PLEASURE IN THE VIEW OF ARISTOTELIAN VIRTUE ETHICS
Introduction
From the very beginning of the life of a child, it has a soft corner towards love. It is not different in the case of an adult man. That is why the famous psychotherapist Freud had crept into the Eros principles of the person. Wherever you go you would find commotion for achieving happiness. Now the happiness is distributed in the nook and corner of the world. The identity of happiness changed into pleasure. Pleasure seeking is the action and passion of the people. Why they seek pleasure? The simple answer is they want happiness. But they are not aware of what they actually want. They try to amass happiness and they remain disappointed. May be that was the reason, why Buddha said, desire was the cause of suffering. In this case, man needs to do two things or he has to work in two realms.
Firstly, he has to eliminate suffering and secondly he has to achieve happiness. Man is, like a pendulum, swinging between these two contradictions. In the Aristotelian virtue ethics, he keeps the tern “happiness”(eudaimonia) as the highest good. Aristotle speaks of the practical aspect of the virtue of happiness. He stresses the point of regular practice makes a person virtuous and enables him to attain the highest goal- happiness.
Virtue refers to human excellence. In their quest to understand what a good person is and how a good life is lived, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle studied human excellences, which came to be called virtues. Virtues are habits of human excellence. Moral virtues are excellences of character acquired through the formation of good habits and are necessary for happiness.
Understanding virtue and the specific virtues that enable people to think and behave well has a real payoff: a serious chance at happiness, defined by Aristotle as a whole life, well lived. The virtue theory of ethics dominated Western moral thinking from ancient times through the middle ages. It made a major comeback in the 20th century. An understanding of what virtue and virtue ethics is all about can help people to see why they need to form good habits of choosing and acting. They concluded that virtue in general and some virtues in particular, enable a person not only to be good, but also to have a good life. People may not always feel the need to be good, but it’s a sure thing that everyone wants to have a good life. It turns out that you can’t have a good life without being good, that is, being virtuous.
“Pleasure” in Aristotle’s View
Aristotle begins Nicomachean Ethics with an explanation of the “chief good.” This good is presented by him through thoughts and theories of the Doctrine of the Mean. He states that all men who are in search of the good and knowledge of “the good” have a profound influence on life. He then writes how a good man, sets goals for himself on a specific task. This experience in the function of the task gives self satisfaction. An example used by Aristotle is a sculptor who participates in the art of sculpting.
To Aristotle, happiness was the activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue and the highest level of happiness could be achieved from the activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with the virtue of thought. Not all conditions of the soul can be called virtues. His Greatest Happiness Principle says that the action we ought to perform in a given situation is the one that promotes the greatest happiness for everyone concerned, not only has the agent’s owned happiness. Virtues are conditions of the soul. Given the contrasting views of happiness by Aristotle and John Stuart Mill one could wonder what Mill would say if Aristotle ever met him and told him that his notion of happiness is worthy only of a swine. He says that people do not get blamed or praised for their feelings but rather for their virtues and vises. Scholars, in his opinion, ultimately led the happiest and most productive life styles. According to Aristotle, feelings are not virtues. The majority of people would become bored really fast and become unhappy with their careers. Mill also has an opinion on the subject of greatest happiness. Mainly, he could say that the definition or the meaning of happiness is different for every person. There are several ways Mill could respond to Aristotle. To Mill, the right action in any given circumstance is the one that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain. Even if you could get everyone to become a scholar, there will be nobody left to do the other essential tasks needed for the general population to survive.
Pleasure V/S Happiness
For Aristotle pleasure and happiness is not the same. Though for us, common people, the concern for the pleasure cannot be eliminated from the very existence. Aristotle frequently emphasizes the importance of pleasure to human life and therefore to his study of how we should live, but his full-scale examination of the nature and value of pleasure is found in two places . It is odd that pleasure receives two lengthy treatments; no other topic in the Ethics is revisited in this way. Book VII offers a brief account of what pleasure is and is not. It is not a process but an unimpeded activity of a natural state. Aristotle does not elaborate on what a natural state is, but he obviously has in mind the healthy condition of the body, especially its sense faculties, and the virtuous condition of the soul. Little is said about what it is for an activity to be unimpeded, but Aristotle does remind us that virtuous activity is impeded by the absence of a sufficient supply of external goods. One might object that people who are sick or who have moral deficiencies can experience pleasure, even though Aristotle does not take them to be in a natural state.
