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Like many ethicists, Aristotle regards excellent activity as pleasurable for the man of virtue. For example, Aristotle thinks that the man whose appetites are in the correct order takes pleasure in acting moderately. Aristotle emphasized that virtue is practical, and that the purpose of ethics is to become good, not merely to know.
On Virtues and Vices (Ancient Greek: Περὶ Ἀρετῶν καὶ Κακιῶν; Latin: De Virtutibus et Vitiis Libellus) is the shortest of the four ethical treatises attributed to Aristotle. The work is now regarded as spurious by scholars and its true origins are uncertain though it was probably created by a member of the peripatetic school.
Vice is a habitual, repeated practice of wrongdoing. One way of organizing the vices is as the corruption of the virtues. As Aristotle noted, however, the virtues can have several opposites. Virtues can be considered the mean between two extremes, as the Latin maxim dictates in medio stat virtus —in the centre lies virtue. For instance, both ...
Aristotle analyzed the golden mean in the Nicomachean Ethics Book II: That virtues of character can be described as means. It was subsequently emphasized in Aristotelian virtue ethics. [1] For example, in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice. The middle ...
The capital vices of lust and avarice, for instance, contrast with the remedial virtues of chastity and generosity, respectively, rather than with any theological or cardinal virtue; conversely, the virtues of hope and prudence are opposed to despair and foolishness rather than to any deadly sin. Medieval moral authors were well aware of the fact.
Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, [a] [1] from Greek ἀρετή []) is a philosophical approach that treats virtue and character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role.
Aristotle's approach to defining the correct balance is to treat money like any other useful thing, and say that virtue is to know how to use money: giving to the right people, in the right amount, at the right time. As with each of the ethical virtues, Aristotle emphasizes that a virtuous person is pleased to do the virtuous and beautiful thing.
Meanness, therefore, is the vice of a free person behaving, in such a culture, as a slave does. [8] Another problem that has taxed philosophers analysing Aristotle is that the expected continuum (on which vices and a virtue lie) is from excess to deficiency; but Aristotle describes meanness as both excess (of taking from) and deficiency (of ...