Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
VIRTUE ETHICS P2 - Coggle Diagram
VIRTUE ETHICS P2
Aristotle
'Moral virtue is a mean... between 2 vices, one of excess and other of defect;...it is such a mean because it aims at hitting the middle point in feelings and in actions. This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is hard to find the middle point in anything'
- We need balance in order to be happy + live a virtuous life
Aristotle - Background
- Ancient Greek Philosopher
- Student of Plato
- Enormously influential on the development of Western Philosophy + society
- Empiricist - believed that knowledge is attained through observation + experience - a posteriori even though his teacher, Plato, was a rationalist
-
-
Aristotle - The 4 Causes
Material Cause:
- What something is made of - what material is it made from - e.g. wood/plastic in a chair
Formal Cause:
- The form of it - what shape does it have? what does it resemble?
Efficient Cause:
- The cause of it - what brought it into existence - e.g. maker/creator/designer
Final Cause:
- The purpose it has - what is the reason it exists? what is it here to fulfil/do? - e.g. a chair provides us with a seat
Aristotle
' We do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why that is to say, its cause'
Aristotle
'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit'
Aristotle
'Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim of human existence'
Aristotle
-
- Need intellectual virtues of the mind + intellectual virtues of the soul/heart
-
Aristotle - Eudaimonia
- Teleological claim that every action is aimed at attaining some good
- The final + ultimate end to which human action is geared is eudaimonia
- It is not attained through pleasure/wealth - it is the result of fulfilling a greater human purpose
- Aristotle believed that out human ability to reason plays an important role in achieving eudaimonia
-
Aristotle - Soul/Reason
- Aristotle saw human beings as unique in their possession of a rational soul (the highest form)
- The uniqueness of the human soul lies in its capacity for raional thought
- Reasoning well is therefore how humans attain goodness + achieve eudaimonia
- This involves exercising virtue for their entire lives