Aristotle, Ethics, and Me, 6-25-2010

 Does anyone not agree that character is how we judge a person, virtuous or not? That is character-as-shown-by-action.

In Book II of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, he divides character into that of thought and that of character. The first comes from teaching, and the second by habit.

Aristotle does not teach about absolutes. He looks for the mean between excess and deficiency. Aristotle requires thought more than obedience to orders.

Those emulating the Pharisees in their love for laws will have trouble with Aristotle. Christians may disagree about the names and number of virtues, but I do not see that as being a Christian objection to Aristotle.

I notice Aristotle using praise or blame as goals or limits on behavior. Who does the praising or the blaming? Other people in our communities. But then we need to know who is wise enough, virtuous enough, to have influence upon us.

I remain too Protestant to think anyone morally infallible. Therefore, I am quite amenable to Aristotle to put moral agency on all of us. That is following an education:

For pleasures causes us to do base actions, and pain causes us to abstain from fine ones. 2. That is why we need to have had the appropriate upbringing - right from early youth, as Plato says - to make us find enjoyment or pain in the right things; for this is the correct education. (Book II, Chapter 3)

Once upon a time, we could expect a broad consensus on American ethics.: George Washington out of Parson Weems breeding Horatio Alger with all the seriousness of Protestant Christianity.

Realists showed us the hypocrisy behind much of that consensus. But we could have a new consensus  - one recognizing our fallibility.

sch

[ I might as well do what I did not do in 2010, and name names; Mark Twain, Ida M Tarbell, Ida B. Wells, Herman Melville, and Martin Luther King, Jr.. Continued in Working on a New Ethical Consensus. sch 12/18/22.]