Artistotle Essays - Social Philosophy, Ancient Greek Philosophers

Artistotle Essays - Social Philosophy, Ancient Greek Philosophers Artistotle Janet Jones Code of Ethics Research Paper Class number 409 Frank Sams Aristotle was a great thinker who used his reasoning ability and knowledge through others to draw ethical assumptions and principles. Aristotle was once in favor of the teachings of Plato until he began to question his philosophy. These ideas lead Aristotle to years of writing and teaching his work. Aristotle was a professor for twenty years at an academy called Lyceum. Lyceum is where Aristotle began to pursue a broader range of subjects. He believed that a man could not claim to know a subject unless he is capable of transmitting his knowledge with others. Simply, teaching for Aristotle was as a manifestation of knowledge. By the end of the 19th century scholars at the academy questioned his works. This genus was alive during a period of havoc and corruption but he did not allow the ethics of man to stop his hunger for knowledge. I will attempt to explain in detail some of the ethics that Aristotle established. Evidence has proved that Aristotle influenced all areas of logic from art, ethics, and metaphysics just to name a few. Art is defined by Aristotle as the realization in external form of a true idea, and is the pleasure, which we feel in recognizing likenesses. Art however is not limited to mere copying. It idealizes nature and completes its deficiencies: it seeks to grasp the universal type in the individual phenomenon. The distinction between poetic art and history is not that the one uses meter, and the other does not. The distinction is that while history is limited to what has actually happened, poetry depicts things in their universal character. Therefore, poetry is more theoretical and more elevated than history. Such imitation may represent people either as better or as worse than people usually are, or it may neither go beyond nor fall below the average standard. Comedy is the imitation of the worse examples of humanity. However, not in the sense of absolute badness, but only in so far as what is low and ignoble enters into what is laughable and comic. Tragedy, on the other hand, is the representation of a serious or meaningful, reaching action. Portraying events, which excite fear and pity in the mind of the observer to purify these feelings to extend and regulate their sympathy until it fits. It is thus a homeopathic curing of the passions. Insofar as art, in general universalizes particular events, tragedy, in depicting passionate and critical situations, takes the observer outside the selfish and individual standpoint, and views them in connection with the general lot of human beings. This is similar to Aristotle's explanation of the use of orgiastic music in the worship of Bacchas and other deities: it affords an outlet for religious fervor and thus steadies one's religious sentiments. Religion can define an individuals moral principle. Aristotle viewed ethics as an attempt to find out our chief end or highest good: an end, which he maintains, is really final. Through of life are many ends that furthers, our aspirations and desires must have some final object or pursuit. A chief end is universally called happiness. But people mean such different things by the expression that I feel necessary to discuss happiness. For starters, happiness must be based on human nature, and must begin from the facts of personal experience. Thus, happiness cannot be found in any abstract or ideal notion, like Plato's self-existing good. It must be something practical and human. It must then be found in the work and life that is unique to humans. Nevertheless, this is neither the vegetative life we share with plants nor the sensitive existence that we share with animals. True happiness lies in the active life of a rational being or in a perfect realization and outworking of the true soul and self, continued throughout a lifetime. Aristotle expands his notion of happiness through an analysis of the human soul that structures and animates a living human organism. The human soul has an irrational element, which is shared with the animals, and a rational element that is distinctly human. The most primitive irrational element is the vegetative faculty, which is responsible for nutrition and