Rebecca C. Serrano

ERH-207W

Aristotle

 

If character exists, which Aristotle believes it does, it is incredibly important in Ethics. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics Books, what a good and bad character is.  In this paper I will discuss what character is according to Aristotle, whether or not it exists, and why it is important to the study of ethics.

There are two words which help with the definition of Aristotle’s ethics. There are virtues and vices.  Virtues are good character traits and vices are the bad character traits.  Virtues which can be intellectual or moral. Intellectual virtues are those which which are like memories, things that are somewhat inherent. Moral virtues on the other hand are developed through habitual practice.  Vices have the same two, moral and intellectual, and they are developed in the same way.

Character, according to Aristotle, is a set of virtues and/or vices that are more or less fixed once you have grown up and determine your feelings, actions, reactions, etc. Aristotle believes that individuals are responsible for their character. He believes that choices lead to actions, which leads to habits, which creates character. Character is not black and white. It is not all good and its not all bad. Aristotle believes that there is a type scale which complete goodness lies on one side, and complete the other side is complete badness.  People are not going to be all god or all bad. He believes that people are going to be a mix of both, but the we should be closer to the goodness side of the scale.

The question some people argue with is whether or not character exist. As I mentioned before, Aristotle defines character as a set of virtues and/ or virtues, and others believe that the choices people make aren’t due to character, but circumstances and situations.  So character to Aristotle is a result of choices. Aristotle says that individuals are responsible for voluntary actions but not our involuntary ones.

Another question which is discussed often is whether or not ethics exists.  By definition, character is essential to ethics. Character allows for the bad and good actions. If character didn’t exist, how would individuals decide what actions to do and which not to do in certain situations? There was an experiment conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960’s.  Around one thousand people volunteered for his experiment which was to examine the relationship between learning and punishment. The experiment had volunteers in a room with experiment conspirators and an actor in another room, the learner, which an individual could not see inside. The conspirator acted like a teacher and the volunteer was his assistant which was in control of a shocking mechanism which was supposedly hooked to the individual in the room. The volunteer did not know that the shock would not reach the individual in the room when the experiment was conducted. The volunteer was instructed to shock the person in the room when the teacher instructed him to, and after every time a shock was administered, the volunteer was instructed to increase the power. The shock intensities were labeled “from ‘Slight Shock’ to ‘Danger Severe Shock’ followed by ‘XXX’” (Patten, 1977).  The teacher instructs the volunteer to pull the switches to administer the shocks and it is eventually up to the volunteer to choose to stop or go all the way to the end of the board. In the experiment “62.5% of the subjects are obedient in the sense that they continue to administer shock up to the maximum voltage” (Patten, 1977). This experiment is an example that some use to demonstrates that there is no such thing as character. If the individuals had character, why did so many of the volunteers continue to push the shock button even though they knew it was beyond painful if not fatal?

The Milgram experiment can also be used for the opposite argument as well. The fact that there were those who refused to continue with the experiment means that character must exist, and that it is important to ethics. Character is important to ethics because humans are naturally social and rational. Character traits help individuals to be social and rational and that is what separates humans from any other animal, our ability to think.  If an individual has a virtuous character, then they will do good things without much thought or effort, and feel pleasure in those deeds. The same applies for vices as well. Aristotle says that the best thing is to have a mean between vices and virtues, avoid the worse extreme, its better to be bad than to be too honest.

Character exists, because if it didn’t, there would be no social order. If one argues that it doesn’t exist and people do things for their own pleasure, then why do we have people who volunteer to help the less fortunate. They lose things that are pleasurable such as time and money? If you had an entire society doing things for their own benefit, there would be no cohesion or order for people to live together in a social setting. Because humans are social creatures, it is crucial that there is character. Of course there are those individuals who don’t have the desired character such as serial killers, but because there are people with good character, they don’t typically get to do the things they find pleasurable because someone goes out of their way to make sure others are safe with the risk of their own lives such as law enforcement. This proves that character exist, and that it is vital to ethics, and the interactions between people on the individual and social level.  I just couldn’t imagine a functional society where everyone does things just to benefit themselves, there would be much death and despair, and I believe would eventually self-destruct, so character must exist and it is incredibly important to ethics.

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Patten, Steven C.. “Milgram’s Shocking Experiments”. Philosophy 52.202 (1977): 425–440. Web…

 

 

Help Received:

JSTOR; Library Archives; Notes; Canvas Notes

 

Word Count:

1011