Aristotle s Work On Ethics - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Aristotle s Work On Ethics - the

Source link. Thanks for installing the Bottom of every post plugin by Corey Salzano. Contact me if you need custom WordPress plugins or website design. Hi there! Click one of our representatives below and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Aristotle and Ethics. Published by at. Categories Uncategorized. Aristotle s Work On Ethics

Aristotle conceives of ethical theory as a field distinct from the theoretical sciences. Its methodology must match its subject matter—good action—and must respect the fact that in this field many generalizations hold only for the most part.

We study Aistotle in order to improve our lives, and therefore its principal concern is the nature of human well-being. Aristotle follows Socrates and Plato in taking the virtues to be central to a well-lived life. Like Plato, he regards the ethical virtues justice, courage, temperance and so on as complex rational, emotional and social skills. But he rejects Plato's idea that to be completely virtuous one must acquire, through a training in the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy, an understanding of what goodness is.

2. The Human Good and the Function Argument

What we need, in order to live well, is a proper appreciation of the way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must e, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each occasion, which course of here is best supported by reasons. Therefore practical wisdom, as he conceives it, cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general Aristotle s Work On Ethics of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion. Aristotle wrote two ethical treatises: the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics.

Both treatises examine the conditions in which praise or blame are appropriate, and the nature of pleasure and friendship; near the end of each work, we find a brief discussion of the proper relationship between human beings and the divine. Though the general point of view expressed in each work is the same, there are many subtle differences in organization and content as well.

Clearly, one is a re-working of the other, Aristotle s Work On Ethics although no Aristotlee piece of evidence shows conclusively what their order is, it is widely assumed that the Nicomachean Ethics is a later and improved version of the Eudemian Ethics.

1. Preliminaries

Perhaps the most telling indication of this ordering is that in several instances the Nicomachean Ethics develops a theme about which its Eudemian Wlrk is silent. Only the Nicomachean Ethics discusses the close relationship between ethical inquiry and politics; only the Nicomachean Ethics critically Aristotle s Work On Ethics Solon's paradoxical dictum that no man should be counted happy until he is dead; and only the Nicomachean Ethics gives a series of arguments for the superiority of the philosophical life to the political life.

The remainder of this article will therefore focus on this work. It ranges over topics discussed more fully in the other two works and its point of view is similar to theirs.]