Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

In Book III of the “Nichomachean Ethics’, Aristotle proposes an extremely relevant and pertinent theory of moral responsibility. Centered on the idea of what people are and are not responsible for, based on their actions, the purpose of this investigation is to give the best response possible for Aristotle to the objection he is given at 1114b. This objection being, what if no one is responsible for their actions? If true, this objection would render his theories of character acquisition, the taxonomy of action, and as a result his theory of responsibility as not plausible. The purpose of this investigation is to to both defend and certify Aristotle’s argument, in which he states that people are sometimes to be held accountable for their actions. …show more content…
Through this process a person acquires their virtues and vices through the actions that he has habitually performed because he has the natural capacity to acquire virtues or vices. “Virtures by contrast, we acquire, just as we acquire crafts, by having first activated them”(NE II.1.32). Understanding that a person becomes virtuous or vicious as a result of the actions that they have habitually done indicates that their character is a product of the choices that they make. For example, “playing the harp makes both good and bad harpists, and it analogous in the case of the builders and all the rest; for building well makes good builders, and building badly makes bad ones” (NE II.1.9). The theory of character acquisition highlights that people are morally responsible for their actions, especially those that dictate their …show more content…
People are to be held responsible for actions in which their own knowing ignorance brought on an action, if they were ignorant of certain law, or if they were negligent. Aristotle does not think that we are responsible only for good actions, but for the bad ones as well (Bradford). An important note to make is that the enactor is still morally responsible because the action was within their control (Bradford). For example, a person is responsible “if the agent seems to be responsible for the ignorance” that resulted in them committing the action (NE III.5.7). This is also noted to be ignorance of particulars or “the price of of what evils, and what evils should be endured as the price of what goods” (NE III.1.30). Aristotle also states that one is held responsible, even when the act is not voluntary if “someone who does a vicious action in ignorance of some provision of law that is required and that is not hard to know” (NE III.5.30). The final non-voluntary act the Aristotle defines as being one that makes the agent responsible is when “for any other ignorance that seems to be caused by the agent’s inattention; they assume it is up to him not to be ignorant, since he control’s whether he pays attention” (NE III.5.2).

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