Eudemonia Vs Harvey

Harvey Weinstein vs. Eudemonia The recent actions of movie executive Harvey Weinstein are, in concurrence with popular opinion, deplorable, demeaning and despicable. In other words bad. We can all agree that his actions are bad, and yet, how are we to understand his actions as bad? And if we are so certain that they are bad, can we say why? According to Aristotle, we can know good and bad by embodying virtuous character traits and developing these over time. These virtuous traits lie between two extreme types of behavior, which hold excess or are deficient of value in regards to the virtuous trait. These are referred to as a vice. Through the manifestation of these traits, right action should follow without a second thought or effort. Someone

He thought that if we could focus on being good people, the right actions would follow without thought or effort. However this still leaves the question: why become a good person? Because, as Aristotle would say, of Eudemonia. Eudemonia means “the good life or the life well lived.” Aristotle believed that when you live a virtuous life, you live a “eudemonistic” one. Keep in mind that at the time philosophers assumed that humans have a fixed nature, or an essence. Also that we thrive by adhering to our essence and that non-virtuous actions go against our human essence. He described this in terms of what he called “proper functioning”. This means that “everything has a function and it, say x, is good so long as x fulfills its function and bad if x does not.” For example: a knife that cuts well is a good knife, a chair you cannot sit in is not a good chair, and so on. For humans, our function is to be virtuous. This now raises the question of what it means to be virtuous. Aristotle would say that having virtue means doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, toward the right people. As neat and tidy as that is, it’s too vague to be able to derive any applicable knowledge. He says that there is” no need for specificity because; if you are in fact virtuous then you have the answers already for every possible scenario.” Aristotle understood virtue

Aristotle’s theory of justice could be described as “distributive justice”. Exemplified here “If A contributes twice as much as B, then A should have twice the reward.” In this understanding, as crude as this is, the actresses who were harassed and propositioned with career advancement in exchange for sex were wronged. Career advancement can yield you two things: Monetary gains and, honor for recognized work. However neither of these contributes to the “good life”. Monetary or material possessions are acquired in pursuit of something else holding little to no intrinsic value, and the pursuit of honor is more telling of how others perceive you, rather than your character. In exchange for these empty things Harvey wants them to sell themselves. Even if this was a just exchange often times Harvey would not deliver on his promise of fame and fortune as a movie star, in fact he has ended many people’s careers behind the scenes in order to keep their silence and distance. So not only is the initial exchange a seemingly unjust one, the actual exchange was even more unjust because Harvey would either give you nothing or the opposite of what you wanted in the first place. This cannot be justice on any account of the