Aristotle – Happiness and Virtue
February 26, 2010
ayamiz
Tags: aristotle, happiness, virtue
Quote: “But to feel them(Fear and confidence, appetite and anger, pity and in general pleasure and pain) at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people with the right motive and in the right way is what both intermediate and best and this is characteristic of virtue.”
What I Expect to learn: I expect to learn about the Happiness and Virtue and how can virtue affect the happiness of man.
Review:
What is happiness? A child will be happy if you give him a box of chocolates. It is true that the child will become happy, but if you dig deeper, is that what happiness all about? According to the point of view of Aristotle, happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul and should be in accordance with virtue. What does that mean? Many people have activities that leads to an end, a doctor have activities which can take care of your health; an architect can build you houses. From those activities, there is what you call an activity and a good activity. When it comes to arts, there is what you call a painter and a good painter. A painter creates many paintings, but a good painter, creates many paintings and at the same time, a very good one. Virtue there is doing things better than it is. Since happiness is in accordance with virtue, we must also consider the two types of virtue. The first one is intellectual virtue, wherein it is trained and is inborn, it is natural and no matter how you change it, it is difficult to change. On the other hand moral virtue is habitual and it does not arise from nature, and as time comes it may change. Upon knowing the two types of virtues we go now on the nature of virtue. There is what you call mean or intermediate, the excess and the defect. Mean is the middle part of the extremes, while excess and defect are both the extremes. The mean is the right virtue which can bring you to success, while excess and defect is the one can bring you down. Anything which is bad from the start, example is gambling, cannot be considered as mean, excess or defect, because from the start it is already bad. An example I can think of this is eating. Eating is needed for a person to regain energy and to survive, but if you eat too much that is required to your body, you can become obese and get many diseases from that such as heart attack, and if you eat lesser than your body need, you will get weak and instead become anorexic. So it just implies that in order to live a better life and do better things and be happy, one must be virtuous and you can achieve that by staying on the mean, although it is very hard, but in the end, it will make you happy.
What I learned:
- Happiness is achieved by being virtuous
- Nature of Virtue: Excess, Deficiency and Mean
- 2 Kinds of Virtue: Intellectual and Moral
Integrative Questions:
- What is virtue?
- How can you relate happiness with virtue?
- Why is virtue necessary to become happy?
- What is the nature of virtue?
- How can you say when something is excess/deficient or intermediate?
Entry Filed under: Contemporary Moral Problems
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