Aristotle Voluntary And Involuntary Action Analysis

Aristotle focuses on actions as opposed to behaviour, examining the difference between voluntary and involuntary actions. His premise is that virtue fully concerns feelings and actions. He believed that to understand what moral excellence is, one must distinguish between voluntary and involuntary actions. Non voluntary virtues take place by force or reason of ignorance. This is when the action is performed under compulsion and causes pain to the person acting, “in which nothing is contributed by the person who acts – or, rather, is acted upon”. (37) It takes place due to force or ignorance. When the moving principle is external to the person doing something, an action is forced. For example, if a bully gabbed your hand and made you hit yourself, …show more content…
In regards to the premise, it is clear that there is a difference between voluntary and involuntary actions. Nevertheless, many factors have not been taken into account. For example, as one grows older they mature, but as a small child you have less of an understanding between right and wrong. If one willingly does something bad but they believe it to be right because they have not experienced otherwise yet in life, we can not blame them entirely for doing so. In addition to this, if one have been taught that this is the way people are supposed to act, they cannot be held completely accountable for their actions, for example people who have been brainwashed into believing a different moral code to the majority of society. On top of this, he did not examine what justifies an action as ethically correct, ergo we cannot decide weather to praise or scold and action when people have such a wide range of opinions and beliefs on what merits these actions as good or bad. Previously he had proposed one 's main ethical aim is to achieve happiness, but there are many plausible situations where achieving this means something different from one person to the