What does it mean to be a "good" person? Is there an objective way to define good? Is there a specific procedure/method to evaluate something as good? Does defining the good in life even matter? Assuming we can define the good, does the end justify the means? What are the proper activities that fulfill the unique nature of humanity?
FTA: "We study ethics in order to improve our lives, and therefore its principal concern is the nature of human well-being…
The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are differences of opinion about what is best for human beings, and that to profit from ethical inquiry we must resolve this disagreement. He insists that ethics is not a theoretical discipline: we are asking what the good for human beings is not simply because we want to have knowledge, but because we will be better able to achieve our good if we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish. In raising this question - what is the good? - Aristotle is not looking for a list of items that are good. He assumes that such a list can be compiled rather easily; most would agree, for example, that it is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be honored, and to have such virtues as courage at least to some degree. The difficult and controversial question arises when we ask whether certain of these goods are more desirable than others. Aristotle's search for the good is a search for the highest good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake...
The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence."
Aristotle's Ethics from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(for those interested, see also Nicomachean Ethics)
DISCUSS!
Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Aug 13, 2010 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=291
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