Aristotelian Ethics - Practical Ethics

Practical Ethics

Aristotle believed that ethical knowledge is not only a theoretical knowledge, but rather that a person must have "experience of the actions in life" and have been "brought up in fine habits" to become good (NE 1095a3 and b5). For a person to become virtuous, he can't simply study what virtue is, but must actually do virtuous things.

We are not studying in order to know what virtue is, but to become good, for otherwise there would be no profit in it. (NE 2.2)

Read more about this topic:  Aristotelian Ethics

Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or ethics:

    When ... I comprehended that poetry had no provision in it for ultimate practical attainment of the rightness of work that is truth, but led on ever only to a temporizing less- than-truth ... I stopped.
    Laura (Riding)

    Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)