Aristotelian Ethics

Aristotelian Ethics

1. Common questions asked by people all over the world

   • What does it mean to be happy and to live a good life? How do we focus on what matters and live up to our own potential? Why do some people succeed while others merely get by?
     • One of the most thorough and compelling discussions of those questions was posed by Aristotle over 2300 years ago.

2. The basics of Aristotelian ethics

   • Is...
     • 1.- . Everyone Seeks Eudaimonia:According to Aristotle, all humans seek to flourish. It’s the proper and desired end of all of our actions. Flourishing, however, is a functional definition. And to understand something’s function, you have to understand its nature.
       • How do we get four different aspects out of “rational creature who lives in societies?”
         • 1.-We are physical beings. 2.- We are emotional beings. 3.- We are social beings. 4.- We are rational beings.
   • 2.- Flourishing Is a Holistic Concept: You can’t truly flourish if you’re not flourishing in one of the four aspects of human nature. This principle plays out in our everyday lives when we see people who are so emotionally stunted that they can’t function well in society… or who are so obese that they can’t enjoy life… or who are so socially inept that they can’t fit into the type of society that would develop their intelligence.

3. Virtue

   • Is...
     • A virtue is a trait of character that enables a person to flourish.
       • The Doctrine of the Mean
         • This is a key phrase to understand Aristotle. Consider the virtue of bravery, for example. An excess of bravery leads people to do really stupid things; the example I normally use is the frat-brat who’ll jump off the fraternity house roof just to prove how brave he is. It’s not brave; it’s rash. On the other hand, people who have a deficiency of bravery are cowards; they won’t put their ass on the line for anything. The virtue of bravery lies somewhere in between the deficiency of bravery (cowardliness) and the excess of bravery (rashness).
       • How Are All of the Virtues Related?
         • It’s not quite intelligence, although it is a rational trait; it’s more like knowing what the mean is in the particular circumstance you’re in.
       • We Become More Virtuous Through Education and Habit
         • If we’re lucky, we’re brought up in an environment where the adults around us teach us how to be virtuous. There are two ways that they can do this.
           • The first way is just by training us to have habits that enable us to flourish. For example, they may instill in us the tendency to exercise or to play sports.
           • The second way normally follows the first. After we reach a certain age of maturity, they can start to teach us why it’s good to have the habits that they’ve been inculcating. Children don’t understand flourishing, but adolescents and adults can. Adults are honing our practical wisdom at this stage, since they are teaching us in what circumstances we ought to do certain actions. They are in effect teaching us why we ought to be the type of person we are.