Questions:

Answer each question. Altogether the answers should be about 500 words.

1. How does Plato conceive of the good life?
2. In what sense, according to Plato, is ethics universal and objective?
3. What according to Aristotle is the question on which ethics should focus?
4. On Aristotle’s account, ethics must be based on an appropriate account of human beings. What are the conditions which an account must meet in order to be appropriate?
5. How does Aristotle criticise Plato’s ethical view?
6. In what sense is ethics objective and universal in Aristotle’s theory?

Pay particular attention to the following criteria:
– the relevance of the answer (do they respond to the questions they are intended to answer or are they only tangentially touching on them or perhaps are even off topic?)
– clarity
– effectiveness (do answers provide the response concisely and by capturing the essential or are they longwinded and full of unnecessary details?)
– informative character (is there an attempt to go beyond providing the bare minimum and to offer answer based on some research?)
– presentation (are answers easy to read or do they have a lot of typos and formatting problems?)

Good luck!

Answers:

Plato’s book named “Apology” was written when Socrates was on trail. He was asked the questions like as to why he questions everything. Socrates answered in a very simple way that life that is unexamined is not worth anything. On the other hand, Plato saw life as a person who lives a normal life like today. Without examining a person goes to work, come back from work, rests and watches TV and then sleeps after having food(Yacobi, 2015).

1. Like most of the philosophers, Plato also maintained the virtue based eudaemonistic start of ethics(Nyabul & Situma, 2014). In this, happiness of people or well being is on the priority as aim of moral thought and conduct and the virtue are the necessary skills and nature required to achieve it. In case of the conception of Plato is subtle and his support for the morality of happiness seems subdued, there are reason for that.
2. Most of the theories of virtue and ethics actually take the inspiration and the motivation from the Aristotle’s theories who claimed that the person with virtue is someone who has ideal character factors(Kukukuysal & Beyhan, 2011). Not like deontological and consequentiality theories, the theory virtues never aims for identifying universal principles on the primary basis which can be applicable in any of the moral situation. The questions of the virtue ethics are: How should I live? What is the good life? And what are proper family and social values?
3. There are three conditions which are present in the soul. They are:

• Emotions: States that the soul is accompanied by pain or pleasure.
• Capacities: is the state due to which these emotions are felt.
• Characteristics: It is the state of soul in which the person feels all such emotions.

5. Aristotle perceived ethics as significant science and they deal with the human behavior which is factual. Not like Plato, that he confirmed that the empirical world and life in it is worth it. He adopted teleological conception of human life that requires to be realized in the current life(Kakkori & Huttunen, 2007).
6. Aristotle’s theory was of knowing the good which was not sufficient for him. Aristotle did not necessarily have a concept of free will. He did not believe that a person needed to practice virtue or habituate oneself to virtue in order to be virtuous in true sense. For the reason like this, though wisdom is considered to be the greatest form of virtue, but still it is not to be taken as the key to possessing all the virtues. In other words, the philosopher Aristotle denies the unity of the virtues. And at last, Aristotle’s thought about virtue is important and necessary for the life which is good and this is not at all enough. This can be said that a person could have virtues or he can be virtuous but that person can still not be happy. Some of the good friends’ fellow citizens are needed in particular for achieving happiness in true sense.

References

Kakkori, L. & Huttunen, R., 2007. Aristotle and Pedagogical Ethics. Paideusi, 16(1), pp.17-28.

Kukukuysal, B. & Beyhan, E., 2011. Virtue ethics in Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics. International Journal of Human Sciences, 8(2).

Nyabul, P.O. & Situma, J.W., 2014. The Meaning of Eudemonia in Aristotle’s Ethics. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2(3), pp.65-74.

Yacobi, B.G., 2015. Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. Journal of Philosophy of Life, 5(2), pp.82-90.