Aristotle

Aristotle's Ethics of Virtue

• Aristotle, a Greek philosopher (384-322 B.C.), was a student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great.
• He wrote on many subjects including metaphysics, science, psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and politics and he is considered the father of formal logic.
• Aristotle differed from Plato, his teacher, on the idea of Forms, believing they exist within things, not independently.
• Aristotle was more empirical than Plato.
• Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens became the second major school of philosophy.
• In a selection from the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle considers the core of ethics in connection to human existence.
• Virtue is described as traits enabling people to live well in communities.
• Achieving well-being (eudaimonia, or happiness) requires suitable social institutions to foster virtue.
• The moral person needs a flourishing political environment because this helps individuals develop essential virtues for a good life.
• Aristotle views ethics as a branch of politics.
• Moral and intellectual virtues are different; intellectual virtues can be taught directly while moral virtues must be lived to be learned.
• Living well creates good habits, which become virtues and should ensure happiness provided one lives in a flourishing environment and lives moderately, following the "Golden Mean."

Book I: All Human Activities Aim at Some Good

• Every art, scientific inquiry, action, and purpose aims at some good.
• Ends vary; sometimes they are activities, sometimes results beyond activities.
• Results are naturally superior to actions when they exist beyond the action itself.
• Various actions, arts, and sciences have various ends.
• Health is the end of medicine, ships for shipbuilding victory comes from strategy, and wealth from economics.
• Arts or sciences can combine for a single enterprise like bridle-making contributing to horsemanship, and horsemanship combining with military action for strategy.
• Master arts/sciences have more desirable ends than subordinate ones, as subordinates are pursued for the sake of master arts.
• Whether ends are activities or something beyond doesn't change the argument.
• The good and supreme good is some end in the sphere of action that is desired for its own sake, for which everything else is wished.
• Knowing this good is important like archers aiming at a target which gives a better chance of attaining desires.
• Comprehending what this good is, and determining which science/faculty focuses on it is vital.
• The most authoritative science is evidently the political one, which determines necessary sciences, what should be studied, and to what extent by each class in the state.
• Faculties held in highest esteem, like strategy, are determined by political science.
• Economics and rhetoric are subordinate.
• Since politics uses other sciences and governs actions, its end encompasses all sciences, aiming for the good of mankind and that end is nobler and more divine than the good of an individual.
• Inquiry aims at the objects of political inquiry.

The Science of the Good for Man is Politics

• Political science aims at the good, the highest of all practical goods.
• There's general agreement that the good is happiness
• The masses and the cultured classes agree on that point, considering "to live well" or "to do well" equals "to be happy," though they disagree on what constitutes it.
• Ordinary people see happiness as pleasure, wealth, or honor.
• Definitions vary, even within the same person at different times (health when ill, wealth when poor).
• Some philosophers believe in an absolute good that causes goodness in everything.
• Conceptions of good or happiness can be interpreted through people's lives.
• Ordinary or vulgar people see happiness as pleasure, choosing a sensual life, while cultivated people equate happiness with honor, which stems from people's conferral of it and the good is inherent and not easily taken away.
• Honor, virtue, and thought are all intertwined since people seek honor from the wise on the grounds of virtue.
• Virtue can be regarded as the end of political life, but a man may possess virtue while being asleep or experiencing calamities, which raises doubts about the notion of virtue being the sole purpose of political life.
• The life of money making is one of constraint since wealth is useful as a means to something else.
• Pleasure, honor, and virtue are more reasonable ends than wealth since they are desired on their own, but they are not the ultimate ends either.

