Aritstotle's Virtues -- for Tuesday, March 11
We have some challenging but also quite fun reading ahead, dealing with Aristotle's specific accounts of those beautiful, excellent projects and ways of acting which allow human beings to give full expression to their rational nature and become fully human.
There are two things to read as general introduction. First, look for sure at the section in the Virtue Ethics article of the Stanford Encyclopedia that addresses Aristotle. I'll put the link below. This isn't easy reading, but it is easier than Aristotle, and it provides a kind of map. Next, look, in the Ethics, at the treatment of the mean, book 2, section 8, pages 27 to 28. This gives the general way that Aristotle thinks about achieving excellence or beautiful activity. It is almost always a matter of of avoiding excess and deficiency, of hitting a sort of bulls eye. The specific treatments of the various excellences, like wit or temperance, are just explaining how to do this in particular cases. So, read this bit carefully.
Next, look at Ari's treatment of particular virtues, starting with his discussion of temperance on page 45, and continuing through the discussions of various other virtues to page 55. Read this stuff carefully, take notes, think about how the particular things he say connect to the general way he goes about analyzing excellent activity. He is basically just "filling in the blanks," applying some very basic questions to a variety of different activities that he takes to be excellent or beautiful. You might think about how much common ground we have with him. Which activities that he takes to be excellent would we also take to be excellent.
For Tuesday, please write one or two sentences on each of these questions:
1. Describe one important virtue (excellence in activity) widely acknowledged within the Gustavus community?
2. Describe one important virtue (excellence in activity) acknowledged within your family or home community?
Here is the link to the virtue ethics article section: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/#2 .