Aristotle’s View on the PolisAristotle’s View on the PolisAristotle is known for his ideas and beliefs in Nichomachean Ethics. Aristotle sates the individual should be thought of and taking care of first. If we are to take care of the few individuals, then the whole society should be taking care of.
Aristotle uses politics and ethics together to explain the good life. People generally disagree as to the nature and conditions of happiness. Some people believe that happiness is wealth, honor, pleasure, or virtue. Aristotle thinks that wealth is not happiness because wealth is just a monetary value, but can still be used to gain some happiness. Not directly of course, money can only buy a person objects that can bring them happiness for a short period of time. Just like wealth, honor is not happiness, because honor focuses more on the people, rather then the honoree. Pleasure is not happiness, because “the life of gratification” is “completely slavish”, since most of the people in the polis decided to live their life based on the way animals live. The people are punished for things not accepted and reward for actions excepted. The last is virtue, and virtue is not happiness either, since one could be virtuous and not use it. Instead, Aristotle says that happiness is a combination of the four. Thus, Aristotle describes the good life by saying that, “the happy person is one who expresses complete virtue in his activities, with and adequate supply of external goods, not just for anytime but for a complete life”. Aristotle believes that virtues are states of character.
Aristotle presents his idea of moral and intellectual virtue out of the fact that they can only be achieved through excellence or virtue. Virtue is referred to as all of the characteristics that are required for a human being to carry out its proper function.
Moral virtue consists of character traits like courage, generosity, temperance, justice, and so on. It is the kind of excellence having to do with the relationship between the rational part of the soul and the appetitive part of the soul. The appetitive part of the soul refers to the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The rational part of the soul deals with a human body and the functions that it needs to survive. Moral virtues can be obtained by imitating the responses (acts and feelings) of a virtuous person. This is done best by habitation. The relationship between the appetitive and the rational part of the soul shows moral virtue. A sign of a person possessing the qualities of moral virtue would be a person taking pleasure in acting virtuous in everything they do.
Now, Aristotles definition of intellectual virtue offers less of a challenge to understand. Intellectual virtues are the excellences proper only to the rational part of the soul. The work or function of the rational part of the soul is to use deep thinking in arriving at judgments about what to do or to believe. These excellences are those qualities that enable a person to think well about a various subject matter. This can be achieved through the teachings of the polis. Teaching is the main way citizens of the polis learn intellectual virtue. They do this by discussing their thoughts and ideas with other citizens of the polis and learning from their wisdom.
Both moral and intellectual virtues must be present for a citizen of the polis to posses a good life. The polis was formed out of virtue that a man possessed while he was in the polis. A citizen of the polis was to behave at his or her highest potential in nature and to posses a virtuous life. The polis can be used to train the excellences of the individual. If there was no polis there would be no excellence of the individual. In addition, the polis provides a field for the operation of these excellences. Moral action is possible only within the polis. Man exists for living well, and the good life just like an individual in the polis. As you can see, virtue is based on choice, but making the right choice depends on habituation. One must live away
The Moral Theory – The Proposition
(Source)
It should be stressed that Aristotle’s definition of the moral is very much in line with what we have seen from the Bible. Here is a summary: When you are not moral you are not going to be morally virtuous. By ‘doing things with a heart’s help’ you can make a moral argument that will have an edge against one’s opponents.
It should be pointed out that the following statements about morality, especially those which concern the physical world, would appear to me like political arguments – a moral case not because my argument is not in line with your principles but because I am against it – but because I am against being moral.
If your heart is not going to accept the argument that my case is not right, how can its support make your case against it?
If your attitude is of an inclination to do wrong, and, in any case, has already proven the contrary, then you are not morally virtuous!
If your attitude is of an irrationality, and all your decisions are wrong, then so is your moral philosophy.
And if your moral opinion, whether good or bad, is good, then your ethical judgment is also good, but yours may not be good.
In either case, no such ethical judgment can be made.
Suppose, for example, that the same moral opinion made by you is also good.
Should you be moral towards your neighbour, and I moral towards you, and vice versa?
We are not moral.
The fact that you have no moral position, on the other hand, implies that you still cannot have a good life.
In fact you must have a bad situation, or you won’t be moral as you will be going to have a bad life and then not exist in it.
Let us consider the problem then to be:
Should we be moral towards our neighbour when he is morally very good, or when he isn’t moral as I see him to be?
The moral argument is thus made against self-interested altruism.
In order to get an answer to this problem, the case is presented in two different ways.
The first way of dealing with the problem of moral opinion is by making it clear that one has an objective viewpoint.
This way of dealing with moral argument is more important than the other way of dealing with the problem. The latter is the key to getting at a solution. In order to get a satisfactory answer, one has to first find two (or many) alternatives. Since we are dealing with moral arguments (and this is all subjective), we also need to think about ourselves. In particular, we need to think about other moral arguments so that those arguments can best reflect our own actions.
In terms