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Aristotle's Two Types Of Virtue

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In the article “Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle talks about how virtue is needed for a person to have happiness in their life. A virtuous person is a person that is living with high morally standards and that is living by the great of goodness. Aristotle talks about two different types of virtue. One being Virtue of thoughts and the other being virtue of characters. Virtue of thought is believed to be a good characteristic. It is acquired by learning virtues like honor, excellence and so on. However not all people have resources or the ability to develop virtue of characters and everyone doesn’t all have good standards to develop it. In book1 Aristotle believes that every activity that we do as humans aims at some conclusion that will be …show more content…

He talks about those that are considered moral. Moral virtue is dealing with moderation, courage, generosity. The other type of virtue he talks about is those that are considered intellectual and intellectual virtue deals with wisdom and contemplation. He believes that moral virtues are created by habitual actions. He Also believes that teaching and growth is intellectual main owes. He stated that “From the pain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exist by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature” (148). Aristotle goes on by giving us an example of this by saying “For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards” (148). He says that when humans are born, they aren’t natural capacity for virtue. When we are young education and cultivation by our parents are pivotal in setting up human’s ability in making virtuous acts habitual. Aristotle feels like human’s beings should commit numerous virtuous actions for to take a step in becoming virtuous. He thinks that we should do this as much as possible. He also stated that moral virtues have to be attended by desire. Aristotle believes that when humans commit virtuous actions, they cannot be pained for those virtuous actions. If the human is pained because of an action in which the commit, then it is not considered virtuous. Given the right education, it should make us take desire in what is moral

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Virtues are only acquired through the habituation of doing the right things voluntarily. Aristotle also believed that a person doing the right thing and reaching the mean of a virtue should be brought pleasure by their actions. In a class discussion we defined character as the sum of all of our virtues, combined with how we use those virtues to influence our decisions and actions. The virtues I found most applicable in this case study are: integrity, humility, and loyalty. Integrity is a very influential virtue in this case, as

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These five common ideas represent how Aristotle would want us as people to contribute to our morals. More in fact how we should part take in these habits to come

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In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that the human good is the soul’s activity that expresses virtue. Aristotle concludes this from an invalid argument. On the one hand I do agree that the activity expressing virtue is a requirement for the human good. But on the other hand, I insist that the human good is a state and not an action. By modifying this argument, I believe we can reach a new conclusion that will help us better understand what Aristotle meant by these concepts.

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We can certainly be taught knowledge but we can’t be taught virtue. Virtue is the love and application of knowledge. For example a teacher can teach you math but they can’t teach you to desire that math. Likewise you can teach a person stamina

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When it comes to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I believe that he has found a common thread in humanity in the fact that humans strive for the moderate in living virtuously. However, I would argue that the thread is varied enough to have no true worth in discerning the aspects of humanity. People have too different moralities and goals. Because Aristotle allows for these “local variations”, as Martha Nussbaum later terms in her defense of Aristotle, he is acknowledging that there cannot be an overarching analysis of humanity.

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In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he outlines the different scenarios in which one is responsible for her actions.  There is, however, a possible objection which raises the possibility that nobody is responsible for their actions.  Are we responsible for some of our actions after all?   If so, under what circumstances?

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This principle lies at the heart of the great-souled man, the first of Aristotle’s peaks of humanly excellence. The great-souled man is chiefly concerned with—and strikes the mean with—external goods. The greatest of these goods is “the one that we assign to the gods, and at which people of high standing aim most of all, and which is the prize given for the most beautiful deeds; and of this kind is honor” (67:1123b19-21). A man who has achieved greatness of soul is deserving of great honors, but more importantly, he understands his own desert and acts appropriately.

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Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book ll, is about his idea of how people should live a virtuous life. Throughout this book, he explains that humans learn virtue from instructions and we learn virtue from practice too. Virtue is something that is very important because it is a moral habit that results in keeping our moral values. Aristotle believed that nobody is born with virtue, everyone has to work at it daily. After reading Nicomachean ethics, Book ll, my main conclusion of it is that us as humans are better off being virtuous than simply doing what we feel like doing at any moment in time.

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In his book Nicomanchean Ethics Aristotle explains and differentiates voluntary and involuntary actions and expatiate on all the factor that contribute in deciding on the nature of our actions. The purpose of this differentiation is essential for the study of virtue ethics and more importantly for the study of jurisprudence “to the assigning of both of honors and of punishments” onto individuals. Aristotle firstly describes factors that causes actions to be involuntary or voluntary, such as ignorance, compulsion and choice. The understanding of such factors and their relation to our actions are also important to understand the principles explained by Aristotle. Voluntary actions is defined by Aristotle as actions that have their principle

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To reach this conclusion, I will be splitting this passage into 3 parts. The first section is Aristotle’s introduction to

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Virtue is defined in many ways. Some say that it comes from the Latin word ‘virtus’, meaning virtue or courage, which comes from the other Latin word ‘vir’, which means man, meaning that virtue is the qualities of a man, such as courage. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines virtue as, “conformity to a standard of right [and/or] a particular moral excellence” (Merriam-Webster 899). With all these definitions floating around, it is hard to determine what virtues really is and what it really means to have virtue. In Plato’s Meno, Socrates and Meno discuss the definition of virtue and whether it can be taught.

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Aristotle’s virtue ethics differs from other moral theories. Unlike deontology and consequentialism, virtue ethics emphasizes and describes moral characters (virtues). In my paper, I am going to explore the objection to virtue ethics from a relativist point of view and the responses to this objection that were presented in Nussbaum’s paper “A non-relative approach to virtue ethics.” Furthermore, I am going to present two out of three relativist objections to her responses that she anticipated, and her responses to them.

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The last theory is Aristotle’s virtue ethics which states that we should move from the concern towards good action and to focus on the concern with good character. This paper argues that Aristotle’s virtue ethics is better than the other ethical theories. The divine command theory says that what is morally right and what is morally wrong is determined by God and God alone. People who follow the divine command theory believe that God is the creator of all things, therefore, he must also be the creator of morally right and wrong acts.

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“Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good has been aptly described as that which everything aims. But it is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are activities, while others are products which are additional to the activities. In cases where there are ends additional to the actions, the products are by their nature better than activities.” (Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, as translated by Crisp, 2000, p. #3) Aristotle was the first philosopher who wrote a book on ethics titled, Nichomachean Ethics.

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(Ethics 938). It is not enough to state that one is virtuous, nor is it enough for someone to be born virtuous and end there. Rather, it is the continuous pursuit, the juxtaposition of virtuous activity and of that which isn’t, that allows an individual to flourish in an Aristotelian society. We can deduce, then, that “…human

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