The Role Of The Good In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle decided to take on the subject of the good in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues that every person must make a choice to act good. Within his ideas of the good it is imperative that men take responsibility for their own actions and that they understand what their own intentions are doing in relation to the good. However, there are some oppositions that believe this is not the case. They would argue that men have no control over how something appears to them or how they perceive it, and that for every man the final end/good/happiness looks differently. Aristotle’s rebuttal to this statement is that the good is something that is eternal, universal, and unchangeable. To understand if Aristotle’s rebuttal to the objector’s argument is correct, the objector’s argument must first be outlined. He does this within book three chapter five of the Nicomachean Ethics. “But some might argue as follows: ‘All men seek what appears good to them, but they have no control over how things appear to them; the end appears different to different men’” (1114b1). What this argument is saying is that humans have no choice in what they see as …show more content…
“Both theoretical and practical wisdom are necessarily desirable in themselves…for each one of them is the virtue of a different part of the soul” (1144a1-3), meaning that there is a need for both wisdoms and that they themselves are good. Aristotle states that “theoretical wisdom produces happiness, not as medicine produces health, but as health itself makes a person healthy” (1144a3). Medicine only tries to mimic health, but health is good within itself and is universal. Both practical and theoretical wisdom is needed side by side in order to reach happiness and virtue. Practical wisdom allows humans to do the vitreous action and theoretical wisdom must understand what the good is and that we are preforming that particular action in order to achieve the