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Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

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The book Nichomachean Ethics written by Aristotle is broken up into 10 books giving insight to what leads to the “good life”. The first chapter and first paragraph give a great insight as to what the book will end up describing throughout. “Every art and every institution, and in like manner every action, as well as predilection, seems to aim at some good: wherefore men have well defined the good to be “that which all things desire” (Oxford ). To me this makes Nichomachean Ethics a valid ethical system based on the way Aristotle sketches the highest good for man involving both a more practical and theoretical side.
“The book, Nicomachean Ethics, prescribed a specific code of conduct in what he had ended up calling good living” (A&E Television …show more content…

“As individuals we must make an attempt to outline and determine what of sciences or capacities would belong to a more authoritative art” (Aristotle). Politics is stated many times with going along with the science aspect. In doing so it discusses how someone educated in this will be a good judge of the subject especially if they are all around knowledgeable they will also be more experienced and prepared for life. “It debates as well that if a young man is not more educated in political science he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life and will more likely follow a passion that will ultimately be unprofitable due to the fact that it is not aimed towards knowledge it is towards action” (Aristotle). Acting with virtue must go along with part of an individual’s nature instead of the current conception of virtue which is discussed more throughout the …show more content…

It is discussed that there is a major distinction between being virtuous and acting virtuously. Virtues are concerned with the actions and passions. “With both of these they are also accompanied by both pleasure and pain” (Aristotle). Virtue is simply not an isolated action either but instead a habit of acting well. With actions, in order for them to be virtuous an individual needs to do it deliberately with knowledge that they are doing it because it a noble action. “Both the voluntary and the involuntary have been delimited, we must next discuss choice; for it is thought to be most closely bound up with virtue and to discriminate characters better than actions do” (Aristotle). Virtue is highly discussed throughout the books and each has its own variations of each. “Friendship is one that is very important and is also the most necessary with a view to living” (Aristotle). Another major virtue is the unity of virtues; justice. “Whether an act is or is not one of injustice (or of justice) is determined by its voluntariness or involuntariness; for when it is voluntary it is blamed, and at the same time is then an act of injustice; so that there will be things that are unjust but not yet acts of injustice, if voluntariness be not present as well” (Aristotle). When it comes to justice there are a distinction between natural

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