The Role Of Cheating In Nicomachean Ethics

Cheating on an academic assignment can come in many forms. Stealing someone’s words or ideas and pretending they are one’s own, original composition is cheating. Falsifying numbers or data sets on a formal lab report is cheating. Copying a neighbors answers on an exam is cheating. Cheating and academic dishonesty are often the first things that students are warned about on syllabus day. Horror stories float around about peers who have been expelled from a university for plagiarizing their papers on line. Many students would never dare cheat lest they be caught and forced to face the terrible consequences. We, as a society, are aware that cheating is morally wrong. But why?
Through analyzing both Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, and Utilitarianism by John Stewart Mill, this paper seeks to understand why these men would find cheating on an academic project morally wrong. Both of these men do, in fact, find academic dishonesty morally reprehensible, yet their reasons for thinking this vary significantly. Mill’s theory of Utilitarianism looks at how cheating affects the utility of all involved. Aristotle, on the other hand, inquires how cheating affects the virtue
Even in a completely selfish way, cheating is just losing knowledge for oneself. Although it is clear that cheating is morally wrong, it is not always clear why. Aristotle claims that the action is morally wrong in and of itself, regardless of the consequences. Cheating is straying from a virtuous mean. Mill, on the other hand, claims that cheating is morally wrong because of the consequences. He claims that the ends justify the means, or in the case of cheating, that the ends makes the means morally deplorable. The loss of happiness in others in no way makes up for anything the person committing the action may gain. In both views, though, cheating is not to be partaken in if one hopes to be a virtuous, morally upright