Easter College

Teacher Education Department

Easter School Rd, Guisad, Baguio City

Module 1: Ethics
Course: GEC 6

Course Title: Ethics

Course Schedule: Education: MTW 8:30-9:30, HBM: MTW 9:30-10:30, BSN 1B: MTW 1:00-2:00,
BSN 1C: MTW 3:00-4:00, BSN 1D: MTW 4:30-5:30, Criminology: ThF 9:00-10:30, BSN 1A: ThF
1:00-2:30, BSN 1E: ThF 2:30-4:00

Consultation Hours: Wednesday 10:00 AM- 3:00 PM ( You can get in touch with me via text
message or email 09095024608/mballoguing@eastercollege.ph or you can go directly at TED
Faculty Office (Brown House) at the given time frame and day)

Topic 2: Ethics of Aristotle

Course Learning Outcomes:

1. Characterize the different concepts of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
2. Recognize the teachings of Aristotle on happiness and rationality by writing reflecting on one’s
happiness and purpose;
3. Research on the criticisms and evaluate Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Time Frame: 4 Hours

Learning Experiences:

“To seek virtue for the sake of

reward is to dig for iron with a
spade of gold.”

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 Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek
philosopher and scientist, who shares with
Plato and Socrates the distinction of being
the most famous of ancient philosophers.

Aristotle was born at Stagira, in

Macedonia, the son of a physician to the
royal court. At the age of 17, he went to
Athens to study at Plato’s Academy. He
remained there for about 20 years, as a
student and then as a teacher. It seemed to
Aristotle that the individual’s freedom of
choice made an absolutely accurate analysis
of human affairs impossible. “Practical science,” then, such as politics or ethics, was called science only
by courtesy and analogy. The inherent limitations on practical science are made clear in Aristotle’s
concepts of human nature and self-realization. Human nature certainly involves, for everyone, a capacity
for forming habits; but the habits that a particular individual forms depend on that individual’s culture and
repeated personal choices. All human beings want “happiness, an active, engaged realization of their
innate capacities, but this goal can be achieved in a multiplicity of ways.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is an analysis

of character and intelligence as they relate to
happiness. Aristotle distinguished two kinds of
virtue, or human excellence: moral and
intellectual. Moral virtue is an expression of
character, formed by habits reflecting repeated
choices. A moral virtue is always a mean
between two less desirable extremes. Courage,
for example is a mean between cowardice and
thoughtless rashness; generosity between extravagance and parsimony. Intellectual virtues are not subject
to this doctrine of the mean. Aristotle argued for elitist ethics: Full excellence can be realized only by the
mature male adult of the upper class, not by women or children or barbarians (non-Greeks), or salaried
mechanics (manual workers) for whom, indeed, Aristotle did not want to allow voting rights.

In politics, many forms of human association can obviously be found; which one is suitable depends on
circumstances, such as the natural resources, cultural traditions, industry and literacy of each community.

Aristotle did not regard politics as a study of ideal states in some abstract form, but rather as an
examination of the way in which ideas, laws, customs, and property interrelate in actual cases. He thus
approved the contemporary institution of slavery but tempered his acceptance by insisting that masters
should not abuse their authority, since the interests of master and slave are the same. The Lyceum library
contained a collection of 158 constitutions of the Greek and other states. Aristotle himself wrote the

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Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, and after being lost, this description was rediscovered in a
papyrus copy in 1890. Historians have found the work of great value in reconstructing many phases of the
history of Athens.

An outline of Aristotle’s Ethics is presented below:

I. The good, right, happiness: the good is not a disposition. The good involves a teleological
system that involves actions.
A. Good is that which all things aim. Something is good if it performs its proper function.
1. A right action is that which is conducive to the good, and different goods correspond to
the differing sciences and arts.
2. The god or best good is that which is desired for its own sake and for the sake of which
we desire all other ends or goods. For human beings, eudaemonia is activity of that
should be in accordance with arête (excellence, virtue, or what it’s good for). Eudemonia
is living well and doing well in the affairs of the world.
B. Aristotle distinguishes between happiness (eudaemonia) and moral virtue:
1. Moral virtue is not the end of life for it can go with inactivity, misery, and
unhappiness.
2. Happiness, the end of life, that to which all aims, is activity in accordance with
reason (reason is the arete or peculiar excellence of persons).
a. Happiness is an activity involving both moral and intellectual arete.
b. Some external goods are necessary in order to exercise that activity.

II. The Good Character.

A. People have a natural capacity for good character, and it is developed through practice. The
capacity does not come first--it's developed through practice.

