‘The only reason to be moral is because it is the right thing to do’ Discuss. Morality is defined as the principles of distinguishing between good and bad behaviour. We call the murderer an immoral person because they have committed a ‘bad’ action. We also stereotype charity workers as moral because they are devoted to helping others. But what motivates our moral behaviour? In an attempt to answer this‚ I will assess several key theories and thinkers to prove that morality is a means of achieving
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The virtue of ethics as define by Aristotle in its simplistic form is to discover the nature of human happiness. Happiness is the highest good and the end at which all our activities ultimately aim. The difficulty is that people don’t agree on what makes for a happy or good life‚ so the purpose of the ethics is to find an answer to this question. The answer is imprecise because practical circumstances vary a great deal when considering a person’s life as a whole. Aristotle defines virtue as a
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Kelcey PHIL 1320 Brant September 23‚ 2010 An Argument against Egoism I shall argue that the ideas of both psychological and ethical egoism are fundamentally flawed and should not be practiced. Egoism is flawed because it ignores the fact that people have a predisposition for compassion toward others that cannot be completely expelled from their motives of action. Egoism is also flawed due to the fact that altruism cannot coexist with egoism; therefore‚ because there is altruism in the world
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person’s life well and how we get there. Aristotle believes that the nature of morality is grounded in the function of persons‚ meaning that we must act in order to become happy and fulfilled. What are the functions of persons and how does one acquire virtue? To live a good life is to aim towards living a good life by acquiring habits that make one become good by doing good. Essentially human activity is aimed towards acquiring happiness for themselves and others to achieve a status of well-being. The
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Book II W. D. Ross translation Book II 1 Virtue‚ then‚ being of two kinds‚ intellectual and moral‚ intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time)‚ while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit‚ whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by
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Confucianism. Humanitarianism is the core belief of Confucianism. The belief system is based on the philosophy that humans are‚ by nature‚ communal and social beings and that everyone has a specific role to play. The Five Great Relationships and the Five Virtues are concepts followed in Confucianism. The Five Great Relationships Confucius believed that people have specific roles in society. He believed that their inherent desire to live around other people‚ or in a society‚ depended on people knowing how
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Socrates and Meno do not obtain a definition of virtue‚ while Socrates thinks that virtue is a kind of knowledge‚ and if virtue is knowledge‚ then it should be able to be both defined and taught. But most virtuous persons (virtue being some sort of excellence or another) don’t seem to be able to teach "virtue" to their own children (as told to Meno by Socrates). As a consequence of this‚ it is problematic for both Plato and Socrates to suppose that virtue is a sort of knowledge. What can be inferred
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Theories of Development: Scholarly Disciplines and the Hierarchy of Peoples In chapter four of his book “Barbarian Virtues‚” Matthew Frye Jacobson connects the theories and beliefs used to interpret relationships to the development of humans over time. He states that scholarly methods in academics have been used to systematically rank different groups of people. Jacobson discusses many academic disciplines used in these theories such as‚ anthropology‚ genetics‚ biology‚ psychology‚ and linguistics
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promise to her baby. The most important example‚ however‚ is Mama’s admittance to Katrin that she had no desire to be rich. She likes the way her life is‚ and is happy just the way things are. 3. In Book II‚ Aristotle addresses moral virtue. This moral virtue‚ which
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What is a good life exactly? This term will mean different things to different people‚ and yet I believe there are the same ingredients that all “good lives” share‚ even from the classic Eurasian time until present day. Virtues of character‚ which are also called ‘moral virtues’‚ seem to be more complex and are an integral part of the completeness of life that is said is necessary for a good life. There seems to be a pattern with people of always trying to achieve being a good person. Is being a
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