He has two strategies for responding. First, when a sick person experiences some degree of pleasure as he is being restored to health, the pleasure he is feeling is caused by the fact that he is no longer completely ill. Some small part of him is in a natural state and is acting without impediment. Second, Aristotle is willing to say that what seems pleasant to some people may in fact not be pleasant, just as what tastes bitter to an unhealthy palate may not be bitter. To call something a pleasure is not only to report a state of mind but also to endorse it to others. Aristotle's analysis of the nature of pleasure is not meant to apply to every case in which something seems pleasant to someone, but only to activities that really are pleasures. All of these are unimpeded activities of a natural state. Aristotle indicates several times in NE. VII. 11-14 that merely to say that pleasure is a good does not do it enough justice; he also wants to say that the highest good is a pleasure. Here he is influenced by an idea expressed in the opening line of the Ethics: the good is that at which all things aim. In VII.13, he hints at the idea that all living things imitate the contemplative activity of god. Plants and non-human animals seek to reproduce themselves because that is their way of participating in an unending series, and this is the closest they can come to the ceaseless thinking of the unmoved mover. In VII.11-14, he appeals to his conception of divine activity only in order to defend the thesis that our highest good consists in a certain kind of pleasure. Human happiness does not consist in every kind of pleasure, but it does consist in one kind of pleasure—the pleasure felt by a human being who engages in theoretical activity and thereby imitates the pleasurable thinking of god. He conceives of god as a being who continually enjoy a “single and simple pleasure” —the pleasure of pure thought—whereas human beings, because of their complexity, grow weary of whatever they do. Aristotle strongly implies that the pleasure of contemplation is the good, because in one way or another all living beings aim at this sort of pleasure. He makes the point that pleasures interfere with each other, and so even if all kinds of pleasures are good, it does not follow that all of them are worth choosing. One must make a selection among pleasures by determining which are better.
The opening words from the book VII. 11, reads like this: the study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political philosopher; for he is the architect if the end, with a view to which we ball one thing bad and another good without qualification. Aristotle reminds us that it is the necessary task of each of us to consider them. Most of the people say that happiness involves pleasure; this is why the blessed man is called by s name derived from a word meaning enjoyment.
Conclusion
The virtue ethics of Aristotle provides people with both amazing insight and a powerful plan to shape one’s choices and actions in ways that will increase the chance of attaining happiness. By developing the four cardinal virtues, a person can go very far down the path of a whole life, well lived and the rest is up to good fortune. But even if bad luck ruins the chance, a person of good character, by possessing the moral virtues, will be far better off than those who don’t.
In fact Aristotle gives some tips to how to attain happiness. It is through the regular practice of virtue. As the virtue stands in the middle , he introduces the need of prudence which makes a man discern or distinguish between foolhardiness and cowardice. Prudence (practical wisdom) is a special virtue in that it is an intellectual one, but guides human choices, while the moral virtues are all about doing, or action. To become a better person, we must practice virtuous acts regularly. After a while, these acts will become a habit and so the virtuous acts part of our every day life and the person will be leading a virtuous life. For example, if a singer practices singing everyday, they will become better at it and used to doing it. People who practice their virtues improve their skills and therefore becoming happier. According to Aristotle the person who struggles to acquire virtues is in the long run a better person and is much happier as they feel that they deserve that happiness as they have worked very hard for it. By continuously practicing their virtues people will soon be acting in the right way. Aristotle says that virtues are something that we acquire and are not just born with; people are not intrinsically good or bad, but become good or bad according to their habits they develop throughout our life.
Bibliography
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Trans. Sir David Ross. Oxford University
Press: London,1959.
Hardie, W.F.R. Aristotle's Ethical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Crisp, Roger Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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