aristotle – Flashcards

The Main Idea: man's good consists in happiness, understood as a life of intellectual and moral excellence

The idea that every activity, whether intellectual or physical, has a purpose, and the achievement of that purpose is the activity's good.

A teleological orientation (from the Greek word telos, meaning end, object, or purpose): such ethical views conceive good in terms of the ends of an action, and conduct is evaluated in terms of the conduct's realizing its purpose.

No - in our investigation of the good we are not to expect more precision than the subject admits. "Precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products in the crafts." - Aristotle

According to Aristotle, there is an end or purpose to human life, and it is happiness.

Self-regarding ethics, because his fundamental concern is with the question of what kind of life is a good life

His capacity to reason, and therefore man's good, his fulfillment, consists in the exercise of reason.

No - Aristotle thinks that material circumstances are highly relevant to leading a happy life. He mentions among other factors the importance of money, friends, political power, even a decent level of physical attractiveness (although he says nothing about other-worldly considerations like the love of God). "It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment." - Aristotle

By "happiness" Aristotle means a life of excellence or fulfillment, doing the distinctively human things well, not a life of feeling a certain way. As any hammer is a good hammer if it does the hammer things well - their purpose is common and objective - so with persons: a person is fulfilled - happy in Aristotle's sense - if he or she does the human things well. Happiness, for Aristotle, in an objective phenomenon, not one that varies from person to person.

First, intellectual virtue, by which he means philosophical wisdom or understanding Second, moral virtue, by which he means developing and possessing a good character, having practical wisdom about what to do, how to do it, and when to refrain from doing it

By exercising our distinctively human capacity for reason to discover where, between the pitfalls of excess and deficiency, the virtues lie (in the "Golden Mean"), and working out a plan of action that takes into account who we are individually, what possibilities are available to us, and other relevant factors in order to achieve those virtues, or excellences of character. The method is for me to use my reason to determine where I am now, where I want to go, and by what path I am to get to the place that I want to be.

No - some actions are inherently bad and always to be avoided. "Not every action...admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply badness, e.g., spite shamelessness, envy, ... adultery, theft, and murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the excesses or deficiencies of them." - Aristotle

Intellectual virtue - "the activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvelous for their purity and their enduringness and it is to be expected that those who know will pass their time more pleasantly than those who inquire." - Aristotle