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

gentleman Function Aristotles Basis for Ethical ValueI. Aristotles Virtue Ethics Depend on the Human FunctionAristotle presents a system of virtue ethics in Nicomachean Ethics. This work presents a prescriptive theory with the aim of showing how humanness may cook 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 cover end itself is unders besidesd as a type of use 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 considerably 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 knead. He pr esents his concept of the human function and says that humans must function well in order to reach the highest good. Functioning 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 basis 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. naked as a jaybird York Oxford University Press, 1925.Irwin, Terence. Aristotles First Principles. New York Oxford University P ress, 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 Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics. New York Oxford University Press, 1992.1 C. D. C. Reeve, Practices of Reason Aristotles 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.