In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle develops a theory of the good life, also known as eudaimonia, for humans. Eudaimonia is perhaps best translated as flourishing or living well and doing well. Therefore, when Aristotle addresses the good life as the happy life, he does not mean that the good life is simply one of feeling happy or amused To Aristotle leading a good life, for the most part, means fulfilling one’s purpose in a way that is good by balancing life’s pleasures. In order to determine if an object fulfills its function in a good way, we must first consider the object Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. According to Aristotle, the good life is the happy life, as he believes happiness is an end in itself. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle develops a theory of the good life, also known as eudaimonia, for humans. Eudaimonia is perhaps best translated as flourishing or living well and doing well
The Aristotle's Idea of a Good Life Essay - Words | Bartleby
Subject Philosophers. Category Philosophy. Topic Aristotle, Ethics. Several scholars argued in the late nineteenth century that the Nicornachean Ethics was incoherent since, although Aristotle stressed both practical and theoretical virtues aristotle the good life essay his concept of happiness in much of the NE, he emphasized only one -contemplation — in Book X.
The problem was that it was difficult to picture pleasure consisting of the fulfillment of a single desire rather than the fulfillment of many. However, by the late s, aristotle the good life essay, the general opinion was that there was an implicit presumption that solved the problem. The assumption that the activity of happiness consisted in the satisfaction of a single desire whereas the life of happiness consisted in the satisfaction of a single desire whereas the life of happiness consisted in the satisfaction of several desires both practical and theoretical.
However, these assumptions have raised questions because the notion of contemplating a completed picture of knowledge seems odd and boring and hardly the sort of thing one would need to express with the ecstatic Augustinian sentiments that Aristotle uses. Happiness is essentially a contemplation thus needs to include both practical and contemplative virtues. The treatments of self-sufficiency, completeness and function suggest that happiness needs to be inclusive.
Individuals need a full complement of external goods such as power, beauty and good fortune. However, Aristotle reiterates that contemplator requires only the bare necessities of life such as food, shelter and clothing.
The equation of happiness may downgrade the ethical and political life to a mere means and not part of eudairnonia. In that sense, an action may seem right only when it makes contemplation possible. As a result, ethical activity may not have intrinsic value as reiterated by Aristotle. However, if ethical activity may become part of eudairnonia, then it may have intrinsic value because ethical activity acts for the sake of the aristotle the good life essay end of happiness and as part of happiness.
Therefore, virtue is not just a mere means of happiness thought rather individuals need to take it for the sake of happiness and as part of happiness. Therefore, aristotle the good life essay discussing the central concerns of individuals, aristotle the good life essay, the ethical and political activities paly an essential role in the conception of good life.
Aristotle the good life essay addition, Aristotle focuses on how the political life culminated in the life of the practically wise politician. Individuals are corrupted by pleasure because they pursue corruption to the exclusion of anything.
According to Aristotle, individuals contemplate only when their natural states are restored by various processes such as eating and drinking and that such processes are pleasurable not in themselves but coincidentally, as they restore individuals to their normal state.
Hence, virtue is concerned with pleasure and pain since all actions by individuals are related in one way or another. On that note, a aristotle the good life essay individual will act in accordance with the mean regarding pleasure. However, the presence of different virtues like temperance may imply the presence of practical wisdom which can imply the presence of virtue, aristotle the good life essay.
Therefore, according to Aristotle, an individual can only contemplate when an individual is in harmony with oneself. Virtue is a pragmatic requirement that provides a level of clear headedness that is necessary for an individual to contemplate. Contemplation is not only limited to philosopher but also involves the natural culmination of the practical life. In such a case, contemplation play an essential role of enabling individuals to overcome the problem of exclusiveness.
Despite contemplation not being an easy aspect of good life aristotle the good life essay access, it does not restrict the possibility of good life to a small percentage of the population who are philosophers.
