The Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle)
What is the main claim and supporting arguments in Nicomachean Ethics?
The chief good is happiness. Human happiness consists in living a virtuous life. Virtue is best defined as a state of character concerned with rationally choosing an intermediate between vices of excess.
- All actions aim at some purpose that is considered desirable, i.e. good.
Some purposes are considered desirable, i.e. good, only insofar as they facilitate the pursuit of some further goal. These purposes are not considered desirable for their own sake, but for the sake of the further goal they promote.
That which is most desirable, i.e. good, is that which is entirely desired for its own sake and never for the sake of something else.
Happiness is the thing that we always choose for its own sake and never for the sake of something else. (Other things such as honor, pleasure, the exercise of reason we may choose for their own sakes, but we also choose them because we think they will make us happy. Happiness, on the other hand, we simply choose for its own sake.
- Those who are happy spend their life in pursuing virtuous activities.
Therefore human good, i.e. happiness, is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.
- Virtue must either be a passion, faculty or a state of character.
Virtue is not a passion, i.e. feeling, since we do not call feelings good or bad simply because we have them, but because we have them in a certain way.
Virtue is not a faculty, i.e. the capacity to have feelings, since we do not call the simple capacity to have a particular feeling good or bad.
Virtue is therefore a state of character. As a state of character it has to do with choosing to feel passions appropriately, i.e. "To feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way ..." Typically, this will involve choosing an intermediate between two extremes.
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