It is only in the middle ground between habits of acting and principles of action that the soul can allow right desire and right reason to make their appearance, as the direct and natural response of a free human being to the sight of the beautiful.
Virtue as the Golden Mean
Aristotle describes virtue as a "hexis," a tendency or disposition induced by our habits to have appropriate feelings. Defective states are "hexeis," tendencies to have inappropriate feelings. Every ethical virtue is a condition intermediate between two other states, one involving excess and the other deficiency. The mean is about the proper emotional response to situations, rather than the proper actions. Aristotle believed that virtue came from character. It is the character that makes us do the good deeds that are virtuous, not the deeds themselves. Even if you do manage to find the mean, it's not enough just to follow it. You can do good deeds but unless you have a good character yourself, Aristotle says the actions won't be truly virtuous. You have to keep...
Aristotle and Happiness What is the point of life? Happiness? Virtue? Power? All of these? The ancient Greek philosophers would have pushed us gently in the direction of virtue, although they would also have argued that both happiness and power derive from virtue and so the quest for a fulfilled life does not have to be seen in terms of a trade-off between doing good and doing well. This paper examines
What distinguishes man from animals or plants is his capacity to reason. Animals seek pleasure for pleasures sake while human beings have the capacity to reason and, therefore, determine what pleasures to seek that are appropriate. This process of seeking the appropriate pleasures such as heath, wealth, knowledge, etc. allows a human being to enrich his life and lead eventually to a state of happiness. Reasoning allows one to
Aristotle's Happiness and the Virtues. Aristotle's ideal of happiness and virtues has been drawn to a large extent from his mentor and teacher, Plato. The context of his ideas is firstly that ethics and politics are closely intertwined, together forming the concept of Political Science. Secondly, virtue according to Aristotle is an innate human quality, which can be enhanced and developed by practice. Since it is innately human to be virtuous,
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 thought happiness was longer in coming, it was the manner of being actualized and fulfilling one's true potential using their own individual gifts: Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that punishment is indicated by
Happiness is perhaps the most illusive, but most sought after mental state in life. Like all human experiences, happiness is also a very subjective state; different things make different people happy. This is why it is so difficult to say what happiness is, and why there has been so much disagreement among philosophers, who have nonetheless not been deterred from attempting to describe this elusive emotion. Both Plato and Aristotle
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