "flourishing" or "living well." It is an active term and way of living for him thus, "excellence." Ultimate "intrinsic good" of "for the sake of." Eudaimonia is the last word for Aristotle. Some things are not able to have a "mean" like murder and adultery because these are not "goods." Akrasia= "incontinence" really "weakness of the will. He suggests good means "a desired end." Something desirable. 1.Action or circumstance.
It is common for the hoi polloi to say pleasure=happiness. There are different virtues, but it is the capacity of Phronçsis that enables these virtues to become activated. Learn by doing according to Aristotle and John Dewey. It has very close parallels to the ancient Chinese philosophy of Confucius and the modern philosophy espoused in the 1970's called Communitarianism.For Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, (EN) is about human life in an embodied state. Ethical strength is not virtue in the full sense of the term. This is akrasia incontinence. All of the virtues can be organized by way of this basic power of the soul called Phronçsis.
What are the virtues. Phronçsis is the capacity of the soul that will enable the virtues to fulfill themselves. Can also mean fulfillment. Aristotle understands that people do things that they know are wrong, Socrates denies this. Prosperity, self-sufficiency, etc., is important, thus, if you are not subject to other, competing needs. As a human being, you have to face choices about what to do and not to do. Continence.
A truly virtuous person is their own moral compass.
Unreadable. The difficult made impossible. A curiosity. A long way from English. Many sentences, long and short, like, "So let these things have been spoken of just this much." Page 9. The footnotes are somewhat clearer than the text.
Joe Sachs has done a remarkable thing in bringing this text -- easily one of the most important philosophical works ever written -- to life. I'd always said, in response to student complaints, something like: I know that the book itself, in style, is kind of boring and dry, but the subject matter could not be more important so try and look past that. I've read and taught the Nicomachean Ethics several times in translation, and working through it this time with Joe Sachs' exceptional translation is what for the first time brought the urgency and interest of the text alive for me. As if that weren't enough, he has also written an excellent and very short introduction to the text that goes a long way towards overcoming many of the commmon misunderstandings of Aristotle's ethics, especially misconceptions tied to the Latin influences on translations of the text. With this translation, I didn't need to say that. You feel the urgency and importance of the subject in the writing itself. Without any effort to give a "definitive" and inevitably partial account of the text as a whole, he confines himself to addressing three central concepts -- habit, the mean, and the noble -- shows how these have led many readers of the text astray, and points readers towards the passages in Aristotle that can overcome or resolve some of the basic misunderstandings (incidentally, one of these misunderstandings is evident in another review of this translation by FrKurt Mesick, and I can only assume he either didn't read the intro, or he disagreed with it in favor of more standard "textbook" interpretations of Aristotle, or that he is commenting on another translation and just happened to include his review under this one). Along the way, Sachs shows that the common reading of Aristotle as a kind of reformed or anti-Platonist is just false -- and that Aristotle's ethics is richer and more compelling than is usually thought precisely because of the elements of Platonism that Aristotle wisely retains.
He uses a dialectical method, as well as a functional method. How many of us today speak of happiness and virtue in the same breath. Aristotle proposes many different examples of virtues and vices, together with their mean states. Moreover, since happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with complete and perfect virtue, it is necessary to consider virtue, as this will be the best way of studying happiness. Aristotle's work in the Nicomachean Ethics is considered one of his greatest achievements, and by extension, one of the greatest pieces of philosophy from the ancient world.
Based on Aristotle's lectures in Athens in the fourth century BCE, this remains one of the most important works on ethical and moral philosophy in history. Aristotle sees pleasure, honour and virtue as significant 'wants' for people, and then argues that virtue is the most important of these. Aristotle uses different kinds of argumentation in the Nicomachean Ethics. This is a difficult question, and not one that Aristotle answers in any definitive way. Aristotle's wording here, that a scientist is the only one fully capable of virtue, has a different meaning for scientist - this is a pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment view; for Aristotle, the person of science is one who is capable of observation and calculation, and this can take many different forms. In the dialectical method, there are opposing ideas held in tension, whose interactions against each other yield a result - this is often how the mean between extremes is derived.
Aristotle was a philosopher in search of the chief good for human beings. This seems to be so because it is a first principle or ultimate starting point. Thus, Aristotle tends to view virtue as a relative state, making the analogy with food - for some, two pounds of meat might be too much food, but for others, it might be too little. Many of us, being imperfect humans, err on one side or the other, choosing in Aristotle's words, the lesser of two evils. It is in the Nicomachean Ethics that Aristotle proposes the Doctrine of the Mean - he states that virtue is a 'mean state', that is, it aims for the mean or middle ground. When the framers of the American Declaration of Independence were thinking of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there is little doubt they had an acquaintance with Aristotle's work connecting happiness, virtue, and ethics together. There are things, actions and emotions, that do not allow the mean state. When one thinks of ethical ideas such as an avoidance of extremes, of taking the tolerant or middle ground, or of taking all things in moderation, one is tapping into Aristotle's ideas.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the claim that happiness is something which is both precious and final. Aristotle states that one of the difficulties with leading a virtuous life is that it takes a person of science to find the mean between the extremes (or, in some cases, Aristotle uses the image of a circle, the scientist finding the centre). However, there are other times that Aristotle seems to prefer a more direct, functional approach. However, it is not sufficient for Aristotle's virtue that one merely function as a virtuous person or that virtuous things be done. However, Aristotle is often misquoted and misinterpreted here, for he very quickly in the text disallows the idea of the mean to be applied in all cases.
With regard to money, being stingy and being illiberal with generosity are the extremes, the one deficient and the other excessive. Aristotle argues that virtue is not a natural state; we are not born with nor do we acquire through any natural processes virtue, but rather through 'habitation', an embedding process or enculturation that makes these a part of our soul. This chief good is eudaimonia, which is often translated as 'happiness' (but can also be translated as 'thriving' or 'flourishing'). There is a discussion of the human soul (for this is where virtue and happiness reside). Both of these methods lead to the same understanding for Aristotle's sense of the rational - that humanity's highest or final good is happiness. This is not a skill, but rather an art, and to be virtuous, one must live virtuously and act virtuously with intention as well as form. However, more important than this is the key difference that Aristotle displayed setting himself apart from his tutor Plato; rather than seeing the possession of 'the good' or 'virtue' as the highest ideal, Aristotle is concerned with the practical aspects, the ethics of this. Anger, too, is highlighted as having a deficient state (too much passivity), an excessive state (too much passion) and a mean state (a gentleness but firmness with regard to emotions).
For, it is for the sake of happiness that we do everything else, and we regard the cause of all good things to be precious and divine. How do we calculate virtue. The mean exists between the state of deficiency, too little, and excessiveness, too much. The mean state here would be liberality and generosity, a willingness to buy and to give, but not to extremes. Of course, one of the implications here is that virtue is a quantifiable thing, that periodically resurfaces in later philosophies.
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