Aristotelian Ethics and its Context Essay -- Philosophy Ethics Essays

morals as Politics On Aristotelian Ethics and its ContextABSTRACT This paper argues that the assertion of Nicomachean Ethics I.ii that the art that treats of morals is administration is to be understood properly not in the sense of politics qua nomothetike just just as politike, i.e., direct, participatory politics as was enjoyed in the Athenian polis and as the formed background to Aristotles philosophizing on the nature of ethics. The ethical import of politics can be retrieved from Aristotles Ethics (in both versions) and Politics by dwelling on the connection of eudaimonia and benevolentitys function as such. Aristotle does not construe this function as contemplation but rather as the practical application of reason-reason leading to action. This, however, is the subject of politics. This specific human function, the function that makes us homo sapiens, can not be displayed in rule-be-ruled institutions such as the oikos (household) since such institutions and their collater al behaviors are predetermined based on rank or role. But achieving the distinctively human telos requires that such rule-be-ruled relations and behaviors be transcended since those relations and behaviors exclude the free exercise of deliberative intelligence.I begin with a proposition that ethics (in the classical sense) (1) requires politics as the venue of its implementation indeed, that ethics in a fundamental sense is politics. Ethics is politics inasmuch as the achievement of human happinessthe operation of the soul in accordance with excellency, lasting a lifetimeis public, both in that the achievement requires the presence of co-equals as the condition of its emergence, and in the sense that the excellence achieved (ones character) is public... ... modern metaphor for the political and ethical consequences of lapsing into a state of nature the history of the Bounty mutineers (1789 and following) and their settlement of Pitcairn Island and the ensuing rapid self-destructio n of the swelled male population until, within four years of the settlements founding, only four men and ten women remained alive, and within a further seven-spot years, all remaining men had been murdered except for one who was left as sole adult male dominating a community of females and juveniles. (23) The absence of a hierarchy of rivals refers to practices within a given sport category competitors within a given Class A league are co-equalsbut this does not imply the exclusion of other (higher or lower) sport categories (e.g., AA vs. A or AAA vs. AA) based on such factors as competitors size, size of competitor pool, and so on.