1. The sequence of human behavior raises the question of which is preeminent--acts or

dispositions. Their interaction is broken by Aristotle's distinction between acts which create good
dispositions and acts which flow from the good disposition once it has been created.
2. Arete is a disposition developed out of a capacity by the proper exercise of that capacity.
3. Habits are developed through acting; a person's character is the structure of habits and is formed
by what we do.

B. Virtue, arete, or excellence is defined as a mean between two extremes of excess and defect in
regard to a feeling or action as the practically wise person would determine it.
1. The mean is relative to the individual and circumstances. For example, consider the following

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 traits:

Defect Mean Excess

Cowardliness Courage Rashness
Humility Pride Vanity
Frugal Giving Liberal

2. The level of courage necessary is different for a philosophy teacher, a commando, and a systems
programmer.
3. Phronesis or practical wisdom is the ability to see the right thing to do in the circumstances.
Notice, especially, Aristotle's theory does not imply ethical relativism because there are
appropriate standards.
4. In the ontological dimension, virtue is a mean; in the axiological dimension, it is an extreme or
excellence. Martin Luther King, Jr. relates his struggle to understand this difference in his "Letter
from Birmingham Jail" when he wrote, "You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme…
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to
think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus
an extremist for love… Was not Amos an extremist for justice… Was not Paul an extremist for
the Christian gospel… Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative
extremists.''
5. Some presumptively virtuous behaviors can be an extreme as when, for example, the medieval
philosopher Peter Abélard explains, “No long time thereafter I was smitten with a grievous
illness, brought upon me by my immoderate zeal for study.” (Peter Abélard, Historia
Calamitatum trans. Ralph Adams Cram (St. Paul, MN: Thomas A. Boyd, 1922), 4.)
6. In the ontological dimension, virtue is a mean; in the axiological dimension, it is an extreme or
excellence. E.g., Hartmann's Diagram:

7. Pleasure and pain are powerful determinants of our actions.

III. Pleasure is the natural accompaniment of unimpeded activity. Pleasure, as such, is neither good
nor bad.
A. Even so, pleasure is something positive and its effect is to perfect the exercise of activity.
Everything from playing chess to making love is improved with skill.
B. Pleasure cannot be directly sought--it is the side-product of activity. It is only an element of
happiness.

IV. Friendship: a person's relationship to a friend is the same as the relation to oneself. The friend
can be thought of as a second self.
A. In friendship a person loves himself (egoism) not as one seeks money for himself, but as he gives
his money away to receive honor.
B. The kinds of friendship:

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 1. Utility
2. Pleasure
3. The Good--endures as long as both retain their character.

V. The Contemplative Faculty--the exercise of perfect happiness in intellectual or philosophic

activity.
A. Reason is the highest faculty of human beings. We can engage in it longer than other activities.

Aristotle claims that “… for all things that have a function

or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in
the function”. Aristotle’s claim is essentially that in
achieving its function, goal or end, an object achieves its
own good. Every object has this type of a true function
and so every object has a way of achieving goodness.

The telos of a chair, for example, may be to provide a seat

and a chair is a good chair when it supports the curvature
of the human bottom without collapsing under the strain.
Equally, says Aristotle, what makes good sculptors, artists
and flautists is the successful and appropriate performance of their functions as sculptors, artists and
flautists.

This teleological (function and purpose) based worldview is the necessary backdrop to understanding
Aristotle’s ethical reasoning. For, just as a chair has a true function or end, so Aristotle believes human
beings have a telos. Aristotle identifies what the good for a human being is in virtue of working out what
the function of a human being is, as per his Function Argument.

According to Aristotle, all activity aims to some good. Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every
action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared
to be that at which all things aim. But a certain difference is found among ends (purpose); some are
activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them.
In short, all activities or products are good if they serve their purpose. For example, a cup which serves its
purpose- an apparatus used for drinking – is good.

Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many. The end of the medical art is
health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth.

However, Aristotle is in search for the “highest good” and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it
turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some
other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake.
If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake and if we do not choose

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everything for the sake of something else, clearly this must be the good and the chief good.
Happiness is the highest good and the end at which all our activities ultimately aim. Only happiness is an
end in itself, so it is the ultimate end.

For example, a student…

Studies hard – to get high grade – to graduate – to build a career s/he always dreamt of – (and so
on) … and the outcome of everything is happiness.

All the other things the student achieved or aimed like high grades, graduation, and career are just good
since they are just mean to a higher end which is happiness.

Further, for human beings, eudemonia is activity of that should be in accordance with arête (virtue). As
mentioned earlier, eudemonia is the means living well.

