Outline Of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

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Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: Book II
Bailey Stephens

1. There are two kinds of virtue: Intellectual and that of character, or moral. o Intellectual virtue is taught through time, experience, and instruction. o Moral virtue arises from habituation and practice. o Virtues develops like musical or other practical skills; only by behaving and acting correctly will they make a person virtuous, through good practice.
2. Our actions develop our habitual virtues, yet there are not any sets of rules to guide agents. o To best develop these virtues, it becomes a matter of choosing the action that is the mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency.
♣ For example, the mean between pleasure/pain, bravery/rashness and strength/health, yet the appropriate amount of each act can vary.
3. How a …show more content…
(Example, glutton) o Through pleasure or pain people become bad or good; virtue depends on pleasures and pains.
♣ Through the three objects of choice and avoidance: The noble, the useful, the pleasant, the shameful, the harmful, and the painful.
4. To determine if someone is truly virtuous, and not acting this way by chance or instruction, actions can be weighed against three criteria: o Action is done with 1) knowledge of the action, 2) rational choice to do the action for sake of being virtuous (for the sake of the action alone), and 3) from a strong, unshakeable character in which it becomes habit. o The masses do not partake in this criteria of action and virtuous choices.
5. Three things in the soul: Feelings (emotions like fear, confidence, love), capacities (our capability to feel these things), states (our disposition of feelings in access or drought, too few or many) o Virtues are not feelings, as a person cannot be blamed for feeling an emotion in the same way they can for doing a wrong act (People are not praised or punished for their
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