What is Good? A Study of Educational Insights in Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III)

2022 ◽  
pp. 097168582110587
Author(s):  
Abhijeet Bardapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Human Good

This work is a study of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III) to characterize the good: the good that features in education and good life. Nicomachean Ethics teaches us that human good is neither in thought/theory, nor in action/practice alone, it is neither an exclusively individual prerogative, nor an outright social preserve. And, human good is impossible without education. The practice of education can neither be isolated nor conceptualized apart from the demands of human life. If education is for human well-being—for human good—the good then is not in action alone, but action in accordance with the excellence (or virtue) 1 of the actor. What unifies reason and action, knowing and doing is learning to be an excellent (or virtuous) person—a person who is well-disposed in her affections and action, whose judgements are true, and decisions correct; and whose intellect and character are in harmony with the human nature.

The Good and the Good Human Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Maria Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Human Good

Chapter 2 defends Aristotle’s premise that the final agential good is the well-lived human life. This premise does not receive much critical attention in the literature. Scholars tend to go along with Aristotle’s mode of exposition, granting that the earliest steps of the Nicomachean Ethics are agreed-upon. Against this, the chapter argues that Aristotle is making a controversial, weighty, and compelling claim. In drawing on the NE, the argument continues, one may pause here. One may accept that the highest agential good is a good human life, without buying into the next steps of the NE, which lead toward a ranking of lives. The chapter defends the premise that the human good is a well-lived life, and develops it such as to make room for a plurality of good human lives.

scholarly journals BEYOND EQUAL LIBERTY: RELIGION AS A DISTINCT HUMAN GOOD AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Moschella
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Special Protection

AbstractIn this essay I argue that religion, understood as harmony with the transcendent source of existence and meaning, is a good that practical reason grasps as an objective, distinct, and important aspect of human well-being, one that reasonably takes pride of place among the various aspects of a good human life due to its architectonic role in structuring and adding a transcendent meaning to all of the other goods that we pursue. On the basis of this view of religion, I suggest that religious belief and practice deserve special protection in law, above and beyond mere preferences and even other conscientious commitments. I develop this view through a dialectical engagement with Ronald Dworkin, Brian Barry, and Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager.

Aristotle's Ethics

Classics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thornton Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Treasure Trove ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (EN) is the first part of what Aristotle calls “a philosophy of human things” (EN X.9.1181b15), one which finds its completion in Aristotle’s Politics (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Aristotle’s Politics). (Throughout this article, references to Ethics or EN are to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; for the relationship of the Nicomachean Ethics to Aristotle’s other ethical writings, including the Eudemian Ethics (EE), see Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics.) The work inaugurates the study of “ethics” as an independent discipline, albeit a discpline which is broader than modern notions of morality, which is primarily practical rather than theoretical, and which is the companion study to politics. The Ethics sets as its goal the understanding of the human good, or eudaimonia, which Aristotle describes as “an activity of the soul in accord with virtue” (I.7.1098a16–17). Its analyses range over the nature of the human soul, the notion of moral responsibility, the ethical and intellectual qualities—called virtues—that are perfections of the nonrational and rational parts of the soul, ways in which reason and desire are unified and in conflict, the nature of pleasure, and the various kinds of friendship that contribute to the human good. Although the work includes a treasure trove of passages that paint a picture of 4th-century Greek social and linguistic practices, the work’s most lasting significance has been its articulation of a philosophical vocabulary and framework to address many of the central questions concerning human well-being.

Perfectionism

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Wall
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

The term perfectionism in philosophy, unlike its more common usage in popular psychology, denotes a range of theoretical positions. There are perfectionist accounts of ethics, perfectionist accounts of well-being, and perfectionist accounts of politics. These positions are often mutually supportive, but one can accept some of them while rejecting others. Perfectionist views purport to be objective in that they characterize states of affairs, character traits, activities, and/or relationships as good in themselves and not good in virtue of the fact that they are desired or enjoyed by human beings. In the history of philosophy, perfectionism has a long and impressive pedigree. It is often associated with ethical theories that characterize the human good in terms of the development and exercise of capacities that are taken to be central to human nature. Aristotle is the foundational figure in this tradition, but perfectionist arguments of this kind can be found in writers as diverse as Aquinas, Kant, (arguably) Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, G. E. Moore, and T. H. Green, among others. Perfectionism also has been associated with ethical theories that, while not tying the human good specifically to the development of human nature, accept some alternative objective account of the human good. Typically, such views have a teleological structure, holding that we have duties to promote the good. More recently, perfectionism has been used to refer to political theories that reject the liberal principle of state neutrality and hold that it is permissible for states to favor, actively and intentionally, objectively valuable conceptions of the good over base ones. Perfectionism, in both moral and political philosophy, has often been charged with being anti-egalitarian and hostile to individual liberty. This charge is encouraged and sustained by a selective focus on the elitist ideas of certain influential perfectionist writers, such as Nietzsche. For these writers, what matters is the excellence of the few, not the mediocrity of the many. It is a mistake, however, to identify perfectionism with any specific articulation of it. Contemporary defenses of perfectionism have attempted to show how its central ideas are compatible with, and indeed supportive of, human equality and individual autonomy.

Aristotle on the Best Life for a Man

Philosophy ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 54 (207) ◽  
pp. 35-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. F. R. Hardie
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Human Good

Does Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics give one consistent answer to the question what life is best or two (at least) mutually inconsistent answers? In the First Book (E.N. I) he says that we can agree to say that the best life is eudaimonia or eupraxia (well-being or well-doing) but must go on to say in what eudaimonia consists (1097b22–24). By considering the specific nature of man as a thinking animal he reaches a conclusion: eudaimonia, the human good (agathon), is the activity of soul (psuchē) in accordance with virtue (aretē), and if there are more than one virtue in accordance with the best and most complete (teleia), and (since one swallow does not make a summer) in a complete life (1098a16–20). Aristotle states that his formula is no more than a sketch or outline (perigraphē), but that a good sketch is important since, if the outline is right, anyone can articulate it and supply details. He seems to be thinking here not just of the rest of his own treatise but of the work of pupils and successors; he speaks, as at the end of the Topics, of progress in a science.

Humanism in Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Masolo
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Mutual Dependency ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter shows that the idea of humanism in contemporary African thought takes as its backdrop the historical interaction between Africa and foreign cultural and political invasions of the continent since the Middle Ages. Christianity and Islam, before European political invasion, introduced novel concepts and values of the human person and human life, introducing with them new political and social concepts and structures. The emerging synchrony and sometimes tensions between these and indigenous African worldviews have seen African philosophers and political visionaries reaching out to indigenous African modes of thought, whether secular or with some supernatural inclinations, as reservoirs of better concepts of human nature that will heal a world broken by unsound concepts of human nature that not only resulted in unsound epistemological and other philosophical theories, but also produced the injustices of domination, racism, and inequality across the globe. Grounded in the idea of the relational nature of humans among themselves and with nature, African philosophers and thinkers have argued that the well-being of human and non-human reality depends on developing and defending the values of mutual dependency.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

The portrayal of Social Evils in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Pooja Shankar ◽  
Dr. Poonam Rani
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Abstract Concept ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Kamala Markandaya ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
Urban People

Life is very precious for everyone. Life needs proper care and nurture. Human life depends on society. Only in a good society we can find a good life.  Life is simple, very little is needed to make it happy. But social evils insist on making it complicated. Social evils in society have become a serious concern in the present day world. It is gradually affecting roots of our culture and its blocking its rapid growth on the global chart. The aim of writing this research paper is to highlight Social Evils in rural and urban societies. This research paper will explore the meaning, reason, effect of social evils in the light of the analysis of two novels of Kamala Markandaya, an Indian English writer. The research paper entitled ‘The portrayal of Social Evils in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice.’ In this paper, the effort is made to study Kamala Markandaya’s Social Evils in Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice. We will find poverty, hunger, starvation, beggary, prostitution, crime, unemployment and many more social evils in both novels. Kamala Markandaya’s A Handful of Rice and Nectar in a Sieve nothing but an account of the suffering of the rural and urban people, and how the cruelty of social evil resulting in suffering, death and misfortune is more explicit in both novels. Poverty is the everyday reality of the characters in the both novels.  Poverty is not an abstract concept that one can really think about, it’s like wolf at the door that must constantly be staved off. Both novels are a jolt to awaken the society against social evils.  

scholarly journals The Enduring Greatness: The Mahāpuruşha Paradigm—An Indian Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110008
Author(s):  
Maharaj K. Raina
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Positive Direction ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Indian Perspective ◽  
Relative Concept ◽  
The Way

Greatness, a relative concept, has been historically approached in different ways. Considering greatness of character as different from greatness of talents, some cultures have conceptualized greatness as an expression of human spirit leading to transcending existing patterns and awakening inner selves to new levels of consciousness, rising above times and circumstances, and to change the direction of human tide. Individuals characterized by such greatness working with higher selves, guided by moral and ethical imperatives, and possessing noble impulses of human nature are considered to be manifesting spiritual greatness. Examining such greatness is the goal of this article. Keeping Indian tradition in focus, this article has studied how greatness has been conceptualized in that particular tradition and the way in which life and times have shaped great individuals called Mahāpuruşha who exhibited extraordinary moral responsibility relentlessly in pursuit of their visions of addressing contemporary major issues and changing the direction of human life. Four Mahāpuruşha, who possessed such enduring greatness and excelled in their thoughts and actions to give a new positive direction to human life, have been profiled in this article. Suggestions have also been made for studies on moral and spiritual excellence to help realize our true human path and purpose.

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