Example research essay topic: View On Ethics And Virtue - 659 words

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Aristotle's View On Ethics And Virtue Aristotle believes that human beings have three parts to their psychologies, what he calls three souls: the vegetative soul (that unconscious part that takes care of autonomic functions such as digestion and circulation), the animal soul (that conscious part that feels emotions, desires, and appetites) the rational soul (that part that thinks, evaluates, judges, forms beliefs, etc. ). Of these, the animal and rational souls may both exhibit excellent rationality. The rational soul may be rational in itself, and the animal soul may be subject to reason that is, ruled by reason. When the rational soul is doing its job well, it attains wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.

The habits of thought and intellectual skills that help it to do this job are called intellectual virtues. These are the virtues that are acquired through the kind of training one receives in school. But someone can have great book smarts and still be very irrational in how they conduct their lives: they are led by irrational desires, uncontrolled emotions, etc. Their animal soul is not subject to the guidance of reason. Such a person lacks what Aristotle calls moral virtue. Aristotle says that peoples states of character are cultivated through like activities.

Peoples feelings and behavioral dispositions are a matter of habituation. If they consistently behave in an angry way in a given situation, they will develop the habit of feeling anger in that situation. If people consistently behave in a calm manner in the situation, they will develop the habit of feeling calm. Hence, if someone wants to develop virtuous states of character, he / she needs to do so through repeatedly acting in the corresponding ways until it becomes internalized.

Virtues are really nothing more than good habits. Aristotle rejects three common conceptions of happiness - pleasure, honor, and wealth. Happiness, he says, cannot be identified with any of these things (even though all three may be part of an overall happy life). Pleasure, he says, is found in satisfying desires - but whether or not we can satisfy our desires is as much up to chance as it is up to us. If human happiness were nothing more than pleasure, then the attainment of the chief human end would ot be up to us. Wed be slaves to our desires.

Furthermore, our chief good - our purpose in life - would be no different from that of lower animals. But then why do we have all the intellectual abilities that distinguish us from animals? Aristotle also rejects the idea that the life of honor (the life of being publicly recognized and revered) is the happy life. Again, he points out that whether or not we are honored is not up to us - so this view of happiness would put the attainment of our chief end in life into the hands of others.

Furthermore, we do not seek honor purely for its own sake - we also seek it as a measure of our worth. But happiness is sought for its own sake. Finally, wealth is merely useful - it is not sought for itself but for what it can be used to achieve. Aristotle notes that we tend to identify the chief good of something with its fulfillment of its function - such that a good hammer is one that does what hammers are supposed to do, and does it well. The properties that contribute to a hammer fulfilling its function are said to be virtues of the hammer. Human beings certainly have functions that they acquire as the result of taking on certain social roles - parent, student, teacher, police officer, concert pianist, janitor - and hence various role-specific virtues.

But we are looking for the chief good of human beings as such. Works used: Aristotle: Ethics and the Virtues - web J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Ethics (London, 1973) Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Research essay sample on View On Ethics And Virtue