Aristotle's Definition of Virtue Essay Example

Aristotle used scientific observation and analytic categorize to make judgment about the world around us, he observes the world and then analyzes it. According to Aristotle, human beings has a purpose, which is to achieve “happiness”. Happiness translate as “eudaimonia”, it's define as a well-being over a long period of time. In order to search for eudaimonia, we have to be complete and self sufficient, and this must gain through practice of virtue. According to Aristotle, virtue means excellence, it's a type of development and exercise of capacity to reason. Happiness is the highest good for humans, we can only be happy if we fulfill our basic function or purpose, which is act according to reason. The use of reason is a virtue, happiness requires us to develop our virtues, in order to develop virtue, you'll have to act good and practice reasoning. Aristotle also divided virtue into intellectual virtues and moral virtues. Intellectual virtues included theoretical capacity that is called wisdom (sophia), or thinking abstract; and there is also practical virtues, the ability to think about appropriate ways to behave in specific situations. For example: Insist to help an old person when you see him/her carrying a heavy bag; or don't laugh in a funeral. On the other hand, moral virtue is define as a mean between extremes, and we'll have to practice balancing the mean in order to develop our moral virtues. For example, the mean of confidence would be either in deficient is coward or in extreme is rashness. For instance, in any competitive sports, an athlete can't have too much confidence or not believing in himself, either attitude could make him a failure, he has choose the balance in between in order to achieve his goals. Aristotle argues that moral education is crucial to everyone, especially kids at their development period, they must taught what the balance is by their parents and tutors, a good role model must be provided. Ultimately, a good life is a