The Role Of Virtue In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Throughout the books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that we have read thus far, he speaks of virtues both intellectual in nature as well as moral, appearing in people first as a result of nature. He then describes how through further education and “habituation”, those characteristics or behaviors become active in our lives and allow us to behave justly. Further, although virtues are a thing relating to the individual, he discusses them in relation to one another, sort of generalizing them for the sake of understanding what he means. He says he does this because of his argument that humans are political creatures and therefore it makes sense to describe virtues in this way because that is how we would see it. The virtues we have read and discussed so far have been the moral virtues. Aristotle defines virtues as the “mean” between the two extremes of some sort of action or way of thinking as the virtue for that specific part of life. For example, courage is the mean between fear and confidence, and as such it is a virtue to be courageous. Other examples of these “means” include moderation being the mean between pleasures, liberality the mean between prodigality and stinginess, and magnificence the “golden mean” between parsimony and crassness/vulgarity. Aristotle’s virtues are part of a striving for excellence that
He believes that anyone can be virtuous, however, it is much easier for a person who has been brought up in a household being taught good habits and the difference between right and wrong and has instilled in him/her the basics of the virtues. According to Aristotle, virtue can be taught and should be of appropriate concern to schools. Ultimately, his argument returns to the assertion that humans are political animals and as such, we should approach the good through exercising our virtues in a social nature or