scholarly journals Aristotle on the Good Man’s Desire for Pleasant Friends

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Andreas Vakirtzis
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Music Theater ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Good People ◽  
Athletic Activities ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One

At EN 1158a22-27, Aristotle argues that the virtuous man will pursue friendships with pleasant people, but not with people who are useful to him. Ideally, he adds, these friends should, despite being pleasant, also be good, since then the good man would have all the goods of friendship.The dominant problem with this passage is that the good man desires his friends to be pleasant; or, put it otherwise, that he desires pleasant friends. This idea, however, stands on the opposite side of Aristotle’s axiological hierarchy where the virtuous man desires, first and foremost, the good both as a goal in his life as a whole and in his friends, in particular. Pleasure is valuable in Aristotle’s ethics, but it only comes second to virtue and the good. In the present paper I will defend Aristotle by arguing that he may justify the argument of this passage without though jeopardizing his axiological hierarchy. To this purpose, I will provide the following reasons: (1) Character friendship is ideal for the virtuous agent. But, character friendships take place extremely rarely. The reason for this is that it is unusual for two people to have reached the same level of highly developed moral goodness. Therefore, it is rather unlikely for a good man to meet and befriend another agent as good as he is. (2) If (1) is true then if the good man does not want to remain friendless he must pursue friendships which are valuable, yet not the most valuable in Aristotle’s axiological hierarchy. In this section,  I will argue that this desire derives, largely, from the good man’s social and political nature. By this I mean that he desires, by nature, to share his life with others, and especially with friends. But this is merely the initial spark that impels the agent to pursue other forms of friendship than the one that occurs between good people. (3) In this third section I will illustrate how it is likely for the good man to desire pleasant friends without this fact influencing his axiological hierarchy. I will suggest that the virtuous agent does not consider pleasant just anyone. He values others as pleasant only if he recognizes in them at least some good habits of character which are manifested by the activities  that they have chosen to take part in, such as athletic activities, music, theater, and other cultured activities. The difference though between the VA and his friend rests on why each one of them values these activities, and, also, each one’s attitude towards these activities. On the one hand, the virtuous agent values them as being worthy of doing, and as being part of the good life and eudaimonia. But he does not deviate from attributing value to virtuous activity more highly than anything else. His friend, on the other hand, enjoys them for being what they are in that they fulfill his life as such, in the sense that he engages in one, or more, of these activities more devotedly than the good man. And this dissimilarity between the two friends with regard to the reason that they value these activities is also evident in their attitude towards them. Namely, while the VA will not engage in them with excess, his pleasant friend probably will; and this reflects the differences between them concerning their moral characters as well.  

scholarly journals Perfectionism and endorsement constraint

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Michal Sládecek
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Good Life ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
State Action ◽  
State Coercion ◽  
The Difference

The article deals with Hurka?s critique of Kymlicka and Arneson?s critique of Dworkin on endorsement constraint thesis, according to which a person cannot have a valuable life if values are imposed on her - primarily by state action - overriding her preferences and convictions on the good life. This thesis has often been identified with neutral liberalism and counterposed to perfectionism. The text argues against Hurka?s and Arneson?s argument that mild coercion and paternalistic reduction of trivial, bad or worthless options can indeed bring about a more valuable life. Their argument does not acknowledge adequately the difference between coercion from a person?s immediate social environment and state coercion, which are not equally legitimate. My critique, however, does not exclude the legitimacy of perfectionistic measures, as a person could accept as justified state intervention concerning the support of particular values or goods, while at the same time not endorsing those values and goods. Not all endorsed goods or activities should be treated equally, as more relevant and valuable ones can be legitimately supported by particular policy.

Toward the Pursuit of What People Value

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
Mendiola Teng-Calleja ◽  
Jose Antonio R. Clemente ◽  
Ma. Ligaya Menguito ◽  
Donald Jay Bertulfo
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Living Wage ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Initial Attempt ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Research And Policy ◽  
The Capability Approach

Abstract. This study sought to initiate conversations on the utility of the capability approach and a psychological lens in approximating a living wage. We put forth the concept of capability gap – defined as the difference between what one values and what one perceives as attainable. We used a set of valued domains of a good life that were identified based on well-being indicators in determining capability gaps. Five hundred workers (all breadwinners) belonging to households selected through stratified random sampling from purposively chosen middle- and low-income communities in the Philippines participated in the survey. From the data, we constructed a weighted capability measure that determines the capability gap, weighted by the perceived importance of each of the good life domains. We likewise derived an estimate of a living wage that yields a weighted capability that represents individuals' capabilities to achieve and pursue valued outcomes, freedoms, and entitlements. This initial attempt at estimating a living wage based on individuals' capability to achieve and pursue a good life is presented as the main contribution of the research. The limitations of the study as well as its implications to living wage research and policy are discussed.

