Ethical Philosophy

Moral experience, which is to say human experience, is loaded with paradox because moral and ethical choices do not always present an opportunity to choose simply between good and evil. Instead, one chooses between good and good, or, in the familiar phrase, between the lesser of two evils. The history of philosophy, which, one might think, should supply resolution to the confusions and dilemmas of life, does nothing so much as ask new and even more vexed questions. And these are questions that the philosophers either do not answer or provide answers that are radically different. Thus philosophy creates its own dilemmas for anyone who is serious about the questions it presents.

It seems hard to think of two more radically different approaches to philosophy than those taken by Aristotle, from the ancient Greek period, and Jean-Paul Sartre, from the postmodern period. Whereas Aristotle seeks to explain and classify everything (Gaarder 104)--from logic to science to ethics to law to politics--Sartre seems intent on explaining nothing, or more exactly explaining either that nothing can be explained or that there's not much point in doing so, even if it could (Gaarder 457). Whereas Aristotle sees human happiness as the highest good and philosophy as the highest happiness and the result of ethical habits of mind and behavior (Gaarder 115), Sartre makes the point that "it is useless to search for the meaning of life in general" (Gaarder 45

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e found in the state." Not identifying the good in absolute terms is consistent with his advocacy of the "golden mean" of behavior and virtue (Gaarder 115), with (for example) too much or too little courage being characterized as rashness and cowardice, respectively. In that regard, one examination of Aristotle's conception of courage as a virtue concludes that it is really an example of moral virtue, which is not always rewarded. That analysis says that for Aristotle, "courage can be understood as a mixture of pleasure and pain or, more precisely, an endurance of pain for the sake of a later pleasure" (Ward 79)--including, presumably, the shared pleasure of social justice. That reinforces the idea of ethics as a practical philosophy and suggests that it is a work in progress. It could be argued that Aristotle was as good as his word, as far as practical training of future political leaders was concerned: He became the tutor of Alexander the Great. What is important to recognize about Aristotle's approach to ethics is that he seems to be assuming that human beings will become engaged by the project of using their reason to enact their ethical responsibilities in a rational world. Yet how paradoxical that, armed with Aristotle's k
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Approximate Word count = 1965
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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