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Like many ethicists, Aristotle regards excellent activity as pleasurable for the man of virtue. For example, Aristotle thinks that the man whose appetites are in the correct order takes pleasure in acting moderately. Aristotle emphasized that virtue is practical, and that the purpose of ethics is to become good, not merely to know.
Aristotle analyzed the golden mean in the Nicomachean Ethics Book II: That virtues of character can be described as means. It was subsequently emphasized in Aristotelian virtue ethics. [1] For example, in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice. The middle ...
Plato and Aristotle's treatments of virtues are not the same. Plato believes virtue is effectively an end to be sought, for which a friend might be a useful means. Aristotle states that the virtues function more as means to safeguard human relations, particularly authentic friendship, without which one's quest for happiness is frustrated.
In Aristotle's work, phronesis is the intellectual virtue that helps turn one's moral instincts into practical action. [ 4 ] [ 10 ] He writes that moral virtues help any person to achieve the end, and that phronesis is what it takes to discover the means to gain that end. [ 4 ]
The Aristotle scholar W. D. Ross suggested that in this conception magnificence turns out to be mainly a matter of aesthetic good taste. [9] The aesthetic role that magnificence acquired with Aristotle exerted a profound influence on rhetoric, the arts, architecture, and art criticism.
In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, chapter 6: "Virtue (arete), then, is a habit or trained faculty of choice, the characteristic of which lies in moderation or observance of the mean relatively to the persons concerned, as determined by reason, i.e., by the reason by which the prudent man would determine it." [14]
On Virtues and Vices (Ancient Greek: Περὶ Ἀρετῶν καὶ Κακιῶν; Latin: De Virtutibus et Vitiis Libellus) is the shortest of the four ethical treatises attributed to Aristotle. The work is now regarded as spurious by scholars and its true origins are uncertain though it was probably created by a member of the peripatetic ...
Virtue and vice, according to Aristotle, are "up to us". This means that although no one is willingly unhappy, vice by definition always involves actions which were decided upon willingly. Vice comes from bad habits and aiming at the wrong things, not deliberately aiming to be unhappy. The vices then, are voluntary just as the virtues are.