Friends, honor, pleasure, and moral virtue may be worth choosing for two reasons: for their intrinsic value and for their contribution to happiness. Aristotle's ethics is eudaimonistic, meaning that every action is ultimately to be justified by reference to the person's own happiness.
For Aristotle, anything that fulfills its essential function is one that performs well. He believes that the nature of a thing is the measure in terms of which we judge whether or not it is functioning well. In Aristotle's opinion, things are good when they achieve their specific ends.
According to Aristotle, there is an end of all of the actions that we perform which we desire for the sake of itself. This is what he refers to as eudaimonia, which is desired for its own sake with all other things being desired for the purpose of the ultimate goal. Eudaimonia is a property of one's life when considered in its entirety. Flourishing is the highest...
Certainly, rhetoric lends itself to the discovery of truth, as truth (Aristotle suggests) always makes more intuitive and intellectual sense compared to falsehood, and so equally talented rhetoricians will be more convincing sharing the truth than sharing falsehood. However, critics have pointed out that there is so "tension between Aristotle's epistemological optimism and his attempt to come to terms with rhetoric as a culturally and contextually specific social institution....
3. Aristotle's Theory of Change In his Theory of Change, Aristotle attempts to explore the nature of how ad why things evolve, or change in form from one object or concept to another. One of the greatest wonders of man, which is still even debates today, is he process of how things evolve to be. Well, Aristotle presented his Theory of Change to account for how and why objects develop into
This could consist of platonic pleasure or erotic pleasure. Because this, like Utilitarian Friendships, is based on superficial foundations, it does not stand the test of time. The final way to Friendship is through a true "goodness of character." Aristotle believed that all human beings have a capacity for goodness of character; yet it takes practice and effort to reach a respectable level of moral integrity. Friendships based on
The material cause refers to that substance out of which a thing is constructed. The formal cause is the idea of the thing in the mind of the creator who sets about creating that particular thing. The efficient cause is the Agent - or the being that creates the thing. The final cause is the purpose for which the thing has been created. Mere potentiality does not exist on its
This is Aristotle's launching pad for his discussion of politics. To him, ethics and politics are matters of rational judgment, stemming from the natural inclinations of individual humans. This notion is reflected in Aristotle's analysis of the constitutional doctrines of some 158 cities. Essentially, he recognized that every state -- necessarily city states -- exist in unique sets of circumstances that act upon the universal forms of ethics in ways
The theatre of the absurd does not depend on eliciting certain specific emotional responses, but rather on generating any sort of emotional disturbance -- it demands that the audience question its basic emotional beliefs, not give over to them. In a careful explication of the concept of catharsis, Allan H. Gilbert determines that pity is the primary emotion necessary for the drama to elicit (rejecting the common counterpart, fear). Pity
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now