Nichomachean Ethics Essay

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Aristotle Ethics

In Book X of the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers several definitions of happiness (eudaimonia) which can exist at the level of physical pleasure, a life of civil involvement and practicing virtue, or the ultimate form of happiness which is the contemplation of God and spiritual and eternal matters. Just as there are degrees of pleasure and pain, so there are degrees or happiness and virtue. Happiness is the supreme good and the ultimate goal of life, but not all individuals define it in the same way and it appears that only a few truly reach the highest levels. Most people confuse happiness with physical pleasure and carnal gratification, including food, alcohol, sex, and accumulating money and material things, but Aristotle does not regard this as the supreme good. Far from it, although it probably seems satisfying enough for the great majority of humanity that happiness should be identified with a life of abundance of physical pleasure and the absence of pain. Many people are slaves to passions and pleasures, so the glutton who finds happiness with consumption of food will have no higher goal than good food, and the alcoholic will be happy with an abundance of intoxicants. Even animals exist this way, but for Aristotle humans are rational beings with immortal souls and were therefore created for a much higher and transcendent form of happiness. Aristotle privileges the higher or rational part of the soul (nous), which able to have communion with the divine, rather than the lower, animalistic lusts and instincts.

On the level of civic virtue and the life of the citizen, some people value honor, fame and glory, such as his student Alexander the Great. Their greatest happiness would come from being remembered forever like Achilles as a great hero or conqueror, but Aristotle is skeptical such ethics as well. A better form of civic virtue would be to doing good for its own sake and practicing justice with no thought of reward or fame. True happiness on this level would be to find pleasure in ethical and virtuous behavior as a member of human society and citizen of the state.

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Good citizens will get pleasure from a life of public service, a way of life in fact, at least for those who are not adept in metaphysics, theology and contemplation of God.

Aristotle also believed in the rule of moderation or the happy medium as the true location of virtues and avoiding extremes of personal conduct. In Chapter 9, Aristotle argues that persuasion and reason alone will not make a bad person good, however, since the individual character is formed in youth. Young people also refrain from bad actions not out of shame but fear of punishment, lacking any personal conception of the noble or good life. At this lowest level of happiness, inferior characters operate on the purely on the basis of physical necessity and fear of pain and punishment. Bad people can only be corrected by fear and coercion, or denying them their greatest pleasures, because they are essentially animal-like. Every person is born with a soul, but they must all be cultivated and trained in the habits of a virtuous life. Those with good characters will learn to love what is noble and hate what is base, and the laws of the state should ensure the proper type of training for the young. Aristotle mentions that the Spartans have given the most consideration to training….....

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