Throughout the book Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle uses a lot of punctuations which appear to attract the reader’s attention and connects Aristotle’s ideas and claims. One of the most important punctuations that Aristotle uses is commas, which is seen in his concept of moral virtues adding meaning to the language, clarity in expressions, and connecting the sentences. Commas are used to separate clauses and parts of a sentence to make it clear and easier for the reader to understand. Nichomachean Ethics is known to be one of Aristotle’s most important books on ethics. It follows Aristotle’s definitions of different concepts like: Moral virtues, good wills, and justice. According to Aristotle, a moral virtue is a concept that depends on our behaviors, actions, and determines our character which helps us achieve a good life. The book is …show more content…
Punctuations are important as the meaning of a sentence depends on the punctuation that is used and as it helps bring the right type of expressions into writing. Without the use of different types of punctuations; the writing would sound vague, incomplete, and difficult to understand. The use of Commas is important as it adds a meaning to the language that Aristotle uses in his concept of moral virtues. Aristotle states that, “Excellence, then, being of these two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual excellence owes its birth and growth mainly to instruction, and so requires time and experience, while moral excellence is the result of habit or custom, and has accordingly in our language received a name formed by a slight change from ethos” (Aristotle, 34). In this quote, the commas add a meaning to it as it separates the ideas and gives a pause between the sentences and words.
Society has not changed much in the thousands of years since Aristotle first addressed ethics in Athens, Greece. Everyday situations and problems he discusses all relate to everyone in the present day. The rules of demeanor and clarifications on virtue that he suggests can all help people today attain a complete and satisfying realization of their duties as an equal member in society and ultimately discover the purpose of life.
1) Explain fully Aristotle’s approach to Ethics. What is the goal of the ethical life? What type of soul is
With the character and interests, Aristotle states that the virtue should start from moral behavior, which means treating other people well and not being self-interest. Next aspect is the values and strength of character, which explains the companion between values and ethics. In order to be a virtual person with strong character, that person has to have good values, generosity, honesty and motivation. In addition, it is really important for people to be moral and happy at the same time. In order to understand the concept of ethics more, people need to perceive what the factors of a good and happy life are. People cannot be really happy if they do good things because someone is watching them. It is a forced action. Morality is truly shown when people are willing to do so, not when they are forced to. Therefore, ethics is not composed of rules that people have to follow. It is the principle that people understand and voluntarily do right things. Besides the daily life, ethics principle is also applied to community and culture. All business students need to understand the concept of ethics in their future career. In workplaces or organizations, culture and moral behavior have strong connection among employees. Business students have to study organizational behavior class upon graduation to shape the ideas of cultural differences and moral behavior in their mind and prepare to act
Aristotle believes that happiness is the ultimate goal in life. You can’t reach happiness unless you work hard and become successful. That is where virtue comes into play. A human’s function is to engage in “an activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue” and which “is in conformity with reason” (page 76, Palmer). The two kinds of virtue are intellectual and moral. Our virtues are what make us all individual and all different. Intellectual virtues are what we are born with and what we learn. It is our nature as humans and what we have inherited that makes desire to learn. As humans, we develop wisdom to help guide us to a good life. With the intellectual virtue you develop two different kinds of wisdom: practical and
Before this essay progresses further, it is essential that both virtue and the philosophers be put into perspective. Apparently, Aristotle hailed from Greece, more specifically, Macedon. He had great ideologies on logic, science, and virtue, which influenced the philosophy of the world. Confucius hailed from China and was a politician, a teacher and a philosopher at the same time. As great philosophers, both Aristotle and Confucius have addressed the subject of moral thinking and have similar opinions with regards to the concept of virtue. Talking about morality, Confucius uses the word “Jen” (Angle, Slote & Chen, 2013) to mean virtue while Aristotle uses the word “arête” also to mean virtue. Apparently, the essence of these two philosophers coming up with their philosophies regarding morality was to guide their followers and countrymen and women on the aspect of individual behavior. That
Virtues are gained through nurture, and backing his thought, he explained that if we are born virtuously then we could not become bad. Yet, there are a number of bad people in the world. Aristotle saw that virtue and duty had a strong connection. This is because duty is an act in accordance with law, which enforces perfections. Since laws keep us in line, and our duty is to follow these laws, virtues come if you commit your duty. It is a cycle that repeats itself in the positive and the negative depending how we act. Because Aristotle was a Christian, he saw God as everlasting, and overall, see’s god as an important figure to live up to. Aristotle laid the framework to what would be the future of ethics. Although what he had reported would be found eventually, his views are what most believed as the golden rule, and future philosophers would just string off his ideas.
In Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the idea of moral virtue. Aristotle emphasized the importance of developing moral virtue as the way to achieve what is finally more important, human flourishing (eudaimonia). Aristotle makes the argument in Book II that moral virtue arises from habit—equating ethical character to a skill that is acquired through practice, such as learning a musical instrument. However in Book III, Aristotle argues that a person 's moral virtue is voluntary, as it results from many individual actions which are under his own control. Thus, Aristotle confronts us with an inherently problematic account of moral virtue.
To start with, Aristotle highlights that the perception of virtue is different for everyone, and there are a lot of factors which influence it. For example, people's moral principles, mentality, the society they live in and its formative culture peculiarities. The highest human good is considered to be in close relations with the sense of happiness. As all people have different characters, attitudes to life, moral values, it is difficult to define the conditions on which their happiness depends. Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, writes that the highest human good "proves to be the activity of the soul in accord with virtue" (Aristotle, trans. Irvin T., 1999). In other words, it is the way of a person's appropriate behavior in the situations of different nature and difficulty in his or her life.
Aristotle outlined his theory of Virtue Ethics in his book Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle focused his idea of ethics on agents rather than acts. His main idea is focused on the idea of human character- how can you be a better person? In fact, Aristotle once said: “For we are enquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our enquiry would be of no use.” Aristotle is given the credit for developing the idea of virtue ethics, but many of Plato's cardinal values influenced his ideas. Virtue Ethics is focused on the person's actions, not the consequences of that action. Aristotle believed if you had good moral values, then your actions would be "good" in theory. Rather than defining good actions,
3. Moral virtue is a relative mean between extremes of excess and deficiency, and in general the moral life is one of moderation in all things except virtue. No human appetite or desire is bad if it is controlled by
Aristotle found that there are two kinds of virtues of the soul. First, there are virtues of thought, such as wisdom. Next, there are virtues of character, such as generosity. The main focus of his virtue ethics lies in the virtues of character. Aristotle assumed that these virtues are learned through habit. For example, whereas intellectual virtue may arise from reading a book, the adoption of virtuous character is inherited solely by practice. Therefore, it is through a person's upbringing that moral virtues are cultivated, and it is through the habit of thinking virtuously that one can excel towards happiness.
Aristotle’s theory will be discussed in full length on his theory of virtue. Now Aristotle did believe in a multitude of theories that are all based off of virtue, but also the soul. To Aristotle, virtue is an excellence, which comes after happiness and achieving our final goal. When Aristotle talks about an individual’s final goal and excellence of that
First, Aristotle believes that humans should only focus on one goal and is to live a happy life by being virtuous. Therefore, we must acquire the highest good by choosing good acts over bad acts. The Highest good of human action is based on the activity of the soul by using virtue. Therefore, Aristotle believes that we need to focus on virtue because he is concerned with a persons’ character. For example, by not being virtuous can affect a person character because they are not showing moral standards. For example, temperance can effect on how we react to a situation .Also, temperance can affect us neatly because we are responding to the
Virtue ethics was written by a Greek philosopher names Aristotle. Aristotle believed that every human’s goal was happiness. Some philosophers argued that happiness only came from following a set of rules, while Aristotle argued that the best way to have happiness is to cultivate a virtuous character. The two kinds of virtues he recognized were moral virtue and intellectual virtue. The virtue that should be focused on to develop a virtuous character is moral virtue. According to Aristotle, while we are born with a capacity to be virtuous, being virtuous is like a skill that we need to learn and practice to be good at. The key element to being virtuous is being able to find the mean or right amount of our various emotions, dispositions, and actions. Aristotle wrote: “Anybody can become angry- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for
When we first started learning about Aristotles’ theory, I did not understand the importance. Aristotle wrote, Nicomachean Ethics many years ago. It did not seem like any of it would pertain to my life. After reading into his theory, I found it to be quite interesting. It was a lot more relatable than I originally thought. When we know what we are looking for, we can find aspects of his theory everywhere.