A Hobbesian and Heroic Unreflective Citizenship
In Meno, Plato asks “what virtue itself is” (Plato 60). This dialogue on virtue between Socrates and Meno ably frames a wider dialogue on ethics between Thomas Hobbes, the Greek heroic tradition, and the sophists of 5th century Athens. Hobbes’ Leviathan and Aristophanes’ The Clouds introduce three classes of ethical actors to respond to Plato’s inquiry: Hobbes’ ethical lemmings, the heroic ethical traditionalists, and the sophist ethical opportunists. The Meno also helps capture the essence of contemporary discussion of the morality of desire and emotivism, as articulated by Roberto Mangabeira Unger in Knowledge and Politics and Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue. Finally, I will examine—and then problematize— the Hobbesian and heroic responses to ethical subjectivism.
SOCRATES: Meno, by the gods, what do you yourself say that virtue is?
MENO: …There is virtue for every action and every age, for every task of ours and every one of us.
(Meno 60-61)
Meno helps Plato articulate the implications of subjectivism and the arbitrary designation of value. Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s discussion of the “morality of desire” (Unger 49) and Alasdair MacIntyre’s description of emotivism formalize the ethical importance of Meno’s inability to disaggregate the self from a definition of virtue. According to Unger, “[t]he morality of desire defines the good as the satisfaction of desire, the reaching of the goals to which our appetites and aversions incline us. The task of ethics on this view is to teach us how to organize life so that we shall approach contentment” (49). In a similar vein, MacIntyre describes emotivism in After Virtue: “Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgme...
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...valuation, but can ensure the engagement of informed citizens and offer the choice and contrast between competing paradigms. Plato’s wisdom does not reside in his provision of definitions, but his understanding of the intrinsic good of an autonomous process of thinking, searching, and questioning—all of which absolute standards ignore.
Works Cited
Aristophanes. The Clouds. Trans. and foreword by William Arrowsmith.
Forrest, W.G. The Emergence of Greek Democracy.
Guthrie, W.C. A History of Greek Philosophy.
Hobbes. Leviathan. Trans. Herbert W. Schneider.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. 2nd Ed. University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, Indiana, 1984.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. A Short History of Ethics.
Plato. Five Dialogues : Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Trans G. M. A. Grube.
Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Knowledge and Politics.
Aristotle 's great-souled man is not only an inaccurate depiction of greatness of soul, honour, perfect virtue and human excellence, but also a hypocritical, short-tempered and insensitive human being. Aristotle describes the great-souled man as being the ultimate person but as Fetter points out in Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man: The Limited Perfection of the Ethical Virtues, we see that there are many flaws in his account. This article looks at the contradictory statements being made about Aristotle’s great-souled man by loyal readers of his works, other philosophers and metaphysicians before Aristotle’s time who seem to have a sense for the worth of honour. We see that nearly all of Aristotle’s statements regarding the great-souled man can
Kraut, R 2014, ‘Aristotle's Ethics’, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Summer Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), .
More with Plato he values the virtue of the should and how it helps with justice to man and to the city. “.. in his soul, there resides a better principle and a
To understand Plato’s view of the nature of human beings one must also understand his view of the world and the soul in turn. Plato’s Republic is a Socratic dialogue, this excerpt from Book IX relays the second of a three-part argument aiming to prove that a man who leads a just life leads a happier and more fulfilled life than the unjust man.
Hursthouse, R. (2003, July 18). Virtue Ethics. Stanford University. Retrieved March 6, 2014, from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/ethics-virtue
Plato believes the conversation to search for what virtue really is should continue despite achieving no success in their first efforts to form a satisfactory definition. Meno becomes very aggravated with Plato and proposes a valid argument to him. Meno exclaims,
Plato and Aristotle have two distinct views on wellness. However, each man’s opinion on wellness is directly tied in to his respective opinions on the idea of imitation as a form of knowledge. Their appreciation or lack thereof for tragedy is in fact directly correlated to their own perspective on wellness and emotion. Firstly, it is important to consider each man’s view of wellness—that is how does each man go about addressing emotional stability. One important consideration is the approach Plato takes in relation to Aristotle. It is this approach that we will see actually mirroring between how they treat emotional well-being and their tolerance for imitation.
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In the Meno, Plato addresses the question of virtue, what it is, how to obtain and if virtue can be taught. Meno came to conclusion after a long discussion with Socrates that it is impossible to know what virtue is. The Meno’x paradox states, “if one knows what virtue is, he does not need to search for it. However, if one does not know what virtue is, how can he search for it? He may not know he has it even when he gets it.” Seeing how hopeless Meno is, Socrates propose the theory of recollection as a way to obtain virtue. This paper will argue against this theory.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. Handbook to Literature. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1986.
We have chosen to write our essay on the ideas and reasoning (being vs. becoming) of Plato. (Essay #1) Virtue consists in the harmony of the human soul with the universe of ideas, which assure order, intelligence, and the pattern to a world in constant flux. The soul, on this view, has three parts, which correspond to three different kinds of interest, three kinds of virtues, and three kinds of personalities, depending on which part of the soul is dominant. This being the three kinds of social classes that should be based on the three personalities, interests, and virtues—shown below in a chart. This relates to the same ideas we discussed in class, the pyramid, based upon controlling self-esteem and upon those two controlling appetite. This leads us into the being vs. becoming state.
The two concepts of Morality and Immorality can be discussed in many different ways, although Glaucon, brother to Plato and Adeimantus, and apprentice to Socrates takes a unique approach to showing the implications of both notions. Glaucon does this through his three-step argument that challenges Socrates by evaluating the benefits of being an immoral person versus one holding onto their morality. Glaucon’s argument dives into three separate segments, which in result leads to Glaucon’s conclusion that immorality is more beneficial than morality.
One of Aristotle’s conclusions in the first book of Nicomachean Ethics is that “human good turns out to be the soul’s activity that expresses virtue”(EN 1.7.1098a17). This conclusion can be explicated with Aristotle’s definitions and reasonings concerning good, activity of soul, and excellence through virtue; all with respect to happiness.
Aristotle once stated that, “But if happiness be the exercise of virtue, it is reasonable to suppose that it will be the exercise of the highest virtue; and that will be the virtue or excellence of the best part of us.” (481) It is through Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that we are able to gain insight into ancient Greece’s moral and ethical thoughts. Aristotle argues his theory on what happiness and virtue are and how man should achieve them.
In this paper, I am going to discuss Plato and Aristotle's viewpoints on inconsistency within the soul in accordance with virtue and vice. Aristotle identifies bad and good states of character. The bad includes vice, inconsistency, lack of moderation, and brutality. These are mirrored alongside their positive counterparts of virtue, superhuman virtue, moderation, and consistency. This can also be extrapolated to cover softness and its opposite of endurance and courage. The problem arises when considering inconsistency and incontinence between these paralleled vices and virtues. In this Paper, I will analyze and provide an account of how the philosophers Plato and Aristotle tackle questions regarding this inconsistency. The questions that arrive regarding this are as follows. How does inconsistency arise and manifest itself, and in what way does it delineate itself from vice.