Carson Garbrecht
Intro to Philosophy
Professor Koegler
October 7, 2018
Is the Good Life an Ethical Life?
Essentially, the primary objective of a philosophical ethic lies in its attempt to explain the justification of rationality within the context of the individualistic internal struggle, as well as how that molds our perception of right and wrong. This perception is then applied to a universal concept of truth that is unique to society. The basic features of the virtue ethics of Aristotle includes six different features one including; the classification of all things, in other words, lets organize the world and say why. For example, this is a tree and all trees are also trees! This is an acorn and all acorns are acorns. Acorns can’t be trees because they are acorns. That is a cloud and all clouds are clouds… interesting. After doing this, Aristotle stops and thinks “okay, now to classify the word “good””. This feature lays out the groundwork for Aristotle’s real theory. Feature two, is being a good citizen. If you’re a good citizen, you are following the laid out social norms and laws, as a result you don’t get a hard time from people for not being normal and your life is good. Features three and four consist of how humans think and make decisions, then how they act on those decisions based on what they learn. This is what makes humans unique. Everything that we do is for the purpose of achieving something or in order to reach a goal of some sort, even if it’s just something as simple as making coffee so you can feel awake and energized. Feature five has to do with all the small achievements and goals that we accomplish. All that we achieve basically just continues to add up to one big goal at the end. Aristotle calls this the “Supreme Good”. This Supreme Good doesn’t lead to anything else because it’s “self-sufficien...
