Key Takeaways

• Aristotle defines the highest human good as eudaimonia, or living and doing well across a complete life.
• Human goodness depends on reasoning well and performing one’s proper function with excellence.
• Virtue reflects stable character and disposition, not merely outward behavior or isolated actions.
• Moral virtue is found in the mean between extremes, avoiding both excess and deficiency.
• Other schools like the Cynics and Stoics developed different ethical views, but all emphasized reason and character.

Father Horacio Medina is a Roman Catholic priest with the Archdiocese of Newark whose academic and pastoral work bridges theology, philosophy, and ethics. Father Horacio Medina studied philosophy and humanities in Costa Rica, completed graduate studies in theology and sacred Scripture in El Salvador, and earned a degree in journalism and communications in Honduras. He later pursued moral theology at the Scuola Alfonsiana in Rome, focusing on questions of virtue, moral character, and human freedom. In addition to his priestly duties, Father Horacio Medina teaches ancient Greek philosophy and Spanish as a second language at Saint Peter’s University. He also reaches a wide audience through daily online ministry, delivering reflections on faith, ethics, and moral responsibility.

His sustained engagement with classical philosophy, particularly Aristotle, informs his approach to moral education and provides a framework for understanding virtue as a lived practice shaped by reason, habit, and character.

Exploring Aristotle’s Ethics and Moral Virtue

Ancient Greece featured a multiplicity of ethical constructs, from the Epicureans and the Stoics to Aristotle’s virtue ethics. The latter philosopher’s Nicomachean Ethics posits that eudaimonia, or a state of living and doing well across a lifetime, is a highest order good. In fact, it is of such importance that one’s life activities should be dedicated to attaining eudaimonia.

Aristotle links happiness with excellent activities of the soul, which span honorable acts, virtuous pursuits, and contemplation of the truth. He posits that every activity has a characteristic function or work. The flutist’s function is to play the flute well, while a scissor’s function is cleanly cutting. When this proper function is performed in a virtuous, objective maximizing way, such a thing embodies goodness. For Aristotle, humans’ proper function is to reason and thus goodness depends on one’s ability to reason well.

Aristotle notes that this goodness is not performative, but rather reflects disposition. As an example, a good person and a bad person may follow the same routine at bedtime, and thus be outwardly indistinguishable. Rather than looking at their active performance, one must take into consideration their disposition, or the nature of their behavior and thoughts. Appropriate feeling, defined as the “mean between the extremes in each situation,” leads to appropriate action.

Aristotle also lays out specific conditions necessary before an act may be defined as virtuous. First, the action must not be accidental, but reflect the agent having knowledge of the action’s circumstances. Second the action must be accomplished for its own sake, as a deliberative choice. Finally, the action must be performed hesitation-free, by a person with a stable and firmly virtuous character.

Aristotle’s ethics also relies on a concept of “mean as moderation” in defining moral virtues. For example, rashness reflects an excessively confident disposition, while cowardice is defined as a deficiency in confidence. With the extremes representing vices, the virtuous stance is one where the person has a reliable disposition. One applies appropriate feelings, neither deficient or excessive, in pursuing appropriate actions in relevant situations.

It’s instructive to contrast Aristotle’s conception of virtue with that of Antisthenes of Athens, founder of the Cynics. This school was in accord with Socrates and Aristotle in considering virtue teachable, with humans’ only good their ability to reason.

Antisthenes went further in arguing (against a competing school, the Cyrenaics) that pleasure is never a good quality. And while poverty, hard labor, disgrace, servitude, death, and illness are commonly presumed as bad, they are not real evils.

The Cynics’ cosmopolitan view (with many living in poverty) was that true virtue involved indifference toward property, health, honor, liberty, and even life. Taking Socratic frugality to an extreme, they influenced subsequent schools of thought, such as the Stoics. Ethics and moral virtue grew linked to avoiding pleasure-seeking activities.

Zeno of Citium, in founding Stoicism, brought about the concept of all virtuous people cultivating membership in a unified community that placed friendship at the fore. His followers adhered to the concept of ataraxia, or a striving for freedom from desires, sorrow, pleasure, and fear – all qualities which, in the minds of Stoics, compromised one’s inner independence.

FAQs

What is eudaimonia in Aristotle’s ethics?

Eudaimonia refers to a state of living and acting well over a complete lifetime, which Aristotle considers the highest human good.

How does Aristotle define human goodness?

He argues that human goodness lies in reasoning well and performing one’s proper function in a virtuous and excellent way.

Why does Aristotle focus on character rather than just actions?

Because virtue depends on stable disposition and intention, not merely on performing the right actions by accident or habit.

What does Aristotle mean by the “mean” in virtue?

The mean is the balanced position between excess and deficiency, such as courage standing between rashness and cowardice.

How do the Cynics and Stoics differ from Aristotle’s view?

They placed greater emphasis on indifference to pleasure, possessions, and external circumstances, focusing on inner independence and self-control.

About Father Horacio Medina

Father Horacio Medina is a Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Newark with extensive academic training in philosophy, theology, and moral ethics. He studied philosophy and humanities in Costa Rica, theology and sacred Scripture in El Salvador, and moral theology in Rome at the Scuola Alfonsiana. Father Medina teaches ancient Greek philosophy and ethics at Saint Peter’s University and is active in pastoral outreach, including ministry to hospital patients and prison inmates. His work emphasizes moral formation, virtue, and the practical application of ethical reasoning.