Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Dialectic and virtue in Plato's Protagoras
- 2 Ethics and argument in Plato's Socrates
- 3 The speech of Agathon in Plato's Symposium
- 4 Is dialectic as dialectic does? The virtue of philosophical conversation
- 5 What use is Aristotle's doctrine of the mean?
- 6 Aristotle's ethics as political science
- 7 Epieikeia: the competence of the perfectly just person in Aristotle
- 8 Aristotle on the benefits of virtue (Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 and 9.8)
- 9 Epicurean ‘passions’ and the good life
- 10 Moral responsibility and moral development in Epicurus' philosophy
- 11 ‘Who do we think we are?’
- General bibliography
- List of publications by Dorothea Frede
- Index locorum
- Index nominum et rerum
8 - Aristotle on the benefits of virtue (Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 and 9.8)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Dialectic and virtue in Plato's Protagoras
- 2 Ethics and argument in Plato's Socrates
- 3 The speech of Agathon in Plato's Symposium
- 4 Is dialectic as dialectic does? The virtue of philosophical conversation
- 5 What use is Aristotle's doctrine of the mean?
- 6 Aristotle's ethics as political science
- 7 Epieikeia: the competence of the perfectly just person in Aristotle
- 8 Aristotle on the benefits of virtue (Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 and 9.8)
- 9 Epicurean ‘passions’ and the good life
- 10 Moral responsibility and moral development in Epicurus' philosophy
- 11 ‘Who do we think we are?’
- General bibliography
- List of publications by Dorothea Frede
- Index locorum
- Index nominum et rerum
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Ancient virtue ethics assumes that all persons have a natural concern for their own life and well-being. It holds that the ability to lead a good life is grounded on certain excellent qualities and dispositions of one's character and intellect. Those qualities or dispositions are called aretai – ‘virtues’ as the term is traditionally if problematically translated. A crucial question for ancient virtue theory is: does the set of ‘virtues’ that enable a person to lead a good life have to include attitudes like justice and generosity? Or are the intelligent, self-controlled, resolute egoists who see other people as mere instruments, or obstacles, to their own well-being equally or even better suited to leading a good life?
The speech of Callicles in Plato's Gorgias is a famous and forceful defence of the attitude of moral egoism. A theoretical elaboration of the view that all human beings are ultimately egoists is set forth in Glaucon's speech in Plato's Republic 2. Aristotle follows Socrates' and Plato's footsteps in depreciating a sort of egoism that seeks fulfilment in the augmentation and gratification of bodily pleasures or the amassment of wealth and social prestige. He unequivocally affirms the value of virtues like justice and generosity and states that behaviour exhibiting those virtues has to be motivated by the acknowledgement of their value and, hence, is clearly different from a strategic pretence of justice or generosity.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics , pp. 167 - 193Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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