PHI 208 Week 4 Discussion (flourishing or successful life)
PHI 208 Week 4 Discussion (flourishing or successful life)
What are two virtues that you believe are important to living a flourishing or successful life in either Aristotle’s sense? Explain what goods in human life these virtues enable their possessor to fulfill. Provide examples of characteristic behavior that manifests these virtues, and contrast that with behavior that displays a lack of virtue. Do your examples confirm Aristotle’s view that a virtue is a mean between extremes of excess and defect? If so, explain what those extremes are; if not, explain why. Refer to this week’s readings and media to illustrate and support your claims.
Identify an area of life that has an impact on the environment (including non-human animals), and explain how the possession or lack of virtue may make a difference to how one conducts oneself within that practice with respect to that environmental impact. In other words, when it comes to our relation to the environment, what attitudes and behaviors would be characteristic of a virtuous person, and what attitudes and behaviors may be characteristic of a person who lacks the virtues? How can those who do not have the virtues develop those virtues so that they can reliably act and feel in appropriate fashion with respect to this issue? Be sure to be as specific as possible in your analysis, and support your analysis with evidence from the week’s readings and media, including Hill’s article, “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments.Referring to MacIntyre’s account of practices and virtue, outline a practice in your own life that you believe requires certain virtues in order to do well. Explain what the practice is, what the “internal goods” of the practice are and how they differ from certain”external goods” (such as money, prestige, power, etc.), and attempt to determine the virtues that one must have in order to excel in the practice. In other words, what are virtues that make one a good practitioner of this practice? What are some vices that get in the way of doing this practice well? How might someone that primarily pursues internal goods behave differently than someone primarily concerned with external goods? Your answers to these questions should include evidence from this week’s readings and media.