Aristotle's Ethics

A detailed Summary of Aristotle's Ethics


Aristotle claims that happiness (flourishing or living well) is a complete and sufficient good. This implies that it is desired for the sake of happiness with no capability of being evil in any way. There are many avenues in which happiness can be achieved and Aristotle delves into some of these examples - pleasure, comfort etc. He specifically mentions the life of gratification, money making, political action and the philosophical life. Aristotle doesn't necessarily agree with living a life of making money or gratification, but does admit that living the happy life does include gratification.

The question of what happiness consists in is approached in several ways. Aristotle notes that in plants and animals, flourishing is a part of their functioning as well ingrained in their nature. This brings up the question of what the major function of a human being is. Aristotle states that our function indwells in reason and acting accordingly to reason. He claims that this is the heart of the doctrine of both moral and intellectual virtue. So, essentially, by exercising and practicing moral an


I tend to disagree with the idea that we need to be "trained" to attain virtue. This implies that society or some outside force has to determine what is good and what is bad. It doesn't allow the individual to seek and find truth for themselves and therefore finding what is virtuous.

d intellectual virtue will result in living well. Aristotle points out the fact that humans tend feel the emotion of desire and the want for what we see as better things. This leads to the conclusion that happiness in it of itself consists the emotion of desiring (seeking a greater degree of goodness). There are a few ways one can categorize "good." One way is external goods (wealth, power, social status etc.). Another category of good is goods of the body (health, physicality, mentality etc.). Finally there are the goods of the soul, which include virtue, wisdom, education etc. There is one problem with this and it is to isolate and identify which of these goods are related to happiness. Aristotle claims that the goods of the body are quite fundamental for happiness and that the other goods are traits of

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 737
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Religion

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