Chief good aristotle. Analysis of Aristotle's Chief Good, Sample of Essays 2022-10-06
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In his Nicomachean Ethics, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defines the chief good, or the ultimate end or goal, as happiness. According to Aristotle, happiness is not something that can be pursued directly, but rather it is the byproduct of living a virtuous and fulfilling life.
Aristotle believes that human beings are rational creatures, and it is through the exercise of our reason that we can achieve happiness. He argues that living a virtuous life, one in which we cultivate and practice virtues such as courage, justice, and wisdom, leads to a life of fulfillment and happiness.
For Aristotle, the chief good is not just the absence of suffering or the presence of pleasure, but rather a state of flourishing and thriving. This state of flourishing is achieved through the practice of virtues, which he sees as habits or dispositions that enable us to live well and pursue our goals effectively.
Aristotle also believes that the chief good is not something that can be achieved in isolation, but rather it is the result of living in a community and contributing to the greater good. He argues that living in a just and well-ordered society, in which we are able to pursue our own individual goals while also contributing to the common good, is essential to our happiness and flourishing.
In conclusion, according to Aristotle, the chief good is happiness, which is achieved through the practice of virtues and living in a just and well-ordered society. It is a state of flourishing and thriving, rather than just the absence of suffering or the presence of pleasure. By living a virtuous and fulfilling life, we can pursue the chief good and achieve true happiness.
How does Aristotle reconcile the claim that contemplation is the chief good when clearly not all things aim at it?
No one man in the world is smarter than every other, and capable to judge all of humanity. Aristotle proceeds to talk about immanent activities and the latter transient activities. To be adequately equipped to live a life of thought and discussion, one will need practical wisdom, temperance, justice, and the other ethical virtues. We will discuss these chapters more fully in section 10 below. His immediate goal is to give a rough outline of happiness which we will gradually fill in with details throughout the Ethics, so as to arrive at a comprehensive account of the happy life and the role contemplative activity plays within it.
Accordingly, for this third way we pick out a particular activity performed by something, which we call its characteristic activity or proper act, and which we can think about as follows: the characteristic activity of an X is the activity it necessarily engages in insofar as it is an X. Everything we do is done with the intent of achieving either of those three entities. This follows from the fact that happiness is our chief good, and the goodness of a thing resides in its function. Aristotle famously held that happiness is the ultimate goal of human life, or — to use language more in keeping with Aristotle — that happiness is the chief good and last end of human life: Let us resume our inquiry and state… what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. One of his reasons for thinking that such a life is superior to the second-best kind of life—that of a political leader, someone who devotes himself to the exercise of practical rather than theoretical wisdom—is that it requires less external equipment 1178a23—b7. This is why Aristotle often talks in term of a practical syllogism, with a major premise that identifies some good to be achieved, and a minor premise that locates the good in some present-to-hand situation.
Analysis of Aristotle's Chief Good, Sample of Essays
Surely that for whose sake everything else is done. The rest of this Book is a discussion of the various kinds of intellectual virtues: theoretical wisdom, science epistêmê , intuitive understanding nous , practical wisdom, and craft expertise. Aristotle conceives of ethical theory as a field distinct from the theoretical sciences. The end for which the activity is done determines how and when those powers are to be used, which is what we refer to as their measured exercise. Another difficulty is that a noble person may suffer external misfortunes which lessen his happiness. These two classes of virtue have to do with following and exercising reason respectively, a division that arose during the function argument.
His point, rather, may be that in ethics, as in any other study, we cannot make progress towards understanding why things are as they are unless we begin with certain assumptions about what is the case. The pleasures of exercising the ethical virtues are, in normal circumstances, mixed with pain. Aristotle assumes that when someone systematically makes bad decisions about how to live his life, his failures are caused by psychological forces that are less than fully rational. A good habit allows us to perform certain actions without effort. For instance, I study activity in order to pass the test good , so that I can pass the year further good , so that I can get a job further good , so that I can make money further good , and so on. He has two strategies for responding.
Example research essay topic Analysis Of Aristotle Chief Good
The first Stoic teaching mentioned in the handout deals with virtue and vice. The main three conceptions, life of gratification, a political life, and life of contemplation, are all outlined by Aristotle; ultimately, he restricts his notion by stating that happiness resides only in…. Superficially, we might say that its function is the electronic storage and retrieval of information according to a program, or some such thing. The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. Introducing function Aristotle starts talking about function when trying to work out what happiness could be NE I.
According to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, what is the "chief good"—at which all human activity and desire is directed?
Aristotle does not deny that when we take pleasure in an activity we get better at it, but when he says that pleasure completes an activity by supervening on it, like the bloom that accompanies those who have achieved the highest point of physical beauty, his point is that the activity complemented by pleasure is already perfect, and the pleasure that accompanies it is a bonus that serves no further purpose. Aristotle says that everything we do is in some way aimed at a goal or "end" that we think is good. Aristotle's third premise in regard to pleasure is that pleasures differ in kind, as do the activities that they complete. Ethical virtue is fully developed only when it is combined with practical wisdom 1144b14—17. Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these? There are several points throughout Aristotle's argument, which I dont hold to be true. Whereas human beings need nourishment like plants and have sentience like animals, their distinctive function, says Aristotle, is their unique capacity to reason. Aristotle goes on to strengthen his argument by comparing the wholeness of pleasure to that of thought.
In fact, while I am good at them, I quite dislike participating in, or even watching sports, as I find them boring and in many cases, just dumb. His theory elucidates the nature of virtue, but what must be done on any particular occasion by a virtuous agent depends on the circumstances, and these vary so much from one occasion to another that there is no possibility of stating a series of rules, however complicated, that collectively solve every practical problem. Also appeared in Pakaluk and Pearson 2010: 159—186. He lies between the coward, who flees every danger and experiences excessive fear, and the rash person, who judges every danger worth facing and experiences little or no fear. Three Lives Compared In Book I Aristotle says that three kinds of lives are thought to be especially attractive: one is devoted to pleasure, a second to politics, and a third to knowledge and understanding 1095b17—19. Happiness is probably the best English word to translate eudaimonia, the term also has relations with fulfillment, success, and flourishing.
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The grandest expression of ethical virtue requires great political power, because it is the political leader who is in a position to do the greatest amount of good for the community. Though the general point of view expressed in each work is the same, there are many subtle differences in organization and content as well. But in fact, as Aristotle continues to develop his taxonomy, he does not choose to exploit this possibility. Aristotle argued that the way to bridge the gap between knowledge of the good life and actually living it was through the development of a good moral character. Man's function is that which sets him apart from all other beings, an action which only human beings can perform. Aristotle thinks of the good person as someone who is good at deliberation, and he describes deliberation as a process of rational inquiry.
Neither theoretical nor practical inquiry starts from scratch. Pleasure Aristotle frequently emphasizes the importance of pleasure to human life and therefore to his study of how we should live see for example 1099a7—20 and 1104b3—1105a16 , but his full-scale examination of the nature and value of pleasure is found in two places: VII. If our ultimate goal is happiness then we have everything that we need. Politics, …show more content… One of the reasons that he says virtues can't be created by nature is that our virtues tend to come from habits, and we cannot create a habit that is contrary to our nature making the source of Disagree With Virtue: Stoic Vs. The honesty and orchestra performance we just mentioned are two different chief goods, and, of the goods Aristotle mentioned earlier, victory could easily be the chief good of strategy and health the chief good of medicine. This pleasure can be increased or decreased by other factors, such as weather. Is he born without a function? Even so, it may still seem perplexing that these two intellectual virtues, either separately or collectively, should somehow fill a gap in the doctrine of the mean.
Aristotle says that unless we answer that question, we will be none the wiser—just as a student of medicine will have failed to master his subject if he can only say that the right medicines to administer are the ones that are prescribed by medical expertise, but has no standard other than this 1138b18—34. On the contrary, Aristotle believes it to be complete the whole time. He treats this as an easily understood phenomenon, and has no doubts about its existence. Friendships based on advantage alone or pleasure alone deserve to be called friendships because in full-fledged friendships these two properties, advantage and pleasure, are present. . What he means is that when it comes to such matters as education, which affect the good of all, each individual should be guided by the collective decisions of the whole community. He claims that a person should live a way of life distinct from the lives of animals, where they only live for the sake of living or pleasure.
