Human Function: Aristotle’s Basis for Ethical Value Essay -- Philosoph

Human Function: Aristotle’s Basis for Ethical Value I. Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics Depend on the Human Function Aristotle presents a system of virtue ethics in Nicomachean Ethics. This work presents a prescriptive theory with the aim of showing how humans may reach a proper state of happiness in which the natural human end is fulfilled. This end is regarded as an end in itself to which subordinate ends are related. This master end itself is understood as a type of activity rather than a state that can be achieved with a limited series of actions, and this activity is described as a general practice of acting well in accord with reason. The Ethics launches an inquiry into what makes human happiness, or eudaimonia, possible, and Aristotle believes this is the highest good for mankind. Aristotle expresses this good as being the highest end that action reaches for, which is something self-sufficient, and he suggests that to understand action we should understand function. He presents his concept of the human function and says that humans must function well in order to reach the highest good. Funct ioning well is what is understood as virtue, and so his system of virtue ethics is overall concerned with humans functioning well. Functioning well is seen as aiming at a mean between excess and deficiency. The virtue of a thing is understood in terms of its function. A function fulfills a need, and a need is met by being provided the right amount of something but not too much or too little. This is why a craftsman designs goods without excess or deficiency — so that they will function well — and likewise human virtue must be understood as aiming between excess and deficiency. So the Nicomachean Ethics develops a system where all val... ...ve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross. New York: Oxford University Press, 1925. Irwin, Terence. Aristotle’s First Principles. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Kraut, Richard. Aristotle on the Human Good. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. Plato. Protagoras. Trans. Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992. Reeve, C. D. C. Practices of Reason: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 1 C. D. C. Reeve, Practices of Reason: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 124. 2 Richard Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) 313-16. 3 Reeve 125-26.