...ARISTOTLE Aristotle was born in Stagira, a “Grecian colony. His father was a court physician to the King Amyntas of Macedonia. It is believed that his purse of studies is due to his father’s influence of practicing medicine. He died at his country house at Chalcis, in Euboea at the age of sixty-two years old in the year of 322 B.C. He died to an illness he suffered from for a long period of time. There were legends that told his death to be because of hemlock poisoning, as well as another legend, it was said he couldn’t explain the tides so he threw himself into the sea. Aristotle was a high-minded, kind hearted man devoted to his family and his friends. He was a man who followed the ideals he outlined in his ethical treaties (“Aristotle”). During the time frame of thirteen years when Aristotle taught at his school, called Lyceum, he composed his writings into dialogues (“Aristotle”). His school was widely known as the walking school or the Peripatetic school because a lot of the discussion at the school took place while walking the grounds (“Encarta: Aristotle”). He taught the young conqueror Alexander, who became Alexander the Great, and thereafter his writings were lost and not recovered until the 1st century B.C. During the middle ages they were translated into Latin and Arabic and became a basis for Christian theology. In 2000 years no one has came close to his brilliance...
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...should all strive to live. There are countless ideas as to what exactly the good life is, some more reasonable than others. In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle tells us what he thinks the life lived well truly is. The basis of his argument is that happiness, or eudaimonia in Greek, is the final end that humans should strive for. The first step in achieving happiness, according to Aristotle is through reason. Aristotle starts off by saying that what makes humans unique from other animals is our ability to reason. It is through reason that we can become more like the “Gods” and come closer to living Aristotle’s view of the good life. Aristotle separates reason into two distinct categories: practical reason and theoretical reason. Practical reason can be thought of as the ability, through contemplation, to decide what one ought to do. Theoretical reason, on the other hand, can be viewed as reasoning that is directed at answering questions that are, coincidentally enough, theoretical. By theoretical I mean questions that are concerned with explaining and predicting what is going on around us. Going back to Aristotle’s assertion that reason is what separates us from lower beings, we can see that he is probably referring more to theoretical reason as opposed to practical reason. Any animal can exercise practical reason in determining what to do to survive, but can an animal reason theoretically? Aristotle says no and that is what separates human beings from animals. It is through reason...
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...Aristotle view upon oil and coal restrictions The "tragedy of the commons” is a theory presented by Garrett Hardin in which an unattended or common limited resource is available to anybody who wants to use it. In his theory Garrett states that individuals, groups, or organizations can slowly deplete a common resource if no regulations are implemented. One example of our modern world “tragedy of commons” is the human dependency upon oil and coal which is a non-renewable energy source and if used without restriction may eventually become unavailable. For this reason, restrictions implemented by Washington legislators are beneficial to our sustainability. Aristotle would certainly agree with the implementation of regulations upon oil and coal since he believed in moral virtues. Aristotle would side with Washington legislators who implement restriction upon oil and coal use. Aristotle believed that the human goal is to sustain the planet and its limited resources in order to pass them onto the next generation. If people continue to abuse resources available to them without restriction, there will not be any resources left to sustain the future of humanity. In order for the planet to survive and continue to grow, sustainability is a necessary part of today's society. Aristotle would disagree with those who continuously fight against legislators and the oil and coal restrictions because he believed in the “golden mean” which implemented an idea that one should not have too much...
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...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...
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...parents, envied her sister, and lost everyone close to her. Sex, drugs, alcohol, and immoral activities seemed to pierce her soul with an unsatisfying feeling. Not a single choice she had made recently was due to reason or virtue. “How could there be a God?” she always thought. Her life had slithered into serious misfortune, which most people would never escape. There was no happiness inside her soul. Nor did she believe at the time there ever would be. There was no purpose for her life. One distressed soul seemed miniscule in comparison to the millions of unhappy people out there. Yet the world’s most famous philosopher believes we all have one function and every humans highest good in life is to attain happiness. How could this be true if so many people suffer their whole lives from external and internal circumstances? How can a human being on planet earth derive a single function or purpose, when we function with the world and our eco system? I disagree with Aristotle, find his theory’s unconvincing, and believe that humans have excessive functions in life; intelligence and virtue are not the only things that make us happy, you can find happiness in honor and pleasure, not one person can define what is “good” and what isn’t, and you can teach a person virtues and excellence. Not all people strive for the greatest good, yet are good people. Certain people’s ultimate goal is happiness...
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...Benda Brown SOCI 4080 January 17, 2013 When ask what are some of the things you could say that stuck with you as a child growing up in the house with your parents? I would probably say with values, morals and happiness along with virtue. Society use morals and values to interact with each day. Morals instruct people to appropriately interact each other, we practice morals and values by certain beliefs within our cultural teachings and live by and the values and morals. Virtue is the excellence that gives to the practice of values moral beliefs. Examples say excuse me if I accidentally bump into a person, do not steal from people, respect older people, keep my voice low when in public, etc.…. People is judged by their moral and value characteristics of which they have been taught. For example I was taught it is not polite to interrupt your parents or any adult while they are talking, at the same time it was ok for the, parent and adult to interrupt the child talking. This rule has followed me, and as I got older I understood why I was taught this rule, why my parents and adults did the opposite. It would have to say it goes with the old phrase “do as I say, not as I do”. Two objections are commonly made to receiving the golden rule as the fundamental principle of morality ( Donagan, A. pg., 58). First, it excludes the possibility that it may be right to do anything to another which you hate to have done to you (Donagan, A. pg., 58). Yet Kant pointed out, the...