scholarly journals The Modernity of Aristotle’s Ethics

MANUSYA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Charles Freeland
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Theoretical Science

Aristotle understood ethics to be a practical rather than a theoretical science. It is a pragmatics, if you will, concerned with bringing about a good life . But the problem and the question from which Aristotle’s ethics begins arid to which it constantly returns concerns the relation of the theoretical to the practical: his concern is for the type or mode of discourse one could use in providing an account of the good life (Eudaimonia). Is this a propositional, apophantic discourse, a discourse claiming to represent the truth and what is true and from which one could then go on to prescribe a course of action, or, and this may be closer to Aristotle, is the philosophical discourse on ethics rather a descriptive one which takes humankind for what it is, not what it ought to be? This relation between theory and practice, between description and prescription, between science and action, is a question and a problem for Aristotle. It is my purpose to take up this question in connection with Aristotle’s texts on Eudaimonia. Another question shall be raised here: What is the relevance of Aristotle’s treatment of Eudaimonia to our contemporary, “modern” concern for ethics and the good life? I would assume, naively perhaps, that even today we are not indifferent to this question of what is a good life, and that we are not indifferent to the many ways in which the “good life” has been described. It would seem, then, that Aristotle’s texts have a particularly striking importance for us today insofar as we prolong the philosophical questioning of the possibilities for ethical and political discourse today and continue to ask who and what we are as human beings.

Dic cur hic?

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 103-158
Author(s):  
Sascha Salatowsky
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Theological Virtues ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

In order to attain a deeper understanding of Aristotelian philosophy in the Renaissance, it is necessary to consider the theological implications of given facts. This article discusses a basic problem centring on the reception of Aristotle’s Ethics. The Nicomachean Ethics was widely regarded as the basis for a virtuous ethical life, yet how could a pagan philosophy, with its concepts of happiness, virtue, justice, etc., be the basis of a Christian society? The aim of the present article is to show how Lutheran scholars solved this problem in confrontation with Catholic and Calvinist scholars of the time. The first part deals with the two basic components of Aristotle’s Ethics, namely the doctrines of happiness (Eudaimonologia) and virtue (Aretologia), and attempts to show that Aristotle’s Ethics should not be understood as a system of rules, but rather as a handbook for the cultivation of practical habits in the free human being who strives to live a good life. The second part examines two key ideological confrontations in relation to Aristotle’s philosophy: between Lutherans and Calvinists in respect of definition of theology and philosophical and theological virtues on the one hand, and between Lutherans and ›the Enthusiasts‹ in respect of the concept of virtues on the other.

The Autonomy-Based Liberalism of Joseph Raz

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Norman
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Philosophical Aspect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Raz ◽  
The One ◽  
Conception Of The Good

Ask a practising liberal to define her political creed, and more likely than not she will begin by describing the wonderful life of the free person. That is, in the parlance of modern political philosophers, she will begin with a conception of the good. The good life is the free life, and the good society is the one where people are as free as possible. By contrast, recent liberal philosophers have for the most part grounded their theories in principles of right or rights. Indeed, some have argued that what is unique about liberalism as a political doctrine is that it is not committed to the advancement of any particular conception of the good, let alone to that of the free person. In his celebrated recent book, The Morality of Freedom, Joseph Raz sides with the practitioner and confronts the pedlars of right-based or deontological liberalism head-on. Believing the history of liberal theory to be against them, he labels his opponents ‘revisionists’. The Morality of Freedom has already been hailed as the most significant new statement of liberal principles since Mill’s On Liberty. And while this may be a bit over-enthusiastic, Raz would welcome at least one philosophical aspect of the comparison with Mill. Both are teleologists who ground their theories of political morality on considerations of the value of the free or autonomous life. I shall dub such theories ‘autonomarian’. And I shall examine Raz’s autonomarian reaction in detail here, for it may well be the most important such theory in the post-Rawlsian era.

scholarly journals Creatures Bound for Glory: Biotechnological Enhancement and Visions of Human Flourishing

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Burdett ◽  
Victoria Lorrimar
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The One ◽  
Secular Humanist ◽  
Grand Vision

The human enhancement debate is fundamentally based on divergent ideals of human flourishing. Using the complementary, though often contrasting, foci of creaturehood and deification as fundamental to the good life, we examine these visions of human flourishing inherent in transhumanist, secular humanist and critical posthumanist positions on human enhancement. We argue that the theological anthropologies that respond to human enhancement and these other ideologies tend to emphasise either creaturehood or deification to the neglect or detriment of the other. We propose in response that understanding humans as creatures bound for glory integrates both dimensions of the human being into the one grand vision of flourishing God has for humanity.

