Related Questions
§ Discuss Plato and
Aristotle’s ethics
(Your introduction)
The
philosopher: Plato
Plato
was the most intimate friend and disciple of Socrates. He was born around
427B.C. of a wealthy aristocratic family in Athens. He admired Socrates and
became his pupil at the age of twenty. His life ambition was to become a
politician, but due to the fact that he was disappointed at the way his master
‘Socrates’ was treated by the Athenian politicians, he gave up his political
ambition. Socrates had such a strong influence on Plato that it would be very
difficult to talk of one without mentioning the other. Also, their philosophies
are very much alike.
The
philosopher: Aristotle
Aristotle
was born in Stageira in 384B.C. At the age of seventeen, Aristotle went to
Athens to study in Plato’s academy. He remained there for twenty years as a
pupil of Plato, studying under him. But after Plato’s death, Aristotle left the
academy and began to develop his own philosophy. He eventually founded his own
institution which he called the ‘’Lyceum’ in a gymnasium attached to the temple
of Apollo Lyceus’, where he lectured and carried out a lot of scientific
research. The members of this school frequently held academic discussions while
walking up and down an ambulatory under the gymnasium’s covered particle called
‘peripatus’. This earned them the name ‘’peripatetics’’ and the school became
known as the peripatetic school. Aristotle’s works on ethics can be found in
his famous books ‘’Nichomachean ethics’’ and ‘’Magna Moralia’’.
Plato’s
ethical philosophy
Regarding virtue and its
connection to human existence, the main purpose of life (i.e. the major reason
for living) for Plato was to attain happiness. Man in all his endeavours and
activities aims at being happy. However, the attainment of this happiness is
via virtue. Virtue Plato was simply knowledge, implying that, it is ignorance
and absence of virtue that makes people to make wrong choices and do evil. To
know the good is to do the good. Hence, when a man does badly, it is because he
does not know what the good is, as wrongness is involuntary and a function of
ignorance. Thus, ignorance is a vice. He also asserts that all virtues are
fundamentally one. Hence, no one can have one and lack another, for to have one
is to have all and to lack one is to lack all. Plato rejects the idea of
Thrasymachus that justice is the interest of the stronger. He also rejects the
idea that justice is doing good to one’s friend and evil to one’s enemies. He
holds that it is wrong to do evil to anyone, for evil is evil. Thus, a just man
should not make an unjust man worse. A man cannot be morally upright by making
his enemies worse.
For Plato, the concept
of justice was a bit more analytical and a response to some extreme ideas of
justice prevalent in his time, like that of Thrasymachus which asserts that
‘justice is the interest of the stronger, as might is right’. Thus, Plato came
up with his own ideology of justice in reference to man. He postulates that all
men are made up of three parts, which are ‘’the rational part’’, ‘’the spirited
part’’ and ‘’the appetitive part’’. These automatically represent the virtues
of ‘reason’, ‘courage’ and ‘temperance’, but he emphatically states that
temperance is the subordination of the spirited and the appetitive parts to the
rule of the rational part. Hence, justice in the soul is the general harmony
resulting from the proper functioning of the three parts of the soul.
In an analogical manner,
Plato relates the concept of justice in the soul to that of justice in the
state. The state is made up of three parts, which are the guardians, the
auxiliaries (soldiers) and the artisans (peasants). Each group performs its own
function according to its own virtue. The guardians are the ones that rule or
should rule the society, for it is the rational part of the society with virtue
and reason. The auxiliaries are the ones with the responsibility of defending
the society from attacks and it is the spirited part. It possesses the virtue
of courage. The artisans are the workers in the society whom are responsible
for the day to day economic activity. Plato however did not say that temperance
is their virtue. Rather, he holds that temperance is the subordination of both
the spirited part (auxiliaries) and the appetitive part (artisans) to the rule
of reason (guardians).
Aristotle’s
ethical philosophy
The
ethical ideas of Aristotle can be grouped according to the following;
·
Eudemonism
Eudemonism is the view of Aristotle that
happiness is the standard of morality. Like his predecessors, Aristotle also
believed that the main goal of all human activities was the attainment of
happiness. In this light, the goal, purpose and standard of morality is
happiness. In other words, if one has to be happy, he must be moral (virtuous).
He must perform good actions i.e. actions that lead to happiness. Evil actions
are thus actions that lead to unhappiness. So, to live a moral life is to live
according to virtue. Aristotle defines happiness as ‘the activity of the soul
in accordance with virtue’.
·
Doctrine of the mean
Like in ancient Chinese philosophy,
Aristotle also taught the doctrine of the golden mean. The underlying essence
of this doctrine is the right placement and balance of actions. It emphasizes
that virtue is a balance between the extremes of excess and defect. In other
words, men are admonished to follow the middle path (i.e. the virtuous path) by
being moderate in all endeavours. For example, one should be generous (the
mid-path) and not miserly (a defect) or extravagant (an extreme). Nonetheless,
Aristotle emphasizes that some vices do not have extremes as they are bad
(evil) in themselves; e.g. murder.
·
Virtue
Aristotle differentiates two kinds of
virtues which are ‘intellectual virtue’ and ‘moral virtue’. Simply stated, the
intellectual virtues are the speculative realms of scientific knowledge, art,
practical wisdom, theoretical wisdom, intuitive reasoning and the likes. Moral
virtues are the virtues of generosity, courage, temperance and justice.
Furthermore, virtue according to Aristotle is specifically perceived as
‘‘habit’’. Thus, it is an automated state of mind which spontaneously gives
rise to good actions. Virtuous actions are good actions performed over time
which have become part of the performer as a second nature. In other words, a
virtuous action is a good action done persistently and automatically, and not
sporadically (once in a while). Virtue as a habit is as a result of constant
practise. Hence, a sudden and radical conversion is not possible according to
Aristotle.
·
Phronesis
Practical wisdom (a type of intellectual
virtue) which Aristotle calls ‘’Phronesis’’ plays an important role in his
ethics. Practical wisdom is simply ‘the rule and standard by which any given action
in any given situation can be judged as right or wrong’. Hence, Phronesis is
the yardstick for virtue and vice. For Aristotle, practical wisdom is actually
the moral insight of a virtuous man- a man whom has acquired virtue through
experience and constant practise. In other words, only a man of practical
wisdom has the ability to know the right thing to do in any given situation as
he or she cannot be wrong.
·
Justice
Aristotle also had his conception of
justice which he saw as the greatest of all moral virtues. He defined it as
‘what is lawful; what is fair and equal’. He further presents two kinds of
justice, which are, ‘’universal justice’’ and ‘’particular justice’’. Universal
justice is contextually the same as virtue (intellectual and moral virtue). On
the other hand, particular justice is of two kinds, which are, ‘distributive
justice’- the distribution of goods among the citizens according to merit and
‘remedial justice’- the application of fairness in human transactions and
relationships.
(Your conclusion)
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