How Aristotle Understands the Human Being through Virtue Ethics

How does Aristotle understand the human being through virtue ethics? In the first part I will explain his notions of the Telos which in his view equals happiness and the methods that he uses to determine what they are. In the second part I will explain his thinking towards knowledge and how it is based on sense perception, reason and reality. In the third part I will examine what Aristotle considers a being and where he distinguishes achievable human actions. In the fourth part I will demonstrate the four causes of his theory. In the final part I will discuss what a human being must do in order to achieve the telos in their life time.
Aristotle’s philosophy about the telos is reaching your highest human potential, or in his words, knowledge and study. He believes that everything is always changing or moving, and has an aim, goal or purpose. Aristotle states that telos is the same for every human being and that it is universal and intrinsic. The only way that you can achieve it he says it by human actions but not all human action are good he believes that there are good and evil human actions. A human action is what makes a human beings different and unique, some actions make a human being move towards the fulfillment of the telos which would be equal to Good, while other actions may obstruct a human being from fulfillment of the telos and which this would equal to Evil. Aristotle establishes three criteria by which the telos can be determined. One of the criteria is that it has to be attainable by a human being. The next criteria would be self-sufficient. The following one would be final or worthy of pursuit in and of its self. Aristotle’s idea of the telos would be the ethical life because to have the ethical life we have to say...

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...st simply good but to have knowledge, because as a being they will be better able to achieve the good if we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish that good. Aristotle does not look for a list of items that are good, yet Aristotle assumes that such a list can be assembled easily most would agree. For example, that it is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be honored, and to have such virtues at least to some degree. The difficult and controversial question arises when we ask whether certain of these goods are more desirable than others. Aristotle's search for the good is a search for the highest good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake.