The Conception Of Virtue In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

The phrase “my body, my choice” summarizes modern man’s conception of morality. In fact, the last several decades in America have witnessed the championing of individual autonomy, often at the expense of longstanding tradition. America’s disturbing trend has many great thinkers rolling in their graves. One of these thinkers, Aristotle, wrote extensively about the importance of human virtue and its relationship to politics. After outlining the Greek philosopher’s view of man’s final end, I argue that, for Aristotle, ethics is necessarily related to the common good and concerns mankind as a whole.
Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics opens with the observation that, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good” (1). All human actions have an end, and because “there are many actions” (2), there seems to be a multitude of ends. Although a plenitude of ends exist, “if there is some end of our actions that we wish for on account of itself,” then “clearly this would be the good, that is, the best” (2). Recognizing the universal aim of humanity makes people “like archers in possession of a target” (2); humans who understand their purpose can live unapologetically, always in
This virtue represents a “mean with respect to fear and confidence” (54). As a courageous man, he “will fear things of this sort, but he will endure them in the way that he ought and as reason commands, for the sake of the noble, for this is the end of virtue” (56). For example, deaths “that occur in war” constitute “the greatest and noblest danger” (55). A man acting with courage corresponds with reason, because it is behaving “the way he ought” (57). As for a man who “exceeds in fearlessness,” he “should fear nothing, neither earthquake nor flood” (56). On the flip side, a man “who exceeds in being fearful is a coward,” and he is also “someone of hope, for he fears everything”