Socrates beforehand disproving Gorgias and Polus in The Gorgias, now takes on a rival who he deems qualified enough: Callicles. Here, they discuss the value of temperance and the indulgence of pleasures. Callicles remarks to Socrates, “In the rightly-developed man the passions ought not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to the upmost and somehow or other satisfy them, and that that is virtue” (Plato 74). Callicles says that to allow growth and indulge in your desires is real virtue. A man who is slave of his own restraint cannot be happy. According to him, satisfying longings is natural and even noble, but because the weaker cannot attain this and are ashamed of their own weakness, they reprimand intemperance and instead praise…
Aristotle’s beliefs on living a good life start with careful deliberation of the ends and the means. Suppose I want a laptop--the laptop is my goal, purpose, or end. I can do various things to get the laptop--such as earn, steal, borrow, or save. These things are known as my means. The means I decide to use depends on which is more convenient and which leads to the most benefits. Contemplating about the end goal that we are pursuing, and the means we use to reach that goal is practical thinking. However, this type of thinking does not come to fruition, until purposeful action occurs; which is acting with some purpose, goal, or end in mind. This purposeful action is compared differently with thoughtless action, which is an action with no purpose…
It is true that each author speaks virtues that are common to both the medieval and ancient times. Aristotle being so cunning during his era introduces virtue or excellence consisting of two parts moral and intellectual which can be taught, it is not possible to change what is naturally imprinted. Moral education is tangible through habits and experiences. Virtue can be achieved, not easily; it takes more than one characteristic to meet it.…
Discussion question 1 it discusses how Aristotle seems to have a low opinion of the pursuits of most people. In Book 1, Chapter 5 he mentions that “the many” who seek pleasure or gratification as the highest good are slaves to their passion and thus live a life like grazing animals. Aristotle suggests that such a life is not self-sufficient and unworthy of human beings. Do we agree with Aristotle’s statement? Why or why not? Do you understand why he would make such claims? I agree with Aristotle statement that he made about people who seek the pleasure and the gratification as the highest goods are living in a life like grazing animals. It seems to be that Aristotle has a very low assumption on people because of what they need to be happy.…
Epicurus says that Pleasure is what we pursue and, what we come back to, but for him pleasure stems from lack of pain. He believed that a life on moderation brought the most pleasure that over indulgence was unhealthy and brought pain. The simple things in life bring the most pleasure. He believed that mental pain was worse the physical pain. He explained mental pain a disturbance of the mind. He urged prudence in our pursuit of pleasures, and that all other virtues spring from it.…
Aristotle’s ethics focuses on virtues of character and good habits. His big term he uses is eudemonia, which means happiness.…
Nicomachean Ethics Book III, Chapters 69 In Chapter 6 of Book III of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle teaches of how fear is not something that can be easily described. He talks about what fear means in terms of courage.…
212) this clearly illustrates Aristotle’s main theory that people can be virtuous and make perfectly moral decisions in the world today, only if they are able to find that mean point between either doing too much (excess) or to do too little (deficiency), and that is where he believes the true virtue in our decisions lie. Also, Aristotle is not the only person in a position of high esteem to have a similar idea, take for example the Bible; a historical book that dates back to over a thousand years in history and not only covers historical events but also provides a guide on morality and “goodness”, which is evident in a lot of its laws like the ten commandments, the Golden rule, etc. Also, as Christian and a person who has been part of the Church for the majority of my life, after fully analyzing the above explanation of the “doctrine of the mean” something that immediately came to my head was a verse from the Bible saying “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8 NKJV) and in the first part this verse, it is referring to how “we” as people should refrain from overindulgence—and in this specific case it is—in wine/alcohol, because it is not seen as a problem for one to have few drinks or more of wine, but when one starts to overindulge themselves in it; that in turn leads to the person being in a state of stupor, where they are not in complete control of their actions. This will be a situation where the devil—seen as everything evil and immoral in life—will take advantage of one and lead you commit an immoral act. That is why much like the “doctrine of the mean”, this Bible verse is using the state of one being “sober” as its mean in this situation, which…
To begin with, there are two important pieces of information that must be acknowledged; the first is that temperance is a state within moral virtue, or a form of which a moral individual would be in while he is morally virtues, making a man temperate man a moral man. The second is in the way in which Aristotle describes and explains temperance and continence; he does so using most of the time their negations (so to speak) of self-indulgence and…
In his book “Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle invited the reader to give an explanation of what he believed is good.…
His account strings together Aristotle positive consideration of bodily appetites as innate dispositions of human nature with the kantian account on passions as specific inclinations of human beings, rooted in our freedom. However this paradigm is used to assign a power as strongest as possible to individual reason conceived as able to rule the conflictual dichotomy between body and mind, repressing with inner logical instruments all the dark desires that - he admits - can be seen as culturally and socially…
In Book II, Aristotle makes a distinction between two types of virtues; those which are considered ethical and those which are considered intellectual. Ethical virtues deal with actions of courage, generosity, and moderation. Intellectual virtues deal with wisdom and contemplation. Ethical virtues are created through habitual actions. Aristotle says that humans are not born with a natural capacity for virtue. He believes that education and cultivation as youth by one's parents are pivotal in setting up humans' ability in making virtuous acts habitual. He feels that humans have to perform virtuous actions as much as possible and through this humans can make a step in becoming virtuous. Aristotle also states that ethical virtues have to be attended by pleasure. He believes that humans cannot be pained when committing a virtuous action. If a human is pained by an action then it is not considered virtuous.…
Aristotle provides the teleological approach of how to live well in his collection of lectures, Nicomachean Ethics. In Book II of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents his definition of virtue in which it is "a kind of mean" (N.E. 129). According to Aristotle, moral virtue is a means to an end, happiness. By using Sophocles's Antigone, I will support Aristotle's theory of virtue in which he reasons it to be a state of character between two extremes. A virtue that remains relevant today as it did during Aristotle's era is that of courage. By using Aristotle's account on what represents the virtue of courage, I will demonstrate how it could be applied to the dilemma the characters of Antigone encounter. Even his definition of justice is based on the notion that rule and legal doctrine should lie somewhere in between a spectrum of two polar ideologies. Nonetheless, Aristotle's statement, "virtue is always concerned with what is harder; for even good is better when it is harder" illustrates his belief that usually what is morally correct stands closer to the side of excessiveness than that of deficit (N.E. 136).…
Urstad, Kristian, The Question of Temperance and Hedonism in Callicles (Leeds: Leeds International Classical Studies, 2011).…
In the reading Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle, a well-known philosopher, wrote about what it is to be a good person and how being a good person, reflects our happiness. Along with writing by Aristotle, there was another writing by Immanuel Kant, called The Foundations of the Metaphysics of morals, that’s rights about the fundamentals of the moral duty. These two philosophers were very good and can very well go well with each other. Aristotle and Immanuel Kant can agree that, to be a moral person, you must do things for the good, and if you do things for the good, you're a moral person.…