Picture this: as you are walking home late at night after work you witness a victim being harassed by a perpetrator. What do you do? Do you play as a bystander and continue watching without assisting or heroic and intervene to assist the victim? Aristotle would not choose either. Instead he would assess the situation and act according, if the perpetrator deemed much bigger than himself he’d standby and call for help and if he had the capability of tackling the perpetrator he would. This decision is relative of Aristotle’s golden mean which is a component of virtue ethics he introduced. Unlike the others, Aristotle ethics did not include a set of rules of what to do or what not to do and how to systemically approach situations, but more of focusing …show more content…
Aristotle argued it is a natural desire for humans to be excellent as evident by Austin “The orientation of Aristotle’s thought is teleological, meaning that he sees it as natural for us humans to have purposes and aims in everything we do” (59). We aim for goodness which arises the question of what is good? Aristotle defines good as happiness which leads into the next question of what is happiness? Happiness is activity of the soul – which is a part of Aristotle definition – actuality of doing something. For instance, the bystander whom would decide to be heroic instead of nothing manifests happiness due to activeness. Happiness is associated with total human ethicalness in that we might do well in a few angles of our humankind and however not be completely happy. In general, a virtue is ‘an acquired disposition of the soul to choose the mean appropriately.’ Virtue is just the right amount between two extremes Aristotle called vices – excess and deficiency of goodness; virtue is the golden mean. With a specific virtue such as courage, too much courage can lead you into danger moving impulsively and unwisely; deficiency of courage is timidity or cowardice – therefore courage is the golden mean. To gain courage, one must practice and familiarize themselves by the conductivity of intentional