Write a Virtue Ethics paper on Plato and/or Aristotle . Due Saturday, Aug. 28th. (Send via email attachment.) I will provide suggested topics, though you are encouraged to develop your own. Writing a philosophical essay can be a trying experience (“essay” originally meant “to try”), but the thought-experimentation can be exciting as well, especially if you write about what interests you.
Virtue Ethics Paper Topics UCOR 2900
Due Saturday, August 28th. See the syllabus (“Requirements” and “Writing
Philosophical Papers”) for specifications and suggestions on possible approaches. You
are encouraged to develop your own paper topic, but any of the following would be
acceptable, or could provide a good place to begin:
• Give an account of the tyrannical soul in Bk. IX of the Republic, with reference to
the tripartite model of the soul in Bk. IV, and Glaucon’s requirements regarding
the effects of justice and injustice in Bk. II. (You might consider comparing the
less abstract character of Creon from Sophocles’ Antigone—or some other
fictional or non-fictional character.)
• Discuss Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia (human happiness or flourishing).
What three features does Aristotle attribute to happiness that makes it the highest
good [1097a15-1097b21]? Notoriously, the Nicomachean Ethics seems to support
two opposing views of happiness—one which includes all the virtues and a life of
political activity, and another in which theoretical intellectual activity dominates.
Find passages in books I and X that support each view, and propose how they can
be reconciled.
• How does Aristotle define virtue? How is the “mean” in virtues of character
determined? Give a summary account of one or more of the four cardinal
virtues—bravery, temperance, justice, and prudence—including accounts of the
corresponding vices.
• Discuss Aristotle’s account of pleasure. Why does Aristotle regard pleasure as a
good, but not the good? What kind of thing is pleasure, how does it occur, and
what is its relation to happiness? Why does Aristotle maintain that pleasure is
necessary for virtue, and that someone who does a good action without feeling
pleasure is not good?
The Overall Structure of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
What we should do is be happy/flourish/succeed as human beings:
1) Happiness/flourishing/success (eudaimonia) is constituted by actions in accord
with virtue/excellence (aretê) (Bk. I).
2) So we need to determine the conditions of such actions, i.e. the meaning of
virtue/excellence and its preconditions (Bks. II – III, 5).
3) And we need to analyze the particular virtues/excellences, moral and intellectual
(Bks. III, 5 – VI and VIII – IX).
4) As well as analyze pleasure (Bks. VII, 11-14 and X, 1-5).
5) And finally state the means of ensuring happiness/flourishing (Bk. X, 6 – end).
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