Reflection Paper Aristotle

Aristotle As I get to understand Aristotle and his understandings I see that his whole perspective is that every human’s goal in life is to achieve ultimate happiness. Happiness is what all of our ultimate goals are, Aristotle saw it as a simple thing that could be in some cases hard to achieve because you have to bring into play pleasure as well. He insisted that at least minimum pleasure was required for ultimate happiness. Because although happiness is desired for itself it is not used to obtain the other aspects in life. The true meaning of life is reaching the ultimate happiness according to Aristotle. But how is this done? What happens if it’s not reached? According to Aristotle’s there are two dimensions in this process, of which is intellectual virtue and moral virtue. Intellectual virtue is defined as excellence of intelligence. In many cases intellectual virtue is seen as an acceptance of reality, but in a good way. It is something that is learned. A person with intellectual virtue is someone who is not tempted to do bad in society or harm anybody. They are here to do good and that is it, they see everything in a positive manner. A moral virtue is defined as excellence of character through choices. Moral virtue is an example of a person that makes good choices out of good faith. Now this does not mean a person that does favors but they end up being bad. It’s as if a mechanic were to fix your car for free and a couple of days later it all breaks down. Now the mechanic had good intentions but it all ended up causing more damage. Also it would not mean doing good by it being a coincidence, such as being at the right place at the right time because that would mean a person was not meaning to do good it just happened as a coincidence. This can be somebody standing in the way of a robber that is running away and bumping him just because they were standing there. Now this person is not considered a hero by any means, because sometimes those same people that