Aristotle's Theory to a Decsion Term Paper

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"(Eliot, 850) She cannot help but comply because she had been humiliated and wounded, and she feels morally guilty. Had Rosamond acted in abidance of Aristotle's Ethics, she would have received Dorothea but she would have done so as a result of her own determination. A person is good if he or she is able to deliberate virtuously, according to the context and the circumstances of a certain situation. Rosamond on the contrary feels compelled to act the way she does, simply because she is in a state of psychological bafflement but she does not actually see the truth of the situation and neither is she able to act virtuously. She merely receives the good Dorothea tensely, endeavoring to guess the reason of her visit.

Catharine's conversion to her own traditional religion is determined by a very different motivation. She determines to become faithful to her own culture because she feels that she is closer to the old traditions than to the religion she had acquired through early conversion. She thus asks the elders of her village to give her a ceremonial whipping which, according to the Indian tradition, would release and purify her. After she performs this ritual, she feels at peace with herself and with her word: "Those old people turned back on the path they had come and for a while their hearts were lightened. The old lady, with the red stripes of the whip on her back, slept without dreaming."(McNickle, 73) Thus, the old woman makes her decision impelled by her need to regain her cultural identity and feel close to her own people. She had been respected in the village before as well, simply because she observed the rites of the Christian religion and at the same time performed her duties towards her old way of life: "[...] She is pleased with her duties in the way that only an old art or an old way of life, long disused, can please the hand and heart returning to it."(McNickle, 75) Her return to her own religion is thus performed as an act of searching for the real truth available for her. She acts consciously and makes a rational choice between the two religions, deciding to be faithful to that which appealed to her more and reinforced her identity.

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Thus, she acts in conformity to Aristotle's Ethics in so much as she bases her decision on a good intention and a virtuous choice.

Aristotle distinguishes between the crafts that are done properly and have good results, and the actions which also have good results, but that can be done improperly. As he argues, the product which is the result of a certain craft will always show by its quality whether the method employed by the doer had been appropriate or not, whereas the good result of a certain action can not plead for the virtuous character of the person who did it. Thus, in the process of decision making, the way in which the person reaches his or her choice is crucial to the classification of the action as virtuous or not. According to Aristotle there are three objects of choice and three of avoidance: "There being three objects of choice and three of avoidance, the noble, the advantageous, the pleasant and their contraries the base, the injurious, the painful."(Aristotle, 37) Rosamond does not have a definite object of choice, and she merely acts as she does because she feels compelled by her own weakness. On the other hand, Catharine makes a definite choice that is based on rational reasoning, as she feels she is closer to her Indian religion and therefore she should be true to it.

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