Contemplation requires an individual to contemplate as seems as an incommensurable better activity. Similarly, practical virtue is a necessary and sufficient condition that supports contemplation. Practical virtue is necessary for a philosophical contemplator because practical virtue restores the body to its natural state. According to books XII and IX, Aristotle claims that only the practically wise philosopher qualifies as a contemplator Ackrill and John, Thus, virtue is a necessary condition of contemplation, aristotle the good life essay.
But theoria is possible only when nous is in command and unifies the various elements of the soul, and nous is in command only in practically wise men. So while it is proper that the activity of the intellectual element within individuals is incomparably superior to any other activity, aristotle the good life essay.
Aristotle asserts that individuals may sustain contemplation longer than any other activity and involves leisure and freedom from other obligations Ackrill and John, If contemplation results from long process of philosophical or political training then the teaching process may take time. For example, when the older individuals who are provided a rest from active service, are appointed appropriately enough as priests for the churches. Aristotle believes that happiness is not a distinct end apart from the activities that are somehow means to it, for example dressmaking for the aristotle the good life essay of a dress Ackrill and John, Nevertheless, happiness is an inclusive end not different from the activities that constitute it just as golfing, swimming and vacation are for the sake of having a good holiday but not different from what it means to have a good holiday, aristotle the good life essay.
The total life of an individual consists of various activities such as thinking, perceiving, growing, and digesting. Aristotle referred to these activities as a life thus aristotle the good life essay a certain type of life and happiness. That is, individuals need to understand life not as total life but in different sense of activities. The components of the total life on the other hand, will consist not only in the activities of primary and secondary eudaimonia and contemplation and practical virtues but those of nutrition and perception as well.
Arguably, the final good at times is made up of several final goods that seem desirable for different individuals. Similarly, this intrinsic desirability about final good makes the activities of their hierarchies good.
However, Aristotle leaves open this possibility. That means Aristotle has not yet proved that the human good is a single most final end, he does think that all human endeavor falls under this good in a single hierarchy.
So the goods that constitute the hierarchy are good in light of the final individual. Aristotle discusses the human good in the larger social context and not in terms of the individual, aristotle the good life essay. Aristotle does so because he believes that there is a preexisting area of study that is political science that is interested in determining the order of the hierarchy of the good in terms of the social order Ackrill and John, However it is much less obvious that the same thing goes on in the individual context.
Second, because, the good is finer and more godlike to attain for a city than it is for an individual. Also, it is important because Aristotle explicitly suggests, contrary to what some scholars have thought for example Hardie that this final good is accessible to more than a privileged few Ackrill and John, Thus he states that happiness will also on this view be very generally shared for all who are not maimed as regards their potentiality for virtue may win it by a certain kind of study and care.
Aristotle the good life essay is, Aristotle disagrees with Hardy aristotle the good life essay final good may be the motive or end for all the actions of an individual. The final good that human aim for is happiness though there is disagreement with some scholars on what happiness consists of. Aristotle focuses on the kinds of lives that best embody the end or meaning of life. His focus lands in three major possible lives such as that of pleasure, politics or contemplation.
Some individuals may take the end of life to be pleasure. However, Aristotle dismisses such a life and argues that the tyrants lacks understanding of life because their knowledge is limited to bodily pleasure.
However, Aristotle further argues that the good man has tested both the pleasure of virtue and those of the body thus is in the best position to judge their value. The good man by definition thinks virtue and not pleasure to be his end, thus the good man rejects pleasure as his final end.
Notably, at this point Aristotle does not reject pleasure as part of the good and happy life. Second, to make amusement the end of everything we do is to trivialize life since serious things are thought to be better than trivial things. It is more appropriate therefore that individual amuse themselves for relaxation so that they can get back to serious work. All people who live the political life do so for the sake of honor or virtue.
