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    Ethics Chapter 5 Reaction Paper

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    Rex Lander Blanza
    The document is a reaction paper about Aristotle's concept of virtue ethics from his work Nicomachean Ethics. It discusses key terms like eudaimonia, the functions of human beings, virtues, and the doctrine of the golden mean. The golden mean argues that virtue lies between the extremes of deficiency and excess, such as courage between cowardice and recklessness. However, the paper argues the golden mean has limitations and can't dictate what is virtuous in every situation, as maintaining multiple virtues like loyalty and truthfulness can conflict depending on circumstances.

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    Ethics Chapter 5 Reaction Paper

    Uploaded by

    Rex Lander Blanza
    139 views2 pages
    The document is a reaction paper about Aristotle's concept of virtue ethics from his work Nicomachean Ethics. It discusses key terms like eudaimonia, the functions of human beings, virtues, and the doctrine of the golden mean. The golden mean argues that virtue lies between the extremes of deficiency and excess, such as courage between cowardice and recklessness. However, the paper argues the golden mean has limitations and can't dictate what is virtuous in every situation, as maintaining multiple virtues like loyalty and truthfulness can conflict depending on circumstances.

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    The document is a reaction paper about Aristotle's concept of virtue ethics from his work Nicomachean Ethics. It discusses key terms like eudaimonia, the functions of human beings, virtues, and the doctrine of the golden mean. The golden mean argues that virtue lies between the extremes of deficiency and excess, such as courage between cowardice and recklessness. However, the paper argues the golden mean has limitations and can't dictate what is virtuous in every situation, as maintaining multiple virtues like loyalty and truthfulness can conflict depending on circumstances.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    139 views2 pages

    Ethics Chapter 5 Reaction Paper

    Uploaded by

    Rex Lander Blanza
    The document is a reaction paper about Aristotle's concept of virtue ethics from his work Nicomachean Ethics. It discusses key terms like eudaimonia, the functions of human beings, virtues, and the doctrine of the golden mean. The golden mean argues that virtue lies between the extremes of deficiency and excess, such as courage between cowardice and recklessness. However, the paper argues the golden mean has limitations and can't dictate what is virtuous in every situation, as maintaining multiple virtues like loyalty and truthfulness can conflict depending on circumstances.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Rexlander E.

    Blanza

    First year Block A

    Mrs. Josefina Callada

    A-Ethics

    Chapter 5

    Reaction paper about virtue ethics

    The Nichomachean Ethics is a dense complex work of Aristotle in which he elaborates the ideas of 'how
    should we live'. Here he discusses about some key terms such as Eudaimonia, Functions of a human
    being, the virtues and the golden mean. Eudaimonia means a happy and flourished life, it means a
    successful life. It is not for evaluating a certain moment’s happiness, but to acknowledge someone's
    whole life. In a sense we cannot call someone's life eudaimon until they are dead. Aristotle even
    considers that eudaimonia of one's life can be affected to a limited extent by the events of his offspring
    after his death. Then he talks about the functions of a human being, by which he means some
    characteristic functions of human being that makes us distinctive and what we are. After that in the
    virtue part he describes how virtue is different from morality. To him being virtuous doesn’t mean being
    moral. Because morality is something concerned for the interests of others. On the contrary, virtue is
    completely a selfcentered matter. It is about excellence of an individual’s character. Lastly, Aristotle
    introduces the doctrine of ‘The golden mean’ which is an approach to make it easier to judge an action
    whether it is virtuous or not. The theory of this chapter is ‘The golden mean’. Basically it can be
    considered as the scale to evaluate the excellence of one’s action. To make his philosophy
    understandable he provides some examples where he says that virtue of an action lies between two
    vices, deficiency and excess. The virtue of courage lies between the deficiency of courage or cowardice
    and the excess of it or recklessness. Similarly, wittiness lies between boorishness and buffoonery;
    Modesty between the vices of shyness and shamelessness. So it can be said that according to his theory
    the middle point among two vices is the virtuous one. A common censure of the Doctrine of the golden
    mean is that the virtuous action is always the moderate one. In this theory Aristotle is encouraging the
    moderation in every act. However, it is not possible to calculate the excellence all the time by this theory
    because sometimes the moderate reaction seems inappropriate. For an example, if a man sees a robber
    looting someone and come forward to help, it might be risky for him to fight against the robber because
    he can be hurt by the robber but if the man overlooks it, he will be nothing but a coward. According to
    the

    golden mean, here the virtuous action would be to advice the robber to let the victim go which sounds
    nuisance and the results can also be furious. So, it is clear that golden mean cannot

    dictate the nature of any act. From my perspective I also believe that it has some limitations. As, in every
    situation the moderate action cannot be the virtuous one and it is sometimes hard to maintain different
    virtues at a time. For an example, loyalty and truthfulness are two virtues. If my friend is taking help of
    cheat means in the examination and the examiner asks me whether he did or not, it would be my duty
    to tell the truth to do the virtuous deed. But it would not be right to tell the truth if I want to be a loyal
    friend. That is how the mean is not enough to judge any action.

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