Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

. . is a characteristic involving choice, and . . . consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is delimit by a rational principle" (43). The fell mortal is unwilling or incapable of finding and practicing this mean.

A nonher burning(prenominal) aspect of Aristotle's definitions of virtue and vice is the concept of joyfulness and spite and the relationship of those two conditions to the moral education of the child. Clearly, the single(a) who experiences pleasure from an act will repeat the act once again and again in vagabond to re-experience that pleasure, and will avoid an act which brings him pain. In this sense, a human being is as simple as any animal which is subject to the laws of conditioning.

Therefore, as Aristotle sees it, the problem is unmatched of strictly controlled education. Society is responsible for educating its citizens, especially its children, with respect to the pleasures and application of both virtue and vice:

Men must be brought up from childhood to feel pleasure and pain at the proper things; for this is correct education. . . . It is by means of pleasures and pains that custody atomic number 18 corrupted, i.e., through pursuing and avoiding pleasures and pains either of the wrong diverseness or at the wrong time or in the wrong manner. . . . (37).

An effective moral education, then, will teach the individual to experience "the noble, the beneficial, and the pleasurable" aspects of virtue, while avoiding "the base, the ha

Manson could be said to possess aboutthing of the virtues of ambition, gentleness, truthfulness, wittiness, and intelligence. However, in every case, Manson did not exercise these virtues in order to extend to his own or others' happiness, but rather in order to bring some suffering and destruction. He certainly was ambitious, but not to achieve virtuous ends. With his engineering of mass murders of innocent people, he treasured to create a war between blacks and whites which would result in his being leader of the survivors of the war.

Manson was gentle, but only to those he cherished to manipulate and deceive.

He seduced his followers with such gentleness, and wittiness, in order to later lead them into theft and murder and other legal actions which Aristotle deems vicious by "their very names."

Perhaps a virtue not mentioned by Aristotle, namely, forgiveness (although generosity is a cousin to forgiveness), could perplex saved Manson from his vicious life. Had he found it in himself, through psychological or spiritual means, to forgive those who had hurt him so deeply, he might have used for virtuous purposes the corresponding talents he exercised so obsessively in the name of vice. Alas, he did not, and his name today lives in infamy because of his singular consignment to the ways and means of a life of vice.

Most men do not perform such acts, but by taking refuge in argument they think that they ar engaged in philosophy and that they will become well-grounded in this way. In so doing, they act like mordant men who listen attentively to what the doctor says, but break away to do any of the things he prescribes (40).

Not every action nor every emotion admits of a mean. There are some actions and emotions whose very names connote baseness, e.g., spite, shamelessness, envy; and among actions, adultery, theft, and murder. These . . . imply by their very names that they are bad (44).

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