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Virtue In Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

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Throughout ancient history, philosophical leaders have illuminated ideas behind oneself and the purpose of life. One such philosopher, Aristotle, contemplated with this notion, albeit about how one can achieve a moral life, and brought about one of his most famous works, The Nichomachean Ethics. In that work, he expounds upon how to become an ethical human being through sequentially more specific ideas such as aiming for happiness, moderation in virtues, and high mindedness. In the opening sections of the excerpt, Aristotle demonstrates that the overarching way to become ethical is through being good, happy, and reasonable. He first claims that every art strives to aim to be good, and that the sake of mastering an art is what people aim for. …show more content…
This virtue makes all other virtues, specially honor, greater and vice versa, as high mindedness is highest of all the virtues. Fortune seems to play a crucial role in this virtue since people who are born into wealth are thought to have predisposed honor. However, only a good man is truly worthy of honor since he has both goodness and fortune. There are other characteristics associated with a high minded individual, such as patience, openness, and honesty. The adverse drawbacks of being high minded individuals are that they look down upon mankind since they have no filter when acting or speaking, which seems immoral in modern times. They do not offend others except when they want to profoundly insult them, which is nonsensical. Also, high minded individuals should have an unhurried pace and a mellow tone of voice since they are very few things that they are deeply interested in. This brings into question the feasibility of being a high minded individual. It seems that only a select few are predisposed to being high minded and thus virtuous, happy, and ethical. The last sections of the excerpt serve to give a thorough analysis of one specific virtue, high mindedness, to demonstrate the difficulty and rarity of portraying a virtuous

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