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...Ethical Approaches Four Ethical Approaches Four Ethical Approaches- By Buie Seawell, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver There are many ways to define "ethics," almost as many as there are ethicists. For our purposes, let's use this definition: Ethics is the discipline and practice of applying value to human behavior (as well as to the constructs of human culture particularly to morality, customs and laws) resulting in meaningfulness. From the earliest moments of recorded human consciousness, the ethical discipline has exhibited four fundamental "approaches" These four approaches are often called "ethical decision-making frameworks:" Utilitarian Ethics (outcome based), Deontological Ethics (duty based), Virtue Ethics (virtue based) and Communitarian Ethics (community based). Each has a distinctive point of departure as well as distinctive ways of doing the fundamental ethical task of raising and answering questions of value. It is also important to understand that all four approaches have both overlaps and common elements. Some of the "common elements" of all four approaches are the following: · Impartiality: weighting interests equally · Rationality: backed by reasons a rational person would accept · Consistency: standards applied similarly to similar cases · Reversibility: standards that apply no matter who "makes" the rules These are, in a sense, the rules of the "ethics game", no matter which school or approach to ethics one feels the closest...
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...Aristotle Philosophy Shalonda Floyd Ethical Issues in Business and Accounting Professor Gates February 12, 2013 In this paper, I am going to discuss the philosopher Aristotle. This paper will discuss how Aristotle perspective of distributive justice is applicable to ethics. Also, I will discuss Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics philosophy, why it is valuable and how it potentially connects to accounting and business. There have been many excellent philosophers and thinkers through past time. There are three main ones that I liked and truly had an accountant and business ethics philosophy. They are Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. I decided to choose Aristotle as the greatest of them all on this subject. Aristotle was a student of Plato, and he possessed extraordinarily strong ethics. Aristotle born in northern Greece. He was a notable product of an educational program devised by Plato. He studied at an academy for twenty years. His view on individual human beings is they invariably linked together in a social context. Aristotle disagreed with Plato’s view but defended his own vision of ultimate reality. According to Britannica.com, he was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He had a wide and a vast range of intellectual pieces. He was the founder of formal logic and the most outstanding as a philosopher among many. This paper will discuss how Aristotle philosopher’s perspective of virtue ethics...
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...Aristotle's Ethics Aristotle discusses what the greatest good could be. He begins by saying, “Every craft and every investigation, and likewise every action and decision, seems to be aimed at some good.” This means that Aristotle thinks that everyone’s actions in life are directed at something greater, something that they are striving for. I believe this to be a really strong point of the thesis because it seems in life that everything you do, you are aiming for something else. With every decision and action that a person makes, they try to gain a greater self-worth and prosperity. The true meaning that Aristotle hints upon is to achieve greatness and to be the best person that lies in your grasp. Aristotle believes that all good is subordinate to some point. For instance, the end, or good of a student would be the degree; with an inventor it would be the invention. This means that different people have different ideas about what the greatest good is. Today, the saying goes “money is the root of all evil”. This is true in some respects because money has destroyed countless friendships and lives. An example would be people who have had money their entire lives. Wealthy individuals probably think that money is not the greatest good because they are used to be able to have everything that they could want and will never be satisfied with anything because they will always want more. Some examples that Aristotle gives as to what he thinks people to see as the greatest good, or...
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...In this paper I want to focus on Virtue ethics and why I believe virtue ethics is the way to go when it comes down to personal and professional development in life and business. In personal/life development, virtue ethics transforms the paradigm of doing “what is right and wrong?” to a freedom of thinking in “what kind of person you are and does this action fit into what you are?”. Virtue ethics in personal development allows a dynamic way of thinking that allows a person to grow and learn that everything isn’t black and white as Kantian ethics suggest neither is it as dutiful as Utilitarian ethics. Virtue ethics in professional and business development allows for definition or a guiding light in a sense, in terms of question if your business is performing for your patients best interests if you’re in medicine or are you looking to provide a real solution for your prospects financial trouble and not stealing homes, if you’re in the buying real estate business. To explain and understand virtue ethics, you would first need to know Aristotle and understand his philosophies on virtuous society and what he considers virtuous behavior. Aristotle was an intelligent man being a student of Plato and teaching Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s written and spoken works were very serious and influential in subjects from logic to biology, meta physics to ethics and poetry that he was literally known to his colleagues as “The Philosopher”. With...
