2. Aristotle 384-322 B.C.
Aristotle is the most notable product of
the educational program devised by Plato.
Aristotle wrote on an amazing range of
subjects, from logic, philosophy and ethics
to physics, biology, psychology, politics and
rhetoric.
3. Aristotle and the concept of Telos
In terms of his ethics Aristotle believed in
excellence of Philosophical contemplation and virtuous
actions stemming from virtuous persons (i.e. virtuous
actions are what the person with wisdom would choose
because what is good is obvious to such a person).
In terms of the material world he believed that
organisms continually moved from imperfect to perfect
states in a teleological development, the perfect being
innate within the imperfect (e.g. a seed becomes a plant,
an embryo becomes a baby which becomes an adult).
Thus the essence of something is found in the form into
which it has grown. Humans are organised to live in a
certain way and the rest of their nature is so organised as
to be able to achieve this goal.
4. In this was Aristotle believed the essential nature
of things lay not at their cause (or beginning) but at
their end (telos).
Virtue as Habit
Happiness is the highest good and the end at
which all our activities ultimately aim. Aristotle
defines the supreme good as an activity of the rational
soul in accordance with virtue. Virtue for the Greeks is
equivalent to excellence. A man has virtue as a flautist,
for instance, if he plays the flute well, since playing
the flute is the distinctive activity of a flautist.
Rationality is our distinctive activity, that is, the
activity that distinguishes us from plants and animals.
5. All living things have nutritive soul, which
governs growth and nutrition. Humans and animals
are distinct from plants in having a sensitive soul,
which governs locomotion and instinct. Humans are
distinct above all for having also a rational soul,
which governs thought. Since our rationality is our
distinctive activity, its exercise is the supreme good.
Aristotle defines moral virtue as a disposition
to behave in the right manner and as a mean
between extremes of deficiency and excess, which
are vices. We learn moral virtue primarily through
habit and practice rather that through reasoning and
instruction.
6. Happiness as Virtue
“Happiness depends on ourselves.” more that
anybody else, Aristotle enshrines happiness as a
central purpose of human life and a goal in itself.
Aristotle was convinced that a genuinely happy
life required fulfilment of a broad range of
conditions, including physical as well as mental
well-being. In this way he introduced the idea of a
science of happiness in the classical sense, in
terms of a new field of knowledge.
7. St. Thomas 1224/6-1274
Saint Thomas Aquinas was an Italian
Dominican friar, Catholic Priest, and Doctor of
the Church. He was an immensely influential
philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the
tradition of scholasticism, within which he is
also known as the Doctor Angelicus and the
Doctor Communis.
8. Natural Law
The term “natural law” is ambiguous. It
refers to a type of moral theory, as well as to a
type of legal theory, but the core claims of the two
kinds of theory are logically independent.
According to natural law moral theory, the
moral standards that govern human behavior are,
in some sense, objectively derived from the nature
of human beings and the nature of the world.
According to natural law legal theory, the
authority of legal standards necessarily derives, at
least in part, from considerations having to do
with the moral merit of those standards.
9. The Cardinal Virtues and the Pursuit of Happiness
In the declaration of independence, when our nation’s
founder spoke of an inalienable right to the “pursuit if
happiness,” they did not have in mind a mere feeling or
emotional state, as happiness today often understood. They
did not mean the pursuit of money or self-indulgent
pleasures, much less did they claim a right of seeking
enjoyment in various vices or iniquity.
instead, the founders used the term “Happiness” in
the classical sense of eudaimonia, meaning to lead a good
and virtuous life, from Greek and Roman philosophy and
later expanded upon by Christian thinkers like St. Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas, who taught that the happy life is the
blessed life found in God, who is Truth and Love.
10. Basically, virtue is habitual and firm
disposition toward doing what is right and good,
seeking excellence of personal perfection so as to
govern one’s actions and be the master of one’s
desires. Principal among the virtues are prudence,
temperance, justice and fortitude, in that all other
manifestations of good human activity in some
way hinge upon these four “cardinal virtues,”
which are knowable by human nature.
