Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

To appreciate Aristotle's explanation of virtue and responsibility as aspects of ethics, it is first necessary to realize the world view from which that explanation arises. Aristotle views ethics as a so-called practical science, which is to say that ethics is something that has application to real life beyond the merely theoretical. That means ethics entails action and behavior and that any actions undertaken have a purpose beyond their ethical nature. Action itself aims at what eventually comes to be called a good, and the good is something not simply to be thought about but rather to be experienced directly and practically by human beings. "It makes no difference," Aristotle says, "whether the activities themselves are the ends of the action, or something beyond the activities" (I.i.87). As a practical science, the central figure of the human being as the actor or the practitioner of the science is important. But for Aristotle, it is not enough that the individual be

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t guarantee that one will behave virtuously. In other words, virtue must be proactively nurtured and developed in one's youth, and the youth must practice behaving in a virtuous way. While it is the case that virtue does not simply happen but has to be built, it is only when something happens that potential for ethical conduct or for analyzing the content of happiness present itself. Divorced from man in action in the real world, and more specifically action within the context of the political community, virtue is meaningless. The situational connection is critical. Happiness, the highest good, or moral virtue, the means to the highest good, is not a unitary notion but must be directed and formulated within the context of a specific situation. It is because the character of virtue is many-faceted, offering crisis and decisions at unexpected moments, that it cannot be defined in absolutist or universalist terms. The notion in the abstract in this view has no validity because it has no historic-narrative content, which is to say it lacks specific referents. Ethics requires events, happenings, and although the events may themselves seem to lack coherence, the choices they imply must be informed by rationality, or at any rate by the p
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2851
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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