Human Nature

ESSAY CATEGORY: Philosophy

Human nature

Grade:

B

Language:

English

System:

Country:

Taiwan

Authors Comments:

Teachers Comments:

11/6/96

Our life is full of problems. Reasoning is a usual way to response to problems which we

concern about. We reason in response to everyday problems. For instance, asked by

friends to go out dinner at a time when we have planned something else, we must decide

which one is more important for us at that moment of time, and whether to decline or to

adjust our schedule. Reasoning appropriate to problems like this has often been called

practical. Practical reasons might be said to be reasons for acting, and it is in some sense

point toward action. Practical reasoning has been much discussed by philosophers, and it

is catalogued under Moral Philosophy. For Aristotle's moral philosophy, as it appears in his

document now called the Nicomachean ethics, reflects his teleological (goal-oriented)

metaphyics. In the Nicomachean ethics, where Aristotle considers a science of doing, and

acting in certain way to seek rational ends. The notion of Goal, or Purpose, is the principal

one in his moral theory.

Aristotle noted that every act is performed for some purpose, which he defined as the

"good" of that act, the end at which the activity aims. We perform an act because we find

its purpose to be worthwhile. Either the totality of our acts is an infinitely circular series:

Every morning we get up in order to eat breakfast, we eat breakfast in order to go to

work, we got to work in order to get money, we get money so we can buy food in order to

be able to eat breakfast, etc., etc., etc., in which case life would be a pretty meaningless

endeavor because this is just bunch of repeated and vain activities practicing if without a

purpose. Or there is some ultimate good toward which the purpose of all acts are

directed. If there is such a good, we should try to come to know it so that we can adjust

all our acts toward it in order to avoid that saddest of all tragedies Ð'- the wasted and vain

life

According to Aristotle, there is general verbal agreement that the end toward which all

human acts are directed is happiness; therefore, happiness is the human good since we

seek happiness for its own sake, not for the sake of something else. In a sense, realizing

the end of attaining happiness is an activity of making, and it's the activity aims to make a

certain kind of man, living in a certain kind of society. Happiness might be explained as the

fruition of a man's way of life, in the truly human aspect of that way of life. The good of

each thing is its own function; thus, vision is the good of the eye and walking is the good

of the foot. As Aristotle said in the Nicomachean ethics, "Every art and every inquiry, and

similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the

good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." (11) However, unless

we philosophize about happiness and get to know exactly what it is and how to achieve it,

it will be stereotyped simply to say that happiness is the ultimate good. To determine the

nature of happiness, Aristotle turned to his metaphysical schema and asked, "What is the

function of the human?" In the same way he would ask about the function of a knife or a

cloth. He came to the conclusion that a human's function is to engage in "an activity of the

soul which is in accordance with virtue and which follows a rational principle." Before

grasping this complicated definition , we must determine what virtues is and what kinds of

virtues there are. But first, we must have a basic understanding