Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics - Research Paper Example

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics From a moral point of view, anything in excess is bad. This is based on nature that anything excessive is destructive. When we eat or drink too much is bad and eating too little also undermines our health. Such, having the right quantity, including moral qualities, is to be desired and this can only be acquired through temperance. Temperance in everything should be exercised because this is wise and anything that is deficient and excessive should be avoided for this destroys temperance and the preservation of the mean. To strengthen virtue, this has to be exercised and observed at all times. In the same manner that nature nurtures the body that is rightfully nourished and trained, virtue is also strengthened by perpetual observation. This virtue or moral disposition is determined on how pain or pleasure influences an individual’s behavior. If a man is susceptible to pleasure, he is licentious. But if he is able to restrain himself and abstains from indulging in physical pleasure naturally without distressing himself, then that said man is virtuous. The ability to restraint oneself from excessive physical pleasure is necessary because it is the temptation of pleasure and its excesses that makes and induces us to behave badly. For us to endure and become virtuous, training is necessary for an individual to feel and experience joy and grief at the right time which is a requirement in the observance of the golden mean. This training has to begin in infancy for us to be educated on becoming virtuous because joy and grief are the basic motivations that dictates our actions. If our sense of joy and grief are misplaced; that is, feeling joy and grief at the wrong time and place, it would inhibit us from becoming virtuous. We would tend to be shunning the wrong pains and we would be seeking the wrong virtues that would lead us to become licentious. Early training would predispose us to act according to the right virtues and would avoid vice. This sense of virtue which had been nurtured since infancy would also dictate on how we make choices. The good man, who had been trained since infancy to be feel joy and grief at the right time and place is likely to be right in his choices. In the same vein, the bad man will likely to decide wrong when given a choice especially when it involves pleasures. Pain and pleasure regulate our conduct and the virtuous man is he who effectively regulates his sense of pleasure and pain. And the real virtuous man is he who exercises virtue by choice and not just performs them because it is expedient. Rather, the real virtuous man effectively conducts himself and makes those choices for the sake of doing it amid difficulty and he knows what he is doing. Knowing the choices that one is making that is virtuous is different from an incidental virtuous man who only acts virtuous when it serves a particular purpose or without difficulty. The real virtuous man chooses it from a fix and steady purpose whatever the circumstance or qualification. The doctrine of the golden mean According to Aristotle, the acquisition of virtue is a result of the right habit which was nurtured by education and choice. This virtue which has been nurtured by early training and conscientious choice can be destroyed either by excesses or deficiency and it is important that the individual should hit the mean condition of virtue to remain virtuous. This “golden mean” according to Aristotle is an approximation of in-betweens between two extremes that is neither excessive nor deficient. It is to feel fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity and pleasure that is neither too much nor too little because both polarized directions are wrong. What is desired is to have “feelings at the right times on the right grounds towards the right people for the right motive and in the right way is to feel them to an intermediate, that is to the best, degree; and this is the mark of virtue. Such, there are three dispositions of virtue which are excessive, deficient and the mean; that is the desirable approximate in-between of the two extremes of excess and deficit. For Aristotle’s standard, this is the ultimate virtue for this compels an individual to act with utmost temperance by acting at the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way. Aristotle realizes that hitting this mean is extremely difficult for this is the ideal. And if it cannot be hit due to circumstances or lack of virtue, one could take the next best course which is choosing the lesser of the evils. Then remedy it by noticing “all errors into which we ourselves are liable to fall and we must drag ourselves in the contrary direction and away from our failing”. It is equally important to realize that “in every situation one must guard especially against pleasure and pleasant things, because we are not impartial judges of pleasure” and the failure to realize this could make our actions less virtuous. Thus, it is important that we know “ourselves”, our failings, our tendencies and our weaknesses so that we may guard ourselves from it and prevent ourselves from veering away from virtuousness. To illustrate how our failings, our tendencies and our weaknesses can make us less virtuous, we can borrow the case in the class for illustration which the protagonists of the A7D Affair, Gretzinger and Vandivier were faced with a dilemma whom they both knew to be wrong and unethical but later assented to commit such fraudulent act. Gretzinger, the lab supervisor was particularly stressful that ethics and integrity are equally important as theorems and formulas that he would never allow fraud to leave his lab yet it did happen and he was even a party to it. Why did it happen? It was because Gretzinger did not guard himself from his weakness which is the prospect of not being able to provide for his family. Yes he knew the right thing to do. But when the pain of dilemma set in, he lost his ground and became bewildered with his decision. Suddenly, the upright man who value integrity and ethics who used to disdain fraud became a party to a conspiracy because his weakness was hit. Gretzinger’s case is not an isolated case but is in fact a reflection of the common dilemma which made many of us less virtuous because of the dilemmas that were presented to us. Theirs was just an illustration of the common that in as much as we would like to do the right thing, there are just dilemma’s that hit our unguarded weaknesses such as our love and duty for our family that held us hostage to do things that we do not like. Yes it may make us less virtuous but not necessarily a bad man because there is always an opportunity to correct errors such as what Gretzinger and Vandivier did when they testified against Goodrich company. There will be times that we will not be able to hit the golden mean but we can take the lesser evil and realize our weaknesses that we may be able to guard ourselves from it when confronted in the future. Reference: Thomson, J.A.K. (____) Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics. Penguin Classics. Read More