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Virtue In Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics

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After having had a black president, many Americans consider America to be a post-racial society. Apparently all it takes is eight years of a black man in the highest governmental position in the most powerful country in the world to neutralize the almost 400 years of oppression caused by the white man. Unfortunately, the math does not add up; having Barack Obama as president did not move America from the list of countries that hate some of its citizens to the list of countries that either loves or hates all of its citizens equally. As a matter of fact, equally as many argue that Obama’s legacy has created a demonstrably weaker and divided society. But America was never going to rid itself of its racial hamartia; whether “rooted in the heart” …show more content…

Virtue ethics, a moral theory concerned with the virtues and characters of people, is an ancient solution to a modern problem. The Aristotelian ethic places emphasis upon the one performing any action rather than the action itself. In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle postulates that every action one performs aims at or shall aim some good. According to this Aristotelian view, every activity has in mind the good at its end otherwise there is no use in performing said action. (Those well-versed in philosophical scholarship know that Aristotle took ‘good’ here to mean happiness). Within this framework of virtue, Aristotle presupposes that all races and classes are included in the assertion that the primary purpose of mankind is happiness. Therefore, as humans are separated from the rest of creation due to their ability to reason, aminority status or skin color other than white is inconsequential. On this basis, Aristotle’s virtue theory discredits racism and vows for racial reconciliation. Discrimination, namely towards those different than yourself, is unwarranted because equality amongst others exists as a universally predominant end for humans as a whole. This theory disallows any and all prejudice or discrimination of differing groups for the sole happiness of those who believe themselves to be of a “superior” rank. This kind of ideal is flawed because it has, at its heart, a selfish and malicious unsociable

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