Characteristics of the Good

• Regarding the good, consider that it seems different in different activities and arts. The good is presumably that for which all else is done.
• In every activity, the end is for the sake of which all people take action and if there is an end for all activity, then all good is accomplished and if there are several such ends, it will be these.
• Wealth, flutes and other instruments are endpoints that are also desired as means to something else, which proves these are not the ultimate ends
• The highest good is final, and if one final end exists, it is the singular object of search whereas there are more that one, and it the most final.
• Happiness is unique because it is always desired for its own sake and never means to attain something else and other factors that are desired happen due to happiness because instruments enable happiness.
• Furthermore nobody desires happiness in order to attain other things.
• The final good is self-sufficient, incorporating parents, children, wife, friends, and fellow citizens.
• Happiness is what remains and is the most desirable out of all things.
• Happiness is the supreme good, but its nature must be defined.
• The best way of defining it is by finding the function of man.
• In all special functions or activity, it is important that excellence should exist, and apply to man as well as carpenters and cobblers, who all are naturally functionless.
• Every part of the body as a special function and so does man and that function is not life, but life peculiar to him.
• Nutrition and growth are secondary, and there remains the active life of the rational part of man and this part is rational in the sense of being obedient to reason, along with exercising reason and intelligence.
• The active life is either by state of character or activity; which means the life of activity is the truer model.
• The function of man then is activity of the should in accordance with reason, or not apart from that, just as with all men of different kinds, a good man does his function well above all else.
• In being that man is a kind of life, consisting with activity of the soul, it follows that good is the activity of soul given with virtue, or if there are many, one of whom is complete.

Part VI: Ethics

• Perfect life is not accomplished until the words are added "in a complete life" because no event can deem a man blessed or happy because happiness is an activity of the sought in accordance with virtue
• Human virtue is considered, for the search for good is human good, and happiness is human happiness.
• Virtues come in two forms as intellectual, and moral, where intellectual is learned by teaching and moral is learned by habit, so named "ethike".
• No virtue that exists by nature can be transformed by habit (a natural law).
• If an action continues to happen many times, it can become virtue, starting by the faculties (the senses) and then we display it at the activities.
• Virtues are obtained by first practicing them (arts) and we will learn when studying to do them.
• This practice applies as well to virtuous concepts like justice, temperance, and bravery.
• States are able to confirm this as lawmakers are able to implement good habits and is the object all lawmakers have at heart, or they will fail and bad constitutions will form.
• Means by which virtue is produced is the same for what it is used for.
• Good and bad harpists come from people playing, so does the case of builders, etc
• No need for a teacher otherwise for they be be good at these crafts or born into them

The Ethics of Virtue

• Virtues are also practiced with everyday actins that grow and produce good habits.
• This present study is not the other studies, purely of intention for the object is how to be good, and that is the benefit of it, thereby we must consider it like a sketch to consider proper actions that come from character.
• Acting in accordance with reason is a common practice for good people and all reasonable debate must exist on the basis of a subject matter.
• This matter consists of conduct and matters of health.
• General reasoning on ethics means there must exist some scientific exactitude so as circumstances are met.
• Also, it is important to note deficiency and excess is what's fatal
• Too much and too little is the end result, and it is with temperance, courage, and other moral virtues.
• A person is considered cowardly if they avoid and afraid of everything, and too much of everything means a person is licentious.
• For temperance and courage, they are destroyed by excess and deficiency, preserved by the mean.
• Production is that for which an agency has, such as strength
• Virtues come from abstaining them, and with courage comes training ourselves to fear it, best able to make us face those things.
• Testing for moral character is if an action is followed with pleasure for physical and mental processes.
• Early training will decide pleasure/pain for certain objects, for this is considered "true education".
• Also, doing what is good and temperating actions will influence our daily lives as we are musicians and grammarians in doing it.
• Speaking is much like language, where it becomes like its code because of grammatical knowledge it possesses with language's excellence being in those factors.
• Virtues may become unjust and intemperate for the wrong reason, because these are needed to justify what is being done. Therefore one of the steps is that art and moral codes must work to achieve conditions and create just action and make them happen without simply just thinking they will exist.
• Fair judgement is a necessity and also just/temperate actions. When acts and situations, even thoughts in one's mind can become just in the spirit and follow with temperate decisions.