Aristotle: Moral Education

This paper is a study about the social dimension of the philosophical education according to Aristotle. Aristotle is not a individualistic thinker but he understands the philosophical activity in the social context of the friendship.

In order to understand the Gricean "logic of conversation" that underlies the Nicomachean Ethics, Burger believes it necessary to identify the audience to which the work is addressed: this is the audience of men and citizens who have received a good education, that is, have learned the virtues through habit, but have doubts about the content of the education received, that is, about the beautiful and the just. Aristotle proposes on the one hand to give them reasons to defend and (...) justify the moral virtues they have learned and they practice, but on the other hand also to lead them to understand a dimension that goes beyond the horizon of traditional ethos. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on friendship as the best context to philosophize. Although Aristotle says that even alone a person could contemplate the truth, it is possible to argue that a philosophical society is indeed necessary for human beings. In every friendship, it is necessary to share certain activities and, at the same time, notice the presence of the friend. In philosophical friendship, the shared activity is philosophy itself and mutual knowledge among friends acquires a peculiar character, because everyone does not (...) only consider the truth with the friend but also he thinks about it as shared with the friend. To teach philosophy represents a kind of unequal friendship, because teachers give to the disciples the great good of knowledge. Further, the paper argues that Aristotelian friendship could not be understood in a narcissistic way, since friends are loved because of their uniqueness and their personal character. (shrink)

Christian B. Miller has noted a “realism challenge” for virtue ethicists to provide an account of how the character gap between virtuous agents and non-virtuous agents can be bridged. This is precisely one of Han Feizi’s key criticisms against Confucian virtue ethics, as Eric L. Hutton argues, which also cuts across the Aristotelian one: appealing to virtuous agents as ethical models provides the wrong kind of guidance for the development of virtues. Hutton, however, without going into detail, notes that the (...) notion of rituals in the Confucian tradition may be able to sidestep Han Feizi’s criticism. In this essay, I wish to explore not only how the notion of rituals, alongside its corollaries in Xunzi’s Confucian program for ethical cultivation, indeed addresses Han Feizi’s criticism, but also observe that Aristotle’s tragic poetry plays functionally equivalent roles in his own understanding of ethical upbringing. I will begin by considering Han Feizi’s critique of ethical cultivation in virtue ethics as such and how it poses a specific problem for the acquisition of the ‘constitutive reasoning’ shared by Aristotle and Xunzi. I will then briefly note that this problem trades on the synthetic structure of human nature found in both Aristotle and Xunzi (the rational/irrational parts of the soul and the heartmind/five faculties), which grounds the way they understand ethical action and agency. Finally, I will suggest how both Aristotle and Xunzi understand the role of the arts in their extensive programme of ethical cultivation, allowing them to respond to Han Feizi’s attack as too narrow a construal of their respective ethical projects. It is hoped that, through this, we may gain a better sense of how more recent virtue ethicists may similarly draw on aesthetic resources for ethical development. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue of character is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue of character is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can hold direct (...) authority over non-rational desires but also why Aristotle defines virtue of character as hexis prohairetikē. (shrink)

This book faces the problem of how is it possible to conceive Aristotelian philosophy as a way of life, and not as a discipline or profession. If there are any of his texts where this concerns are to be found, it is in his practical treatises, in which he defends a philosophy of human affairs. However, Aristotle insists on the fact that philosophy, in its greatest expression, is the first philosophy, to which the idea of contemplation seems to refer to, (...) at the end of the Nicomachean ethics. How is this tension between human and first philosophy to be understood? Which one was more important in Aristotle’s conception of the good life? What will we be claiming here is that there’s no dichotomy between active and contemplative life beyond the conceptual analysis. On the contrary, the Aristotelian proposal is that choosing between action and contemplation is impossible without appealing to philosophy itself. The intellect, in his role as ruler of life, requires contemplation to lead action, in the same way as a medical practitioner requires natural science in order to guide his deeds. (shrink)

The picture of moral development defended by followers of Aristotle takes moral cultivation to be like playing a harp; one gets to be good by actually spending time playing a real instrument. On this view, we cultivate a virtue by doing the actions associated with that virtue. I argue that this picture is inadequate and must be supplemented by imaginative techniques. One can, and sometimes must, cultivate virtue without actually performing the associated actions. Drawing on strands in Buddhist philosophy, I (...) explain several methods of moral development that rely on imagination and visualization rather than overt action. These techniques are essential in cases where cultivating virtue the way one practices the harp is impossible. In particular, I focus on single-event virtues, first-time virtuous acts, and morally dangerous situations. (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the following claims: “the end cannot be a subject of deliberation, but only what contributes to the ends” (NE 1112b33-34) and “virtue makes the goal right, practical wisdom makes the things to- ward the goal right" (NE 1144a7-9). A problem arises from such claims: the ends as- sumed by a moral agent cannot be subject to rational choice. For deliberation, an intel- lectual procedure, is bound to deal with the things that contribute to the (...) ends, and the ends, in turn, fall within the realm of virtue of character, which is described by Aristotle as a virtue of the non-rational part of the soul. In order to understand how Aristotle sup- ports such thesis, this research investigates how virtue of character and practical wis- dom are related and their work to delimit the ends and the things that contribute to the ends in the moral actions. (shrink)

Contrapondo-se às interpretações que sobrevalorizam o papel da razão nas escolhas dos fins morais, pretendo resgatar o papel positivo que a virtude do caráter, uma virtude não-racional, pode exercer em tais escolhas. Isto será feito levando em consideração a análise que Aristóteles faz da crise moral de Neoptólemo na tragédia Filoctetes.

Positive psychology has significantly influenced studies in the fields of moral philosophy, psychology and education, and scholars in those fields have attempted to apply its ideas and methods to moral education. Among various theoretical frameworks, virtue ethics is most likely to connect positive psychology to moral educational studies because it pursues eudaimonia (flourishing). However, some virtue ethicists have been concerned about whether the current mainstream concept of positive psychology can apply directly to moral education because it focuses on subjective aspects (...) of happiness, but not its objective and moral aspects. Thus, I will consider whether the concept of purpose, which was investigated recently by a group of psychologists and emphasizes both subjective and objective aspects of happiness, can address this issue. I will examine whether purpose is a moral virtue contributing to flourishing, consider if its nature is possibly a second-order virtue and whether it is distinguishable from other second-order virtues. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct the reasons why Aristotle thinks that musical education is important for moral education. Musical education teaches us to enjoy appropriately and to recognize perceptually fine melodies and rhythms. Fine melodies and rhythms are similar to the kind of movements fine actions consist in and fine characters display. By teaching us to enjoy and recognise fine melodies and rhythms, musical education can train us to recognize and to take pleasure in fine actions and characters. Thus, musical (...) education can, up to a point, lead us toward the actions and character dispositions a virtuous life requires. (shrink)

Buscando apresentar uma interpretação para EN I 4 1095a31-b13, este artigo defende que a digressão nela feita por Aristóteles pretende caracterizar a investigação recém iniciada como promissora, opondo-a, ainda que não explicitamente, ao modo rígido socrático-platônico de fazer Ética ou Política. Para tanto, propõe-se uma interpretação pouco usual do termo que como o princípio buscado e não como ponto de partida da investigação. Recusa-se igualmente ver na passagem mencionada uma referência ao modo ou etapas de aquisição de virtude moral ou (...) prudência, mas de um corpo preciso de conhecimento ou ciência, a Ética ou Política. (shrink)