Moral Virtue In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the complexities of individuals and their character traits are developed within a sphere of human nature and moral virtue. To Aristotle, character virtues define an individual’s well being, characterize their dispositions to action, and are defined by reason’s judgement of phasic, ethical dilemmas. Aristotle’s theory argues for moral accountability not only in manifested action, but in an individual’s very psyche. As such, moral character virtue influences an individual’s entirety, influencing their emotions and actions and setting their path toward human betterment, or human telos. The path to virtue is fixed on that human betterment, the path of vice turned away. Following Aristotle’s claims, I argue that …show more content…
I argue virtue in Nicomachean Ethics does not focus on the individual as a subjective being, and that the call for subjective individuals to characterize their life around objective, universal virtue implies individuals should seek to be beyond themselves. Aristotle holds the position that for humans to develop their nature – toward reason, toward moral virtue – they must engage socially, politically, and culturally. The cultivation of practical wisdom as not blind habituation, but a developed and reflective disposition to the morally virtuous, seems to imply a human being freed from dependent habit and, thus, finally autonomous. However, I argue against this inference, that individuals characterized by Nicomachean Ethics are not of free will and it is their own human nature that determines choice. Choice, to Aristotle, is not possible without pre-existing dispositions that deliberate; choices are external manifestations of disposition. Hence, I assert that in Aristotle’s characterization our decisions are not ours, but our self. Choices determined by character, character determined by nurture and habit, and nurture and habit determined by a nature for self development: a circle of interdependence and relation in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Yet, could we not be locked in this circle? No possibility of acting out of character or escaping a cycle of predictability? I argue that if individuals were …show more content…
As social animals, humans possess capacity for social intelligence and its concomitant attachment and collusion. However, I argue in the search for one’s telos a human cannot be blinded by a telos of humanity: that with character and self shaping perception adhering to universal virtue and the virtue of others is to lose oneself in a ‘big picture’, to be ignorant to one’s individual mind and the individual conceptualizations of ethical dilemmas, and thus ignorant to the personalized and individual path to one’s moral virtue and