Aristotelian Ethics - Aristotle's Starting Point

Aristotle's Starting Point

As mentioned above, the Aristotelian Ethics all explicitly aim to begin with approximate but uncontroversial starting points. Aristotle's starting point is that everything humans do is aimed at some good, with some good higher than others. The highest human good that people aim at, he said, is generally referred to as happiness (Gk. eudaimonia - sometimes translated as "living well").

Aristotle asserted that popular accounts about what life would be happy divide into three most common types: a life dedicated to vulgar pleasure; a life dedicated to fame and honor; or a life dedicated to contemplation. To judge these, Aristotle uses his method of trying to define the natural function of a human in action. A human's function must include the ability to use reason or logos, because this is an essential attribute of being human. A person that does this is the happiest because he is fulfilling his purpose or nature as found in the rational soul.

The question of how to be happy therefore becomes a question of which activities of the human soul represent the highest excellence in using reason.

Aristotle proposed that we could accept it when people say that the soul can be divided into three parts: the Nutritive Soul (plants, animals and humans), the Perceptive Soul (animals and humans) and the Rational Soul (humans only).

Read more about this topic:  Aristotelian Ethics

Famous quotes containing the words starting point, aristotle, starting and/or point:

    The starting point of the human and the end,
    That in which space itself is contained, the gate
    To the enclosure, day, the things illumined
    By day, night and that which night illumines,
    Night and its midnight-minting fragrances,
    Night’s hymn of the rock, as in a vivid sleep.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    You have both said well,
    And on the cause and question now in hand
    Have glozed, but superficially—not much
    Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
    Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;
    Down went the owners—greedy men whom hope of gain
    allured:
    Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.
    Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

    If you give me a short shot I will attack you. I’m not a baseliner who rallies. I try to get the point over with.
    Venus Williams (b. 1980)