Aristotle’s Ethics
1. Aristotle understands “ethics” as the results, intentions, reasons and motivations of different sorts of social activity, and how this activity is perceived evaluatively by the community. In the broadest terms, it is the inquiry into how people can live a good life.
2. A “teleological” explanation is one that refers to the final end or purpose of the phenomenon under explanation. For human beings, this involves a reference to their innate capacities and desires.
3. Reacting to a witnessed suicide: 1) the vegetative level will react to the shock on a subconscious level: chemicals and electric process in the brain will fix, associating sights, sounds, locations and other sensory input with trauma and pain. 2) the appetitive level will react consciously, terrified and upset, and seek to escape or reconcile the situation. 3) the deliberative level will order the situation, reflecting on how to explain what has happened, and what activity ought to be carried out in the time after witnessing the event. 4) the contemplative level will reflect on the deeper significance of what has occurred, what can be understood from the real occurrence of such an event.
4. “Virtues of character” are virtues resulting from training the appetitive level by way of habit. As character inheres in activity, only continuously revisiting virtuous activities will result in the successful cultivation of virtues of character.
5. Training to inculcate habits is the key method to training virtues of character.
6. Intellection and sophisticated reflection on beauty and form are considered to be “finer” than indulgence in appetitive pleasure, as the latter is shared with other animals, while the former are the domain of homo sapiens alone.
7. The relation of reason to pleasure is one of control: the ethical role of reason is to moderate indulgence in line with aims set in order to cultivate virtues of character.
8. Phronesis, or practical wisdom, is the natural facility to carry out skilful activities that are adaptive in accordance with the subtle idiosyncrasies of each situation in which the skill is applied. It is important as it is through the practical wisdom of prudence that activity in accordance with the Golden Mean is cultivated.
9. Prudence and wisdom are different in the sense that the former is more concerned with practical choice, whereas wisdom consists in the ability to contemplate the universal and unchanging aspects of life. Prudence finds more of a place in everyday life, but each is indispensable.
10. Whether or not Aristotle conceives of different routes to eudaimonia depends on the level of generality. At a low level of generality, there are many different ways of achieving eudaimonia as it results from the skilful and successful execution of worthwhile activities (so the many different routes that one may take to self-improve, self-educate or self-cultivate offer different routes to eudaimonia, as long as they are executed over a sufficiently long period of time). At a high level of generality, only the successful and continuous practice of virtuous activities will conduce to eudaimonia.
11. The role of intellect is to guide and direct action. It is only through the intellectual application of prudence to activity that a virtuous and happy life is possible.
12. Bad people cannot be happy: they lack the completion and integrity that results from a conscious reflection on the virtue of their activity (though how far egoistic justification will take you seems to have eluded Aristotle entirely).
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