1. Aristotle on early experience and good
Virtue Ethics
Recap from last lesson
Time line
Early thinking
Aristotle on early experience and good

2. Recap
Virtue ethics is agent centred – FOCUS ON THE QUESTION WHAT SORT OF PERSON SHOULD I BE? REATHER THAN HOW OUGHT I ACT
It is focused on arête meaning excellence. A virtuous person then is one who does things excellently all of the time
Aretaic ethics – strength/excellence centred ethics
Virtues – strengths of character and Vices – weaknesses
Focus on walking the middle path between excess and deficiency

3. Timeline of development
EARLIEST THEORY
MODERN THEORY

4. Plato Centres around the achievement of man’s highest good
This involves the cultivation of his soul (inner being) and the well being of his life (eudaimonia/happiness)
Eudaimonia is achieved through the pursuit of virtue and actions are good when they help achieve this.
The central virtues (cardinal virtues) – temperance, courage, prudence and justice
When these virtues are in balance a persons actions will be good
There was disagreement among the Greek philosophers about which virtues were central and Aristotle gives a very different account of the virtues to Plato

5. Aristotle’s Ethics
The Nichomachean Ethics is a collection of Aristotle’s notes, apparently edited by his son, Nichomachus.
The work is famous for being accessible, if not well organized.
Modern ethics is focused on rights and duties
Aristotle is interested in them too (indirectly), but he is more interested in
what is good for humans, and
how we ought to live

6. Foundational experience
Aristotle asserts early in NE that one must have experience of good to comprehend ethics:
For example, someone raised in a meth house will have so little experience of the subject matter that arguments about the goodness of a virtue will be unintelligible.

7. Some goods better than others
Aristotle begins the NE considering all the disagreement among us about what is best of all the goods: pleasure, honor, love, wealth, fame, glory, etc.
He uses a distinction between instrumental and intrinsic goods to find the best, highest good.

8. Instrumental and Intrinsic Good
Instrumental good - something good as a means to something else
Having a tan? Good for getting a date
Having a date? Good for falling in love
Being in love? Good for its own sake (intrinsically), and for happiness (as a means to happiness)
Being happy? Good for its own sake, and as a means to …

9. The Highest Good
NOTHING.
It seems that happiness is not desired for anything other than itself. It is intrinsically desirable but not instrumentally so.
Is that true of anything else? Try out …
Honor?
Fame?
Happiness, then, seems to be the highest good for humans.
We desire it for its own sake, but never, seemingly, for anything else. It seems self-sufficient.

10. What is happiness?
He says that the good of a thing is its unique function:
the good of the eye is seeing, and it’s a good eye if it sees well
the good of a pencil is writing, and it’s a good pencil if it writes well
He then asks, what is the good of human beings?
the good of a human is reason, and it’s a good human if it reasons well.
Humans are rational animals (common definition of humans in ancient Greece).
HAPPINESS = REASONING
… or, in Aristotle’s own words:
HAPPINESS is an activity of the soul (reasoning) in conformity with virtue (reasoning well)
so,
happiness is NOT a feeling
happiness is NOT a condition or state of mind
happiness is NOT desire-satisfaction (getting what you want)
happiness is NOT something you can receive