Plato - Healthy Personality/The forms/The Ideal

-A genuinely rewarding life cannot be one that exploits others/uses people as a means in order to satisfy desire
-Would rob life of any meaning or possibilites of fulfillment
-Virtue is intrinsic to fulfillment i.e athletes - winning the medal or as an instrinsically fulfilling activity
-Virtue brings it's own rewards
- Egoists believe doing what makes me happy is right whereas it is doing what is right that makes me happy
-Plato's healthy personality - The charioteer with two horses, reason reigning in spirit and desire.
-Desire - physical appetites for sex, power and food. -Spirit consisting of emotional capacities, strength of will (anger/jealousy/courage/loyalty)
-Reason is an exclusively human capability - allows us to harmonise our personality
-Must reach long term goal of beauty, health and fitness (reaching the destination)
-Aiming at goal - all our organs, muscles and glands are working harmoniously and efficiently.
-Discipline neccessary to repress desires and good habits must be fostered over long term - short term remedies unsuccesful
-Egoists - if you continue to treat others with no respect, surely surely you will lose all self respect, self worth and self esteem
-Behaving virtuously therefore is the key to a happy and healthy lifestyle
-Real happiness comes with the conviction that we are contributing to positive relationships and a flourishing community
-Happier when surrounded by positivity and support
-Genuine moral conviction and concern for others more satifsfying than egoism?
-Must understand other's interests by being a skilled person i.e a doctor
-Plato's forms - an unknowable realm from which all things on this earth are copies as we can never achieve perfection - can come to access this perfection through rational thought -analogy of the cave - discover form of 'the good' (the sun)
-Plato's ideal - grants that everyone serves a role in society, but the ideal character is the philosopher who is honest/wise/brave/beautiful - excels in the life of the mind, devoted to rational thought (and therefore will begin to understand the forms). Philosophical nature - balanced and harmonious. Life led by rigorous education and training to control spirit and desire. Guided by knowledge of the form of the good. Physical pleasure seen as trivial and unsatisfying. Distraction from the highest forms of life.

Mill - Alternative theory on the healthy personality

-Mankind is not ifallible, the truth is complex and certainty is unlikely - all only arrive at a portion of the truth
-There should be different "experiments in living"
-"individuality should assert itself"
-Emphasis not on training but on strong impulses and personal energy leading to creativity and originality
-Trees and trains analogy - Training/Growing
-Train has one function, must conform to one track, soulless, people only successful if they reach their destination
-Tree is organic and can develop in many different directions and grows out of deep roots, instincts and convictions.

Aristotle- Ehtical knowledge guides our action/Virtue

-Rejects that abstract knowledge only obtainable in another realm (world of the forms) can be a necessary precondition of moral behaviour
-Any useful knowledge needs to be a generalisation about experience
-Aristotle's premises - 1) Everything tends to it;s own good (teleological approach). 2) Ultimate end or purpose is happiness - eudaimonia (well being, flourishing or fulfilment). 3) Happiness achieved by exercising the unique human faculty which separates us from other living creatures 4) The unique human faculty is reason.
-Concluding that the flourishing human being achieves the good life by exercising reason which is our chief function.
-Happiness desired in itself - not a means to anything else, it is the final goal of human activity, it is desired in itself
-The Virtues - the mean - examples Deficiency/Virtuous Mean/Excess Cowardice/Courage/Recklessness Humbleness/Pride/Arrogance Meanness/Generosity/Extravagance
-Unlike Plato, Aristotle teaches that knowledge alone cannot make us virtuous - must be practised and acquired
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	Created by yasmyncharles about 12 years ago

The three different approaches to morality.