Aristotle

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Aristotle

• Virtue Ethics 2

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• We saw last time
• The function of a good man is the excellent
  activity of the soul in accordance with reason.

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• Lets look now at
• The role of pleasure
• Moral virtues
• The Mean and moral training

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The Role of Pleasure

• The question of pleasure is a very important one
  in Greek (and later) thought about ethics.
• What is the proper place of pleasure in the
  good/just life?

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• Weve already seen Platos way of dealing with
  this question at the start of the Republic.
• Aristotles approach is the very commonsense
  one that pleasure is a necessary component of the
  good or happy life but it not the aim or goal of
  human life.

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• Pleasure the good, justice, etc are inherently
  pleasurable the good man finds them
  pleasurable.
• BUT, we need to work on ourselves in order to
  find the good/just pleasurable. Human beings
  dont automatically find the good to be
  pleasurable.

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• AND, of course, some external goods are also
  necessary for full happiness (eudaimonia) for
  you cannot quite regard a man as happy if he be
  very ugly to look at, or of humble origin, or
  alone in the world and childless (p.43).
• SO, virtue is not sufficient in itself to make a
  human being happy.

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• Aristotles definition of happy person
• one whose activities accord with complete
  virtue, with an adequate supply of external
  goods, not just for any time but for a complete
  lifeand who will also go on living this way
  and will come to an appropriate end. (Bk.1,
  Ch.10, Sect.15)

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Virtue

• We call this goodness of action virtue
  (arete/excellence).
• And, following the division of the soul, human
  beings are capable of two kinds of virtue
  intellectual (relating to the rational part) and
  moral (relating to the non-rational part).
• For this introduction well just look at the
  moral virtues.

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• Intellectual virtues are taught moral virtues
  are cultivated the product of habit (ethos).

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Moral Virtues

• The moral virtues are not implanted in us by
  nature but neither are their opposites. And
  unlike sight, for eg., which we have before we
  use it, in the case of moral virtues we acquire
  them by exercising them. In the same way as a
  craftsman learns his craft through practice.
• A state of character results from the
  repetition of similar activities. So actions
  precede dispositions.

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• Practical Objective
• Our present discussion does not aim, as our
  others do, at study for the purpose of our
  examination is not to know what virtue is, but to
  become good, since otherwise the inquiry would be
  of no benefit to us. (Bk 2, Ch.2, Sect.1)
• But how do we become good/virtuous?

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The Mean

• The answer is by acting according to a mean
  between deficiency and excess.
• Just as health is destroyed by too much (eg food)
  or too little (eg food, exercise), so it is with
  the moral virtues.

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• The same actions that produce a virtue express
  that virtue eg. bodily strength temperance,
  courage, etc.

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• But, how is it possible that we must perform just
  actions to be just, and we must be just to
  perform just actions circularity?
• No The just and temperate person is not the one
  who merely does these actions, but the one who
  also does them in the way in which just or
  temperate people do them. Bk.2, Ch.4

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• Which is 1) The agent must act in full
  consciousness of what he is doing. 2) He must
  will his action, and will it for its own sake.
  3) The act must proceed from a fixed and
  unchangeable disposition.
• NB Aristotles emphasis, unlike other moral
  philosophers, is not on what actions are just?,
  but on what is a just person how do we become
  just? defining feature of virtue ethics

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• So, what is virtue?
• Virtue is a disposition a disposition which
  enables the good man to perform his function
  well. And we do that when we avoid excess and
  deficiency, when we achieve the mean in our
  actions and our feelings.

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• What is the mean? It is not the arithmetical
  mean. It is not the mean of the thing but the
  relative mean.
• Eg., fear, anger, pity can be experienced and
  acted upon to excess or to deficiency.
• But to have these feelings at the right times on
  the right occasions towards the right people for
  the right motive and in the right way is to have
  them in the right measure, that is, somewhere
  between the extremes and this is what
  characterises goodness. Bk.2, Ch.6, Sect.10-12

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• Virtue, then, is a state that decides,
  consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us,
  which is defined by reference to reason, that is
  to say, to the reason by reference to which the
  prudent reason would define it. It is a mean
  between two vices, one of excess and one of
  deficiency. (Bk2. Ch.7. Sect. 15)
• We may now define virtue as a disposition of the
  soul in which, when it has to choose among
  actions and feelings, it observes the mean
  relative to us, this being determined by such a
  rule or principle as would take shape in the mind
  of a man of sense or practical wisdom (pp.66).

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• Examples of some virtues (of character)
• Courage Temperance Generosity Truthfulness
  Friendliness Modesty.
• These are all acquired through good habit.
• And, when combined with the intellectual virtues
  (knowledge, practical wisdom, etc), they lead to
  a life of eudaimonia well-being, or well-doing.

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• We call the person who achieves this happy
  (eudaimon) and virtuous (excellent).
• The point of ethics and philosophy is to
  achieve this goal.