Virtues and happiness

response to a discussion

Aristotle believed that there is nothing that doesn’t have a purpose in the universe, and that the purpose of man in this world is to lead a good life, or “Eudaimonia”. This is contained in the study of ethics, which is aimed at improving our lives. By good life, Aristotle wasn’t referring to life full of just pleasures and profligacy, both according to him, a good life “is a life led by a good person”, and , “a ‘good’ person is one in whom the virtues are very well developed”. He attributed happiness to the product of being good. Examples of ethical virtues include; temperance, courage, wisdom, strength, kindness, loyalty etc. The question now is how do we acquire virtuous characters in other to become a virtuous person, and live a good life? According to Aristotle, we can become virtuous of character through reason, and as such, we must use reason to become virtuous. Reason is that tool that can help shape our lives and character properly, by leading  us into making the right decisions at every point in time. The two important parts of a virtue is intelligence, or virtues of mind, and moral, or virtues of character. The intelligent part is the one that is responsible for learning, while the moral part is that part that is responsible for habit forming. Hence, to be virtuous, we must learn the virtuous characters, and also practice what we have learned in other to form a habit of it. Aristotle used the doctrine of the mean to simplify how we can become virtuous, because virtuous behavior may not be easy to classify sometimes. He categorized virtuous behaviors as those falling between the extremes. As an example, to be considered generous, the lecture notes pointed out that one must fall between the extremes, one extreme being stinginess, while the other extreme being foolhardy or reckless in spending. Also, he pointed to the fact that we have to consider the situation of the individual involved, and not just on the mean. In this case, “the mean is to be determined in a way that takes into account the particular circumstances of  the individual”, like how we should determine the amount of food intake in pounds that is appropriate for an athlete, we must not decide it just by the arithmetic mean, but the mean should be determined with full acquaintance and knowledge of the athlete body requirement, so that we can avoid choosing what could be defined as excess food, or as deficiency food. In other to imbibe the spirit of virtuousness, we should always ask ourselves what will a virtuous person do in such circumstances, when it comes to decision making. We must be able to justify our decisions by a “chain of reasoning”. In conclusion, for us to live a virtuous life, we must learn the characters that make virtue, and put it into practice in our everyday life, just like in Christianity, the Bible encourages us to supplement our faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge.