Aristotle Chapter 8 Summary

The thesis for this paper is one that states that, from Kenny's chapter 8 "How to Live: Ethics.", Aristotle’s account on how we should lead our lives comes closest to what may not only be the correct way to take on the difficulties of life for me, but perhaps everyone else’s. Even though modern philosophy has opened other accounts of where ‘right or wrong’ tends to fall and has elaborated on the essence of ‘goodness’, Aristotle’s account on moral virtues doesn’t cease serving as a reasonable foundation that can be used in the attainment of a richer grasp of what entails happiness or the essence of the highest ‘good’, found in virtuous acts/being just.

In answering what account I deem best to go about leading our lives, from those provided to

Many of his works/books were more like lecture notes; amongst them were those in Rhetoric, Metaphysics, Politics, and Ethics, some of several other works. His works on Ethics were constituted in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) in ten books, the Eudemian Ethics (EE) in seven books, and the Magna Moralia in two books. Philosophy, for Aristotle, was about practical wisdom. In figuring out how we should lead our lives, Aristotle tries taking a stab at answering ‘what makes people truly happy?’, as happiness is the central role that tends to play in all of Aristotle’s ethical treatises, in hopes of arriving at an answer that suffices as a focus to attaining a worthwhile way of life, by probing into this query. Briefly elaborating, something Kenny already did, Aristotle’s account sets the criteria for a good life as being something perfect, self-sufficient, always sought out for its own sake, makes life worthwhile, and lacking in nothing. These properties of happiness, Aristotle says, can be acquired through learning and discipline, and are found in a triad of wisdom, virtue, and pleasure; unlike in honor, riches, reputation, and the like, which are the end of things that we do as means to attain them. “Virtue and wisdom are both states, whereas happiness is an activity. The activity that constitutes happiness is, however, the use or exercise of [moral] virtue [alongside wisdom]” (Kenny 267). Pleasure is,

Those actions that express moral virtue are those that avoid excess and defect, he follows. Aristotle provides us with a list of virtues that are concerned with the mean of what would have otherwise been an excess or defect. A simple example is given: a temperate person will avoid eating or drinking too much and at the same time avoid eating or drinking too little. However, what is to be considered as the right amount between yielding or challenging, talking or silencing, giving or receiving, etc. may differ from person to person, just like the best portion of food for an Olympic champion will differ from the best amount of food for a baby. Because of experience and unique lifestyles, we each learn what is the right amount by observing and correcting our own excesses and deficiencies. Before moving on to explaining what wisdom is, “Aristotle sums up his account of moral virtue by saying that it is a state of character expressed in choice, lying in the appropriate mean, determined in the prescription that a wise person would lay down” (Kenny 271). This wise person’s prescription depends on its function/job. According to Aristotle, reasoning’s function is the making of