Reply to Elinor Mason and Alastair Norcross

Utilitas ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-406
Author(s):  
FRED FELDMAN
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Dartmouth College ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Sensory Pleasure ◽  
The One

In comments originally presented at the ISUS conference at Dartmouth College in 2005, Elinor Mason and Alastair Norcross raised a number of objections to various things I said in Pleasure and the Good Life. One especially interesting objection concerns one of my central claims about the nature of pleasure. I distinguished between sensory pleasure and attitudinal pleasure. I said that a feeling counts as a sensory pleasure if the one who feels it takes intrinsic attitudinal pleasure in the fact that he is then feeling it. I also said that attitudinal pleasure is a propositional attitude that does not intrinsically involve any particular ‘feelings’. On my view, a person can take attitudinal pleasure in things at a time even though he does not feel any pleasurable feelings at that time. In their comments, Mason and Norcross expressed doubts about my account of attitudinal pleasure. In my reply, I try to answer those doubts.

scholarly journals Classic and Romantic Trends in Plato

1917 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-236
Author(s):  
J. Loewenberg
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
One And Many ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
As If

The problem of the One and the Many is a problem essentially Platonic. Characteristically Platonic is the saying of Socrates in the Phaedrus: “If I find any man who is able to see a ‘One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’” The problem of the One and the Many may indeed be said to be the point around which Plato's deepest concerns center. It occurs in most of his dialogues. It appears in different formulations, and it receives a variety of emphasis. It is certainly at the root of his morals. “Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued,” is Plato's fundamental teaching. And the good life is a life of law, order, justice. The diverse elements of the soul must be set in order; they must submit to one organizing principle; they must become a well-ordered unity.

The Flight from the Good Life: Fahrenheit 451 in the Context of Postwar American Dystopias

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
David Seed
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Aldous Huxley ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Grand Inquisitor ◽  
The One

Surveying the American scene in 1958, Aldous Huxley recorded his dismay over the speed with which Brave New World was becoming realized in contemporary developments: “The nightmare of total organization, which I had situated in the seventh century After Ford, has emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner.” Having struck a keynote of urgency Huxley then lines up a series of oppositions between limited disorder, individuality and freedom on the one hand, and order, automatism and subjection on the other in order to express his liberal anxieties that political and social organization might hypertrophy. Huxley sums up an abiding fear which runs through American dystopian fiction of the 1950s that individuals will lose their identity and become the two-dimensional stereotypes indicated in two catch-phrases of the period: the “organization man” and the “man in the grey flannel suit. ” William H. Whyte's 1956 study diagnoses the demise of the Protestant ethic in American life and its replacement by a corporate one which privileges “belongingness. ” The result might be, he warns, not a world controlled by self-evident enemies familiar from Nineteen Eighty-Four, but an antiseptic regime presided over by a “mild-looking group of therapists who, like the Grand Inquisitor, would be doing what they did to help you.”

scholarly journals Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy: Keeling Lectures 2011-18

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
University College London ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
Hellenistic Philosophy

The present volume collects together papers based on the annual Keeling Memorial Lecture in ancient philosophy given at University College London, over 2011-18 (and one from 2004, previously unpublished). It contains contributions to theoretical as well as practical ancient philosophy, and in some cases, to both. Susanne Bobzien argues that Frege plagiarised the Stoics in respect of logic, Gail Fine compares uses of doxa and epistêmê in the Phaedo to contemporary notions of belief and knowledge, David Sedley offers a novel interpretation of ‘safe’ causal explanation in the Phaedo, and Gábor Betegh understands the ingredients of the soul in the Timaeus as structuring thought and speech. Dorothea Frede presents new considerations against a ‘particularist’ reading of Aristotle’s ethics, Lesley Brown examines the role of agreement in establishing what is just and the correctness of names in Plato, and Gisela Striker gives an analysis of the role of Stoic therapy in the good life. A. A. Long details a new reading of divinity in the Republic that reveals the Good as the essence of the divine, and Malcolm Schofield explores the tension between unfettered theoretical debate and the demand of determinacy in practical philosophy in Cicero.

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