[STS] M3: The Good Life

Aristotle

Born in Greece (384 BC – 322 BC). His influence on the physical sciences spread widely, providing theories and reasoning that lasted for centuries before modern physics replaced them.

Aristotle

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

Virtue Ethics

Aristotle’s main point in living a good life; based on rational understanding of human life, identifying the good life with virtuous life.

Virtue

is human excellence, and the good life is the life of excellence.

Highest Good

For Aristotle, the ______ is happiness (eudaimonia), which means living well. All other goods are pursued for the sake of this ultimate goal.

Happiness (Eudaimonia)

Central purpose of human life, dependent on ourselves. It is “the meaning and the purpose of life: the whole aim and end of human existence.” It consists in achieving goods like health, wealth, knowledge, and friendships across a lifetime to perfect human nature and enrich life.

• Utility

• Pleasure

• Virtue

Three Types of Friendships

Utility

Based on mutual usefulness, the most common.

Pleasure

Based on delight in one another.

Virtue

Grounded in goodness and character.

Moral Theory

Like Plato, Aristotle focused on virtue, linking virtuous life with happiness. Excellent activity of the soul is tied to moral virtues and practical wisdom (excellence in deciding how to behave).

Moral Virtues

Courage, temperance, liberality.

Intellectual Virtues

Wisdom (governing ethical behavior), understanding (scientific contemplation).

Wisdom, prudence, justice, fortitude, courage, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, temperance.

Nine Important Virtues

Generosity

A moral virtue that lies between wastefulness and greed.

Episteme

scientific knowledge

Techne

artistic or technical knowledge

Nous

intuitive reason

Phronesis

practical wisdom

Sophia

philosophic wisdom

Nicomachean Ethics

Fundamental basis of Aristotelean ethics (10 Books)

instrumental good

intrinsic good.

Two Types of Good

Instrumental Good

Something valued not for its own sake but as a means to achieve another end (e.g., money, which is used to gain other goods).

Nicomachean Ethics

A treatise on the nature of moral life and human happiness based on the unique essence of human nature

Eudaimonia

transcends all aspects of life for it is about living well and doing well in whatever one does.

Eudaimonia

The ultimate good. Eu (good); daimon (spirit)

Intrinsic Good

Something valued for its own sake, desirable in itself and not because it leads to something else (e.g., happiness, which Aristotle sees as the highest good).

Arete

“Excellence of any kind” ; “moral virtue”

Intellectual

Virtue of thought; education, time and experience

Moral

Virtue of character; habitual practice.

The Magician’s Twin (C.S Lewis and the Case against Scientism)

“Science must be guided by some ethical basis that is not dictated by science itself.”