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...come across. The text offers Aristotle’s views on a variety of topics including what a human being is comprised of, not in terms of physiology, but rather what differentiates us from animals for example. Most importantly, and the parts that I focused on for this assignment were the areas where Aristotle defines the various types of friendships, and the parts where Aristotle discusses moral virtue and how one can go about acquiring them. In this paper I will review Aristotle’s moral virtues in relation to the term philia, and evaluate why self-control is the most significant of the virtues required in a true friendship. Before diving in, it is first important to dissect the term philia as used by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics. The term philia encompasses a variety of relationships types including the relationships between: business contacts, parent and child, soldiers on the same army, the best of friends, and even the relationship to one’s significant other. Though today we would not necessarily consider all of these relationships to be friendships, the term philia did incorporate them. For the purpose of this paper, the term philia, or friendship, is about the relationship between the truest of friends. Within the scope of friendship overall, Aristotle distinguishes between three objects of philia: utility, pleasure, and good. The friendship based on the object of utility, according to Aristotle, is the lowest kind of friendship as it is based on the mutual intent to use...
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...Unlike utilitarianism, which focuses on the consequences of an action, and deontological ethics, which focuses on moral rules; virtue ethics focuses on doing something simply because it’s the right thing to do based on established virtues. Aristotle (Irbe, 2000) listed several virtues and vices that correspond to different “actions” or “feelings”. Each virtue has two corresponding vices that accompany it, one of the vices occurs when there is an excess of the virtue, and the other occurs when the virtue is deficient. The feeling associated with modesty is shame. If there is too much shame, it would be shyness; however not enough shame would be shamelessness. Virtue ethics focuses on choices that an individual should make based on morals that hold true regardless of the laws and customs of a person’s specific culture. Essentially everyone should be held accountable to the same virtues even if local laws and customs allow the behavior. One should apply virtue ethics to both their personal lives as well as their professional lives. In the 1990’s major concerns were exposed in the manufacturing community about working conditions in factories located in third-world countries (Sethi, Veral, Shapiro, & Emelianova, 2010). Major pressure was then placed on numerous manufacturing companies in an attempt to force them to change their practices and improve working conditions in their factories. While it is the goal of every company to continually increase profits, a company should...
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...of the perfect society. To this fact he gives an ingenious riposte, such societies will be under the guardianship of the offspring of the current guardians. That means what the future society will be under the guardianship of a not skill but the benefits of inheritance. In such a society, dissatisfaction is possibly the way of the day. Plato maintained that for dissatisfaction an understanding of the nature of the human being is the answer. That is, people are naturally different and they have where they fit in the society. In such a situation, they will be able to rule the society. A perfect society, I believe, is one that is distinctive by leaders who have the interests of the society at hand. That is, a society under the reign of guardians who are in favor of the members of the society and their needs. A society that is simply having rulers who have inherited power is liable to doom. This is because, in most cases, such kinds of people not only lack the wisdom to rule, but they are also corrupted by the benefits of inheritance that they become nefarious with power. However, in a situation where someone who has inherited power is able to stand for the wishes of the people then can lead a perfect society. The wishes of the governed should be the guiding factor here. It defines what the society stands for and what it aims to achieve, anybody going against such things is in contravention to the core...
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...rules and regulations to provide the citizens a peaceful and orderly way of life. Through the obedience of the Filipinos, they had practiced to be always properly conducted every time in accordance with the place they dwell with. Later on, Filipinos have found the conclusion which is to include the value called Delicadeza as one of the Filipino values. II. DELICADEZA AS A VALUE Delicadeza is a Spanish word coined from “Delicado” which means fragile, irreplaceable and precious.[2] In Spanish it can mean many things – ‘delicacy’, ‘kindness’, ‘tact.’ The word implies a care for what others think and the accordant behavior this requires from the person in act. When one does not exhibit delicadeza then one does not care what others think and will behave despite what has been deemed ‘improper. ’ Delicadeza, in this sense, can be seen to underline a sense of community - a device to identify what is indelicate, unkind or tactless – things that are harmful to public harmony. It is meant for being sensitive especially to the feelings of other persons. More so, it pertains to the decency and propriety of someone dwelling inside the society. In addition, it is the act of searching the proper things to be conducted especially when positioned in an...
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...Easter and Western Philosophers Comparison Dominick Mckeon 105 Philosophy Nancy Wack The philosopher I chose was Aristotle and his philosophy of naturalistic ethics. He discerned that what was good for us was defined by our natural objective. To him, happiness was the thing that we seek for its own sake and for no other reason and that this being our highest objective makes it also the highest form of good. He reasoned that in order to find out what makes us happy we must consider our function, what we actually do as human animals. The text claimed that, for the most part, we do two things, live and reason, and so happiness consists of enjoying life and honing our ability to reason. As living creatures with biological needs, we receive pleasure by satisfying those needs. Eating food is enjoyable, sleeping and napping can be enjoyable, procreation can also be enjoyable, and many other biological needs when met create enjoyment. He also argues that human beings are distinct from other animals in our ability to reason, I do not agree with this, but if I were living in his era, I probably would have agreed. The chapter goes on to say that because we can reason it is therefore, necessary to exercise our ability to achieve happiness; not just the pleasure of satisfying biological needs. Aristotle coined the term virtue which encompassed two variations, one in which we contemplate called intellectually virtuous and the other to be morally virtuous as when...
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