Second Reflection Paper
A moral dilemma I confront in my life is whether I should purchase products from corporations I know are unethical. For instance, I buy Apple products because they are convenient and easy to use. Furthermore, smartphones and laptops serve almost as necessities for a college student in 2016. However, I read articles exposing Apple’s corrupt practices. BBC Panorama investigated a factory in China that produces Apple electronics and revealed Apple as a company that overworks and neglects their employees (Bilton). I will use Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to analyze my moral dilemma from Aristotle’s perspective.
Concerning the ambiguity of my dilemma, Aristotle asserts that ethics is not a precise study. He notes in Nicomachean
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The ultimate internal good “must be something final and self-sufficient” (Aristotle 10). The eternal and independent nature of this good renders it more important than the transient and dependent external goods. Therefore, I must weigh the merits and drawbacks of this focus on external goods like Apple products. Aristotle would say that it is important that I possess necessary external goods in order to have the ability to consider internal goods. For instance, he says happiness “needs the external goods” because “it is impossible [...] to do noble acts without the proper equipment” (Aristotle 14). This relationship between external and internal goods is often illustrated through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which states that humans need food, water, and rest before they can attend to higher needs like love or self-esteem (McLeod). However, these lower, external goods cannot counteract the presence of higher, internal goods. Aristotle advocates using moderation in all aspects of life, saying that “virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate” (Aristotle 31). Therefore, I must find a “mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect” (Aristotle 31). To find this mean, I would have to do my research on the ethical practices of companies and practice purchasing products made in virtuous ways. Aristotle believes that ethics and achieving happiness are like skills or crafts. Ethics takes practice; to become a master one must repeatedly make virtuous decisions. Aristotle argues that “happiness [...] comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training” (Aristotle 15). He says that all are born with the potential for virtue but that
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Rpt. in Ethical Theories: A Book of Readings second edition. Ed. A. I. Melden. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967. 106-109.
Kraut, R 2014, ‘Aristotle's Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Summer Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), .
...it is necessary to examine human virtue. Something is considered to have reason in two senses: that which has reason in itself and that which listens to reason. These two senses are the origin of the distinction between intellectual and ethical virtues, respectively. The understanding of virtue and happiness is justified in the ideal that happiness is to be found in pleasure, others that it is to be found in honor, and others that it is to be found in contemplation. Happiness is not found in living for pleasure because such a life is slavish. Nor is it found in seeking honor because honor depends not on the person but on what others think of him. In order to be successful in an organization it is key to find a balance between two extremes that is an end within itself, that’s why Aristotle strongly believes that happiness is acquired through political organization.
In conclusion, Aristotle’s elucidation of happiness is based on a ground of ethics because happiness to him is coveted for happiness alone. The life of fame and fortune is not the life for Aristotle. Happiness is synonymous for living well. To live well is to live with virtue. Virtue presents humans with identification for morals, and for Aristotle, we choose to have “right” morals. Aristotle defines humans by nature to be dishonored when making a wrong decision. Thus, if one choses to act upon pleasure, like John Stuart Mill states, for happiness, one may choose the wrong means of doing so. Happiness is a choice made rationally among many pickings to reach this state of mind. Happiness should not be a way to “win” in the end but a way to develop a well-behaved, principled reputation.
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. David Ross, trans. J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson, revisions. Oxford World’s Classics paperback, 1998.
Aristotle. "Nicomachean Ethics." Classics of Moral and Political Theory. 3rd ed. Trans. Terence Irwin. Ed. Michael L. Morgan. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001.
Aristotle’s goal in, “The Nicomachean Ethics,” is to argue that there is such thing as a chief good
Aristotle begins his ethical account by saying that “every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and every choice, is thought to aim for some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim” (line 1094a1). Though some things might produce higher good than others, Aristotle looks for the highest good, which he says we must “desire for its own sake” and our actions are not decided on some other goal beyond this good itself (line 1094a20-25).[1] This highest good is then realized to be happiness (line 1095a16-20).
According to Aristotle, if we have all these we are able to live our life to the fullest, which means to live well and to do things well (NE 1098b20). In particular, in this paper I will focus on why Aristotle thinks external goods are necessary for happiness. Aristotle says, “He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life” (NE 1101a15). It is Aristotle’s explicit view that virtue is necessary, but not sufficient, for happiness. He views external and bodily goods as instruments deemed necessary to live a virtuous life.
One of Aristotle’s conclusions in the first book of Nicomachean Ethics is that “human good turns out to be the soul’s activity that expresses virtue”(EN 1.7.1098a17). This conclusion can be explicated with Aristotle’s definitions and reasonings concerning good, activity of soul, and excellence through virtue; all with respect to happiness.
Aristotle tries to draw a general understanding of the human good, exploring the causes of human actions, trying to identify the most common ultimate purpose of human actions. Indeed, Aristotelian’s ethics, also investigates through the psychological and the spiritual realms of human beings.
Roth, John, et al. Ethics: Volume Two. California: Salem Press, Inc., 1994.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, c. 350 B.C. Book VIII: Translated by W.D. Ross
1.) Aristotle begins by claiming that the highest good is happiness (198, 1095a20). In order to achieve this happiness, one must live by acting well. The highest good also needs to be complete within itself, Aristotle claims that, “happiness more than anything else seems complete without qualification, since we always…choose it because of itself, never because of something else (204, 1097b1). Therefore, Aristotle is claiming that we choose things and other virtues for the end goal of happiness. Aristotle goes on to define happiness as a self-sufficient life that actively tries to pursue reason (205, 1098a5). For a human, happiness is the soul pursuing reason and trying to apply this reason in every single facet of life (206, 1098a10). So, a virtuous life must contain happiness, which Aristotle defines as the soul using reason. Next, Aristotle explains that there are certain types of goods and that “the goods of the soul are said to be goods to the fullest extent…” (207, 1098b15). A person who is truly virtuous will live a life that nourishes their soul. Aristotle is saying “that the happy person lives well and does well…the end
Aristotle feels we have a rational capacity and the exercising of this capacity is the perfecting of our natures as human beings. For this reason, pleasure alone cannot establish human happiness, for pleasure is what animals seek and human beings have higher capacities than animals. The goal is to express our desires in ways that are appropriate to our natures as rational animals. Aristotle states that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character, what he calls complete virtue. In order to achieve the life of complete virtue, we need to make the right choices, and this involves keeping our eye on the future, on the ultimate result we want for our lives as a whole. We will not achieve happiness simply by enjoying the pleasures of the moment. We must live righteous and include behaviors in our life that help us do what is right and avoid what is wrong. It is not enough to think about doing the right thing, or even intend to do the right thing, we have to actually do it. Happiness can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an ultimate end, an act must be independent of any outside help in satisfying one’s needs and final, that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else and it must be
Happiness can be viewed as wealth, honour, pleasure, or virtue. Aristotle believes that wealth is not happiness, because wealth is just an economic value, but can be used to gain some happiness; wealth is a means to further ends. The good life, according to Aristotle, is an end in itself. Similar to wealth, honour is not happiness because honour emphases on the individuals who honour in comparison to the honouree. Honour is external, but happiness is not. It has to do with how people perceive one another; the good life is intrinsic to the...