Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle ETCI Ch 6, Pg Barbara MacKinnon Ethics and Contemporary Issues Professor Douglas Olena

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1 Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle ETCI Ch 6, Pg Barbara MacKinnon Ethics and Contemporary Issues Professor Douglas Olena

2 Outline The Nature of the Good Happiness: Living and Doing Well The Function of a Person

3 Outline (cont.) Virtue Deficiency and Excess The Nature of Virtue Virtue as a Mean Some Virtues Why is it so Difficult To Be Virtuous

4 The Nature of the Good 96 Every art and every scientific inquiry, and similarly every action and purpose, may be said to aim at some good. Every activity has its own goal, ships for the shipwright, health for the doctor, etc. We are looking for a good that is not a means to something else, but good in and of itself. This good is the goal of all activity, the supreme good.

5 Happiness 96 Of this goal The masses and the cultured classes agree in calling it happiness, and conceive that to live well or to do well is the same thing as to be happy. But as to the nature of happiness they do not agree, nor do the masses give the same account of it as the philosophers. We admit that happiness is the supreme good, however we must define what it is.

6 The Function of a Person 97 The best way of arriving at such a definition will probably be to ascertain the function of Man. What is this function? We are not talking about life or sensation, because the animals have life and sensation. What is left? There remains the practical life of the rational part of Man s being.

7 The Function of a Person 97 But the rational part is twofold; it is rational partly in the sense of being obedient to reason and partly in the sense of possessing reason and intelligence. The practical life too may be conceived of in two ways, viz., either as a moral state, or as a moral activity.

8 The Function of a Person 97 The function of Man then is an activity of soul in accordance with reason. It follows that the good of Man is an activity of soul in accordance with virtue in accordance with the best and most complete virtue.

9 Virtue 97 Virtue or excellence is partly intellectual and partly moral. Intellectual virtue is fostered by teaching. Moral virtue on the other hand is the outcome of habit. No moral virtue is implanted in us by nature. Nature gives us the capacity of receiving them, and that capacity is perfected by habit.

10 Virtue 97 The virtues we acquire by first exercising them, as is the case with all the arts, for it is by doing what we ought to do when we have learnt the arts that we learn the arts themselves. 98 Not all who learn the arts learn them well. So it is with those who learn virtue, some do not learn them well.

11 Deficiency and Excess 98 deficiency and excess are equally fatal. A person who avoids and is afraid of everything and faces nothing becomes a coward; a person who is not afraid of anything but is ready to face everything becomes foolhardy. It is by habituating ourselves to despise and face alarms that we become courageous.

12 The Nature of Virtue 98 Virtue is one of the three qualities of the soul: Emotions Faculties Moral States

13 The Nature of Virtue 99 Neither the virtues nor the vices are emotions. While Nature gives us our faculties, it is not nature that makes us good or bad. The virtue or excellence of man will be such a moral state as makes a man good and able to perform his proper function well.

14 Virtue as a Mean 99 There is a mathematical mean, say between 2 and 10 the mean is 6. It is not so easy to determine the mean for people. For excellence in skill a perfect mean is required. ex. for tuning a piano one must be able to master the equipment as well as have a fine ear. It requires balance and touch.

15 Virtue as a Mean 99 Virtue [moral virtue] will aim at the mean. It is moral virtue which is concerned with emotions and actions, and it is these which admit of excess and deficiency and the mean. 100 There are many ways of going wrong, but good is finite.

16 Virtue as a Mean 100 Not every action or every emotion admits of a mean state. There are some whose very name implies wickedness: emotions: malice, shamelessness, envy actions: adultery, theft, murder These are censured as being intrinsically wicked, not admitting of any excess or deficiency or mean.

17 Emotion or Action Catalog of Virtues Deficiency Golden Mean Excess boldness cowardice courage rashness fear foolhardiness courage cowardice giving or getting money honor and dishonor meanness liberality extravagance littlemindedness highmindedness vanity anger passive, timid good-tempered irascible sincerity mock-modesty frankness boastful pleasantness surly agreeable obsequious

18 Virtuousness is Difficult 101 Much of what we judge to be excess or deficiency is based on our own perspective. If I am prone to overindulgence, then staying closer to abstinence which would be a deficiency to a temperate person would be a golden mean to me. What is permitted to one person is not necessarily permitted to another.

19 Virtuousness is Difficult Rule 1. We must steer farthest away from the extreme that is a greater mistake. Rule 2. We must notice which errors we ourselves are prone to and avoid with a passion the mistakes we are most naturally inclined to. Rule 3. We must keep a very close watch on pleasant things and pleasant feelings. When mistress pleasure is on her trial, we the jury have been tampered with.

20 Virtuousness is Difficult A small departure from the right amount, either in the direction of excess or deficiency, is not censured, though a wider divergence is bound to be noticed. There is no formula for this latitude.

21 Virtuousness is Difficult This much then is clear, that the middle course in everything is commendable, but that we should diverge sometimes towards excess and sometimes toward deficiency, as that is the easiest way of hitting the middle course, which is the right one.

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