PHILOS 25A Lecture Notes - Lecture 36: Voluntary Action, Habituation
Document Summary
Lecture 36 - the intellectual virtues (presented by gsi) Aristotle attempts to discover the highest good for human beings. Concludes the highest good is happiness, but happiness is unclear. Virtue: - happiness is an activity of the soul expressing complete virtue; we must examine virtue, for what will perhaps be a way to study happiness better. Virtue of a knife is what enables it to cut well. Virtue in the soul, whatever makes it good at its functions: a part that obey reason, a part that performs reason. We become courageous by acting as the courageous person would, this helps us to gradually take pleasure in the right actions. Aristotle defines character virtues as a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defines by reference to reason to the reason by reference to which the intelligent person would define it.