By honor Aristotle means the respect, aristotle the good life essay, admiration and even fear with which men in power are held. But this is quickly rejected as the final good, since the things we do to obtain honor are our own, whereas honor not only depends on others to give, but is easily lost for it depends on someone else to be ours. Happiness is something that individuals can choose for itself and not for the sake of happiness. Aristotle reiterates that certain good such as wealth are just means and not ends in themselves and thus final but also means to other ends Ackrill and John, Such would be honor, pleasure, reason and virtue in general, for all these are chosen for themselves aristotle the good life essay well as for the sake of happiness.
Aristotle argues that contemplative is the final activity of man because it is virtuous activity of the highest element in an individual. Besides, Aristotle further argues that the objects of contemplation are the highest possible objects. That is, if an activity X is higher in the hierarchy than activity Y, then X is more final compared to Y. Aristotle thinks that rational activity is higher and therefore more final than perceptual and nutritive activities. In addition, Aristotle believes that rational activities themselves rank in some order, based on their objects.
Aristotle acknowledges that pleasure is not a function of the restorative process but the activity of the still healthy disposition. Aristotle argues that disposition and pleasure are interrelated. Therefore in case the disposition is completely destroyed t it means the pleasure is equally affected. Also, there is a relation of pleasures associated with the restorative processes and those associated with the activities of the completely restored state.
As stated in the previous paragraph that the virtue in charge of the appetites is temperance and it is only the temperate man who can correctly replenish his natural needs as opposed to being attracted to that which is contrary to what is pleasant by nature. Yet this is not all that would constitute a settled state from which the activity of contemplation arises.
That is, a perfected nature must not only be free from the pains of appetite, but from unnecessary pain in general. Hence it must be the case that a perfect nature requires perfect virtue, since virtue is concerned with pleasure and pain. More importantly all the virtues, with some qualifications aristotle the good life essay as being disposed to actions that are done in the right way, time and amount are defined as states of impassivity and rest Ackrill and John, Thus change is good because of some vice for it is aristotle the good life essay simple to change a vicious man.
Therefore, the nature that needs change is vicious because it is not good and simple, aristotle the good life essay.
Contemplative activity arises when the passions and appetites are controlled and brought to a state of rest, a control that only aristotle the good life essay provides, aristotle the good life essay.
For virtuous actions are activities and ends in themselves and therefore complete insofar as they do not leave behind any residue of actions or passions which thus allows for theoria. Whereas vicious actions are processes that not only are incomplete in terms of the emotional residue they leave behind, but also because of the further action that they impel.
While this may be true of the philosophically trained virtuous man, for example a good man needs to be good to do philosophy well and ultimately aristotle the good life essay a contemplator, aristotle the good life essay. Aristotle focused on two major virtues about good life and happiness that is practical and theoretical virtues. At some point, Aristotle mainly focused on contemplation because it was not simple to imagine how happiness could consist in the satisfaction of a single desire.
Aristotle argument that the activity of happiness was theoria whereas the life of happiness consisted in the satisfaction of several desires both practical and theoretical faced critics from various scholars. The scholars argued that the notion of contemplating a completed picture of knowledge seems odd and boring. Aristotle believes different activities that each separately constitute to a life and thus happiness. Aristotle believes that external goods are more important in some lives than in others which is why he does not say that they are necessary conditions of happiness, but simply needed in addition.
3 Tips to live the Good Life - Aristotle \u0026 iPhones
, time: 2:08Aristotle's Theory of the Good Life - Words | Bartleby
Nov 03, · Essay, Pages 5 ( words) Views. The “good life” is a phrase that is used to describe the ideal life for one to live. According to Aristotle, the good life should be free of any greed, full of virtue, pleasure, and friendships, as well as excellence in whatever you may do. I would agree with all of the things he believed in To Aristotle leading a good life, for the most part, means fulfilling one’s purpose in a way that is good by balancing life’s pleasures. In order to determine if an object fulfills its function in a good way, we must first consider the object Nicomachean Ethics: Aristotle's Outline Of A Good Life. A good life, is one of virtue and happiness. In his design, Aristotle states that virtue is manifested through an individual’s actions. Aristotle contends that in order to obtain moral and intellectual virtues, reason
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