This document provides an overview of Aristotle's views on ethics and virtue. It discusses that for Aristotle, happiness is the highest good that is pursued for its own sake. Living well and flourishing requires developing moral virtues like courage, generosity, and honesty through consistent habits of acting virtuously. Virtues are excellences that involve moderation between deficiencies and excesses of emotions and actions. Practical wisdom is needed to determine the virtuous mean in different situations. An act is right if a virtuous person would tend to do it, where virtue involves acting for the right reason at the right time in the right way.

1. ARISTOTLE’S
ETHICSBy: John Paul Espino
De La Salle University – Dasmarinas
Facebook.com/Johnpaul.dss

2. ANCIENT ATHENS

3. ARISTOTLE

4. ARISTOTLE: GOODS
• Instrumental goods:
desired for the sake
of something else
• Intrinsic goods:
desired for their own
sake

5. HAPPINESS
• One thing is always desired for its own sake, never for the sake of something else:
happiness

6. HAPPINESS
• One thing is always desired for its own sake, never for the sake of something else:
happiness
• Happiness (eudaimonia) = living well = flourishing

7. HAPPINESS
• One thing is always desired for its own sake, never for the sake of something else:
happiness
• Happiness (eudaimonia) = living well = flourishing
• What does that require? Prosperity and luck, yes, but more

8. LIVING WELL
• What is it to live well?

9. LIVING WELL
• What is it to live well?
• Analogies:
– A good knife cuts well
– A good eye sees well
– A good teacher teaches well

10. LIVING WELL
• What is it to live well?
• Analogies:
– A good knife cuts well
– A good eye sees well
– A good teacher teaches well
• A good person _____s well

11. FUNCTION
• A thing’s function stems from what is special about it: what distinguishes
it from other things
– Knives cut: sharpness —> cutting
– Eyes see: ability to see —> seeing
– Teachers teach: ability to teach —> teaching

12. OUR FUNCTION
• What is the function of a
human being?

13. OUR FUNCTION
• What is the function of a
human being?
• What is special about people?

14. OUR FUNCTION
• What is the function of a
human being?
• What is special about people?
• We act according to rational
plans

15. VIRTUE
• Our function is rational activity
• A good person succeeds at rational
activity
• Virtue = excellence
• A virtuous person excels at rational
activity

16. TWO KINDS OF VIRTUE
• Virtue = rational activity
• Excellence in rationality: intellectual virtue
• Excellence in activity: moral virtue

17. BECOMING VIRTUOUS
• Intellectual virtue can be taught
• Moral virtue can’t be
• It requires developing habits
• We become good by doing good
things

18. RIGHT AND WRONG
• An act is right if it is something a virtuous person would tend to
do

19. CIRCULAR?
• Moderns: A virtuous person is one who tends
to do the right thing.

20. CIRCULAR?
• Moderns: A virtuous person is one who tends
to do the right thing.
• Aristotle: That’s not enough. A virtuous person
tends to do the right thing as virtuous people
do them.
• A good person consistently does the right
thing at the right time, in the right way, and for
the right reason.
• Virtuous people do the right thing for the right
reason: because it’s the right thing to do.

21. VIRTUE AS A MEAN
• Virtues are means between extremes
• Virtues constrain desires
• But we may constrain too little or too much

22. VIRTUES AND VICES
Drive Too little Just right Too much
Fear cowardly courageous rash
Pleasure self-indulgent self-controlled insensitive
Material goods stingy generous extravagant
Self-esteem vain high-minded
small-minded
Anger short-tempered gentle apathetic
Sociability obsequious friendly
grouchy
Boasting boastful truthful self-
deprecating
Humor clownish witty boring
Drive for honor ambitious ?
unambitious
Spending grudging magnificent vulgar

23. VIRTUE AS A MEAN
• We must give in to desire in the right circumstances, in the right way, for the right
reason, etc.
• Practical wisdom—the ability to draw the right distinctions and tell right from wrong—
allows us to find the mean
• There’s no rule for doing this
• You must learn to see what is right

24. CAN ONE BE TOO MORAL?
• It’s possible to be “too generous” (extravagant), “too courageous” (rash), “too witty”
(clownish), etc.
• Is it possible to be too moral?

25. Too narrow?
(False
negatives)
Too
broad?
(False
positives)
ARISTOTLE’S THEORY
• Right
Virtuous people
would tend to do
it