The Nicomachean Ethics advances an understanding of ethics known as virtue ethics because of its heavy
reliance on the concept of virtue. The word we translate as virtue is aretê, and it could equally be
translated as “excellence.” Something has aretê if it performs its function well. A good horseman, for
example, has the aretê of being good at handling horses, and a good knife has the aretê of sharpness. For
the Greeks, moral virtue is not essentially different from these other kinds of excellence. The Greeks do
not have a distinctive concept of morality like we do, which carries associations of sanctity or duty. Moral
virtue is simply a matter of performing well in the function of being human. For the Greeks, the
motivation for being good is not based in a divine legislator or a set of moral dos and don’ts but rather in
the same kind of striving after excellence that might make an athlete train hard.

Though Aristotle follow Plato and Socrates in taking the virtues to be central to a well-lived life like
regarding ethical virtues such as justice, courage, temperance, etc as complex rational, emotional and
social skills, he rejected Plato’s idea that to be completely virtuous, one must acquire through a training in
the sciences, mathematics and philosophy, an understanding of what goodness is.

What we need, in order to live well, is a proper appreciation of the way in which such goods as
friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor, and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply that general
understanding to particular cases, we must acquire, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to
see, on each occasion, which course of action is best supported by reasons. Therefore, practical wisdom,
as he conceives it, cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire, through
practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general understanding of
well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion.
Aristotle insists that ethics is not a theoretical discipline (like Mathematics, Science, etc.). In asking what
the good for human beings is not simply for the knowledge of what is good but on how to understand and
be able to achieve the “good”.
What is “good” for Aristotle? One assumes that such a list can be compiled rather easily; most would
agree, for example, that it is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be honored,
and to have such virtues as courage at least to some degree.
However, Aristotle is in search for the “highest good” and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it
turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some
other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake.
Happiness is the highest good and the end at which all our activities ultimately aim. All our activities aim
at some end, though most of these ends are means toward other ends.
Aristotle also differentiated happiness and moral virtue. People who are eudemonia are not in a particular

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emotional state so much as they are living successfully. While happiness is the activity of living well,
virtue represents the potential to live well. Excelling in all the moral virtues is fine and good, but it
doesn’t ensure our happiness unless we exercise those virtues. Courageous people who never test their
courage by facing down fear have virtue, but they are not happy. Aristotle illustrates this distinction
between happiness and virtue by saying that the best athletes only win at the Olympic Games if they
compete. A virtuous person who does not exercise virtue is like an athlete who sits on the sideline and
watches. Aristotle has a proactive conception of the good life: happiness waits only for those who go out
and seize it.
Moreover, Aristotle claimed that people have a natural capacity for good character, and it is developed
through practice.

In a quote widely attributed to Aristotle, Will Durant (1885–1981) sums up the Aristotelian view by
saying that “… we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”. It is fairly
obvious that we cannot become excellent at something overnight. Making progress in any endeavor is
always a journey that requires both effort and practice over time. Aristotle holds that the same is true for
human beings attempting to develop their virtuous character traits in attempt to live the good life.

Aristotle is also known for his golden mean which is between excess and deficiency. Courage, for
example, is a mean regarding the feeling of fear, between the deficiency of rashness (too little fear) and
the excess of cowardice (too much fear). Justice is a mean between getting or giving too much and getting
or giving too little. The mean is a mean between two vices, and not simply a mean between too much and
too little.

Furthermore, the mean is “relative to ourselves,” indicating that one person’s mean may be another
person’s extreme. Milo the wrestler, as Aristotle puts it, needs more gruel than a normal person, and his
mean diet will vary accordingly. Similarly, for the moral virtues, Aristotle suggests that some people are
born with weaker wills than others; for these people, it may actually be a mean to flee in battle (the
extremes being to get slaughtered or commit suicide).

Similarly, with health in the soul: exhibiting too much passion may lead to reckless acts of anger or
violence which will be injurious to one’s mental well-being as well as to others; but not showing any
passion is a denial of one’s human nature and results in the sickly qualities of morbidity, dullness, and
antisocial behavior. The healthy path is the “middle path,” though remember it is not exactly the middle,
given that people who are born with extremely passionate natures will have a different mean than those
with sullen, dispassionate natures. Aristotle concludes that goodness of character is “a settled condition of
the soul which wills or chooses the mean relatively to ourselves, this mean being determined by a rule or
whatever we like to call that by which the wise man determines it.”

Aristotle frequently emphasizes the importance of pleasure to human life. Aristotle holds that a happy life
must include pleasure, and he therefore opposes those who argue that pleasure is by its nature bad. He
insists that there are other pleasures besides those of the senses, and that the best pleasures are the ones
experienced by virtuous people who have sufficient resources for excellent activity.

