Moral Character: Aristotle

Aristotle believes that all actions and questions are done for the purpose of some sort of good. If there is something that we desire something that fulfills itself, an ultimate end, then this thing must be good and the chief good. This chief good should have an influence on the rest of how we live our lives as we aim for this target. Politics, ethics and social philosophy, should have this quality. Aristotle also believes that reaching this good for a nation or state is greater than reaching it for an individual - I assume because it will positively impact the whole nation of people rather than just the individual. 

Aristotle believes that good and just actions, guided by politics, are achieved through convention rather than by nature. This causes him to conclude that the best people for politics are those who are educated about them and have the most experience with them. Having a less experienced person create ideals is foolish as they are more likely to be flawed. People are good judges of what they know - making the young bad to get political advice from.

Aristotle says that most people hold the opinion that happiness is the chief good that people aim for. Aristotle identifies a person's chief good as the single end result that we pursue. We must remember that ends are not always final ends. One end often leads to another and then another, therefore there can only be one final end - something that is desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. Happiness is the end and final result of many of the virtues we have. Aristotle says the final good should also be self-sufficient - fulfilling when isolated and lacking nothing.

Aristotle defines happiness as coming from a complete life full of activity of the soul, a rational principle, in accordance with virtue (the best virtue possible). This must be throughout the entire life, not just one day, hence the use of "complete life." Human virtue, that of the soul, depends on the structure of the soul. Each soul is made of two different parts, the irrational and the rational principle.

Aristotle says that two virtues, intellect and morality, correspond to reason. One of the reasons that he says virtues can't be created by nature is that our virtues tend to come from habits, and we cannot create a habit that is contrary to our nature making the source of morality convention. The only way we an become skilled in an area is by performing that medium, moral actions being performed leads to better moral actions/behavior (habits).

Aristotle breaks the human personality into three elements: passions, faculties, and sates of character. He believes that morality comes from states of character as passions and faculties are not, in themselves, worthy of praise. Being a state of character it makes man good and makes his work good too. For us to do this we must seek the intermediate that is correct for what is right.

He finally defines virtue as a state of character concerned with choice involving a mean between excess and defect in what is right. We use rational principle to help us decide. When there is excess fearlessness (a mean) we get rashness, but under doing it and we get a coward. Temperance can become self-indulgence and lacking, a person could be called "insensible." Liberality becomes prodigality or meanness.

The intellectual virtues, ones that exercise reason, have the task of give us knowledge of the world around us and to help provide a rational guide for action throughout our day. Virtues show that we have practical wisdom, not forms of practical wisdom as Socrates would have us believe.

Aristotle wishes people choose activities based on how good they are not based on the amount of pleasure that they produce. A good activity will have pleasure, but pleasure does not necessarily produce goodness - making the good activity better than the pleasurable one.

Happiness aligns with virtue, so we should seek the highest of virtues. If our activity is in accordance with this highest virtue than we should find the perfect happiness. Aristotle believes that philosophic wisdom is the pleasant of virtuous activities. A man who seeks and contemplates truth becomes self-sufficient. We work so that we may have free time and we make war so that we may have peace.

If we live lives that are full of reason that is best and pleasantest we will live the happiest of lives, as reason is human.

Discussion Questions/Comments

I find it interesting that Aristotle believe that "true student of politics wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws." I want to know how he is defining laws. Is he talking virtue? If he is I feel that "obedient" is an odd word choice as you should want people to adopt virtues and make them their own, not follow because they must be "obedient."

I didn't really follow what Aristotle was trying to say about the rational and irrational principles of the soul in #7. Could you clear that up please?

What is he talking about with picking the "intermediate?" I understand what he is saying...just not why he is talking about it. Was it only so he could connect it to the 'mean of character?'

Can you have excess "right"? Wouldn't that just be a more moral, just, and good world? Or are we talking about when a virtue becomes a vice?

I don't understand what he means when he says that "philosophic wisdom is the pleasant of virtuous activities." Does he mean virtuous actions or the process of thinking about/creating morals?

Key Terms/Definitions

Teleology: the explaining of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by the postulated causes
Politics (Aristotle): ethics and social philosophy
Self-sufficient (Aristotle): fulfilling when isolated and lacking nothing


Analogous: comparable in certain respects, typically in a way that makes clearer the nature of the things compared
Defect: a shortcoming, imperfection, or lack
Prodigality: spending money and resources freely and recklessly 

Ethical Skepticism: Bernard Williams

Socrates asks "How should one live?" Plato thought the answer lay in following a life of philosophical understanding.

Williams looks at the work of Socrates and Plato, who attempt to justify morality to amoral people. Williams asks why philosophers should even bother, as they are dealing with people who will be unmoved by their arguments. Williams believes that the reason we try to convince these people is because they might influence individuals to give up morality and live an unethical life. Williams says "to be skeptical about ethics is to be skeptical about the force of ethical considerations." These people must not be assumed to live lives that lack ethical considerations, but rather question what the force of these ethical considerations are. Skeptics interact with the world and must find actions they approve of or do cheerfully, removing skepticism away as the skeptic has just made an ethical decision. By removing oneself from all ethics, one has nothing to do.

Williams feels that we should not ask what to say to the amoral person but what we can say about them, as that message will reach the rest of the population who has morals - providing support and reinforcement of morals to the people who will actually listen, those with morals, instead of the amoral who won't listen. When it comes to force, Williams explains that Plato thought, "the power of the ethical was the power of reason", and that the power of the ethical was made into a force by the power of reason. The aim then should be to focus on reinforcing the ethical rather than attacking the unethical.

Williams asks if there is a Archimedean Point, and notes that both Aristotle and Kant have philosophical "ventures" that follow his own definition: something to which even the amoralist or the skeptic is committed but which, properly thought through, will show us that he is irrational, or unreasonable, or at any rate mistaken." Kant follows rational action (agency) and Aristotle thought that it is "the idea of a specifically human life." Williams says that there is no such Archimedean Point and says that he hopes people will adopt three things to help prompt ethics: truth, truthfulness, and the meaning of an individual life.

Williams proclaims that the scientific truth does not provide us with anything normative - possessing facts does not change people's behavior (smokers still smoke despite its known harm). This knowledge can have an impact though when we look at the social understanding we have.

The reason Williams says we should seek truthfulness is because our ethical thought should "stand up to reflection, with the goal of its institutions and practices should be capable of becoming transparent." If our ethics can't be transparent, then what are we hiding? We need to be truthful about our ethics so that people can know how ethical they really are.

Williams needs for "individuals of dispositions of characters" and "a life of their own to lead" for his hopes to be reached. As for the "meaning of an individual life", he looks for "one that does not reject society, and indeed shares its perceptions with other people to a considerable depth, but is enough unlike others, in its opacities and disorder as well as in its reasoned intentions, to make it somebody's." He wants people to understand each other, maintain that truthfulness, and to make the principle of general goodness someone else's principle so that they too can add to the world happiness.


Discussion Questions/Comments

Could you explain what Mill means by "One has nothing to do" in #5? Does he mean there is no meaning to an amoral person's life?

What does Aristotle mean by a "specifically human life?"

Key Terms/Definitions

Philosophical: general and abstract, rationally reflective, and concerned with what can be known through different kinds of inquiry
Amoral: lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness and wrongness of something
Archimedean Point: a point where the viewer can objectively perceive the subject of inquiry, with a view of totality
Normative: establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard of a norm, especially of behavior.


Phrenology: the detailed study of the size and shape of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities