Philosophical Ethics Term paper
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Got Courage?
Aristotle s Doctrine of the Mean states that there are three kinds of dispositions, two of them vices, involving excess and deficiency and one virtue which is the intermediate or mean. Aristotle considers the act of courage to be a mean concerning fear and confidence. With the deficiency of courage being cowardice and the excess being rashness. In his Nicomachean Ethics, he goes into detail about what courage is and what qualifies a person as being courageous. Aristotle states The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things with the right aim, in the right way and at the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way reason directs (Aristotle, Book 111, chp. 7). He is essentially saying that a brave man is a noble man as well.
Aristotle also indicates that the brave man is fearless of most things and is concerned with only the greatest of things. A brave man then, is one who stands his ground in the face of death since death is the end and it the most terrible of all things, however, not all instances of death are great enough to make a brave man quiver. Deaths involved in battle and wars are the circumstances in which brave men are concerned with since they take place in the greatest and noblest danger. Properly, then, he will be called brave who is fearless in face of a noble death, and of all emergencies that involve death; and the emergencies of war are in the highest degree of this kind (Aristotle, Book 111, chp 6).
Aristotle goes on to discuss what consists of doing an act of cowardice or rashness. A madman or insensible person is the name he gives to a person who has gone to the excess and fears nothing. In the same context, a person who is over confidant and exceeds in confidence about something is acting rash and boastful. On the otherhand, a person would not stand their ground against something that is truly terrible and exceeds in fear is simply a coward. All three types of men have their eyes set on the same object; however, the way they attempt to achieve it is different.
But to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward . Aristotle states this in chapter seven referring to the instance of a person taking their life or fleeing because ultimately they do not wish to stand the pain of something. They are not brave rather cowards for a brave man would stand in face the pain, for pain is weakness leaving the body.
In the case of the elderly man who has a terminal and incurable disease and who wishes to take his life, I feel that Aristotle would count this man as being a courageous individual. This man has obviously faced the pain and hardship of this disease for some time now and has learned that soon he might go into a coma. It is not as if he tried to kill himself when he first learned of the disease he had acquired. The old man has hopefully lived a long and fruitful life and now requests to leave this...
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