For Aristotle, friendship is one of the most important virtues in achieving the goal
of eudemonia (happiness). While there are different kinds of friendship, the highest is one that is based on
virtue (arête). This type of friendship is based on a person wishing the best for their friends regardless of
utility or pleasure. Aristotle calls it a “… complete sort of friendship between people who are good and
alike in virtue …”. This type of friendship is long lasting and tough to obtain because these types of
people are hard to come by and it takes a lot of work to have a complete, virtuous friendship. Aristotle
notes that one cannot have a large number of friends because of the amount of time and care that a

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virtuous friendship requires. Aristotle values friendship so highly that he argues friendship supersedes
justice and honor. First of all, friendship seems to be so valued by people that no one would choose to live
without friends. People who value honor will likely seek out either flattery or those who have more power
than they do, in order that they may obtain personal gain through these relationships. Aristotle believes
that the love of friendship is greater than this because it can be enjoyed as it is. “Being loved, however,
people enjoy for its own sake, and for this reason it would seem it is something better than being honored
and that friendship is chosen for its own sake”). The emphasis on enjoyment here is noteworthy: a
virtuous friendship is one that is most enjoyable since it combines pleasure and virtue together, thus
fulfilling our emotional and intellectual natures.

He distinguished three kinds of friendships that we commonly form. A friendship for pleasure comes into
being when two people discover that they have common interest in an activity which they can pursue
together. Their reciprocal participation in that activity results in greater pleasure for each than either could
achieve by acting alone. Thus, for example, two people who enjoy playing tennis might derive pleasure
from playing each other. Such a relationship lasts only so long as the pleasure continues.

A friendship grounded on utility, on the other hand, comes into being when two people can benefit in
some way by engaging in coordinated activity. In this case, the focus is on what use the two can derive
from each other, rather than on any enjoyment they might have. Thus, for example, one person might
teach another to play tennis for a fee: the one benefits by learning and the other benefits financially; their
relationship is based solely on the mutual utility. A relationship of this sort lasts only so long as its utility.

A friendship for the good, however, comes into being when two people engage in common activities
solely for the sake of developing the overall goodness of the other. Here, neither pleasure nor utility are
relevant, but the good is. Thus, for example, two people with heart disease might play tennis with each
other for the sake of the exercise that contributes to the overall health of both. Since the good is never
wholly realized, a friendship of this sort should, in principle, last forever.

Rather conservatively representing his own culture, Aristotle expressed some rather peculiar notions
about the likelihood of forming friendships of these distinct varieties among people of different ages and
genders. But the general description has some value nevertheless, especially in its focus on reciprocity.
Mixed friendships—those in which one party is seeking one payoff while the other seeks a different
one—are inherently unstable and prone to dissatisfaction.

The biological fact Aristotle makes use of is that human beings are the only species that has not only
these lower capacities but a rational soul as well. The good of a human being must have something to do
with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better
life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human
beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists
in. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities
caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.

Aristotelian Virtue Ethics is very different in nature to the other act-centered normative moral theories
considered in this book. Whether this, in itself, is a virtue or a vice is an issue for your own judgment. The
lack of a codified and fixed moral rule book is something many view as a flaw, while others perceive it as
the key strength of the theory. Some, meanwhile, will feel uncomfortable with Aristotle’s teleological
claims, differing from those who are happy to accept that there is an objectively good life that is possible
for human beings. Regardless, there is little doubt that Aristotelian Virtue Ethics offers a distinct
normative moral picture and that it is a theory worthy of your reflections.

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 What is your own definition of “good’?

Do you agree that excellence is not an act but a habit?

Has this ever reflected on you own experience in life?

Assessment Task:

1. As a human being, what do you think is your purpose? Are you on your way of fulfilling it? In
your personal perspective and in Aristotle’s, will you finally be “living well” or be “happy” in a
way once you fulfil it? Why?

References

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) Retrieved on January 20, 2021 from sparksnotes.com

Fieser, James. 2010. Ethical Theory. Retrieved on January 20, 2021 from utm.edu
Introduction to Ethics. (n.d.) Retrieved on January 21, 2021 from
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/

NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS by Aristotle. (n.d.) Retrieved on January 20, 2021 from \

http://people.bu.edu/
Philosophy 302: Ethics. Retrieved on January 20, 2021 from philosophy.lander.edu
Pursuit of Happiness. Retrieved on January 20, 2021 from pursuitofhappiness.org

Compiled by: M

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