Philosophy of Ethics

Student

Instructor

November 2005

Concepts of Virtue and Vice : from Aristotle to Our Times

Limits of perspective

We depend on translations of some preserved specimens of Aristotle 's notes and must compare them with comprehensive contemporary texts written in English . There is always the danger that modern interpretation of Aristotle 's thoughts is flawed (Thomson , Tredennick and Barnes , 27 . Aristotle did not have access to philosophies from India and China that preceded him by thousands of years . Neither did he have the benefits of Christian thought , Darwin 's discoveries

and all the other aids and props that we enjoy today . It is therefore fallacious to compare scraps of his translated notes with comprehensive treatises conceived , expressed , and read all in English today

Contemporary philosophy has autonomous branches in major religions sovereign countries , and significant community groupings . We may presume to sit in judgment over how much Aristotle evolved from his inheritance of Plato , but generations of his successors and critics may take shelter under any of the many paths that comprise ethics in the modern sense

We still owe it ourselves to revisit Aristotle 's work in the context of our lives . We have no alternative but to weigh whatever remnants we have of his notes in Greek . We must try to seek meaning and relevance to navigate in the treacherous waters of 21st century social life and international relations . Such an exercise is more for our benefit and use , rather than to presume the ability or the right to measure the intellectual titan

This relies on W . H . Shaw 's book entitled `Contemporary Ethics to provide a contrast to Aristotle 's Nicomachean Ethics . This is entirely for convenience as nothing less than an encyclopedia could do justice to the volume of work that exists today on the concepts of vice and virtue

The failings of the mean

Even the uninitiated in philosophy would be aware that Aristotle 's work must have incomparable classical value that endures from 400 BC to the 21st century and beyond . We may arouse some interest and save on length as well , by focusing on popular interpretations of Aristotle 's notes with which we can find some fault . The concept of the mean is one of the more vulnerable targets of such presumptuous attack . The table (Thomson , Tredennick and Barnes , 104 ) that shows virtues in a neat column between extremes of excess and deficiency , must have been a sort of aide-de-memoir that Aristotle had scribbled to help with one of his lectures . Perhaps he used similes of extremes to help his students comprehend his exceptional abstract intelligence . Perhaps he did make a mistake , which he may have corrected in retrospect . Contemporary ethicists do not endorse the view that virtues lie in the mean (Shaw 253 . The concept of virtue being a mean between extremes is of relatively little use in our times . It would be better for us to see virtue as an abiding character trait , which enjoins us to stand up for...