Ethics and Virtue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Ethics and Virtue - Essay Example And this is considered to be more important than the manners and behaviors. Socrates was one of the first Greek philosophers and he did a great work for mankind. According to him people should be well aware of the facts of life, hence they should attain self-knowledge, and after attaining self-knowledge, it will be easier and natural for them to do what is good and to avoid doing the wrong deeds. As he said that evil or ghastly actions are the result of ignorance and unawareness, even if a criminal or a sinner is really aware of the results of his actions and deeds, he would never ever do anything bad. And a person, who is aware of good and bad, tries to do the good things and always tries to stop doing the wrong and bad things. And Socrates associated knowledge with virtue, and virtue is directly associated with pleasure and happiness, a man, who truly knows the difference between right and wrong and is familiar with virtue will never do anything bad, and will always try to do good things which will make him happy and will add pleasure in his life (Sahakia n, Ideas of the Great Philosophers. pp 32-33). Aristotle was a famous philosopher, and according to him, ethical system is "self-realizationism". He gave an idea that when a person acts according to his nature and his true self, then he will do well and will be happy with doing it. He said that unhappiness and frustration develops the unrealized potential or prospective of a person, and it further leads to the failure of achieving goals in life, which increases the frustration inside the man. He emphasized on the idea that every person acts in accordance with his or her nature and it is the only way to live a happy life, all the facilities of life and also the moral values are dependent on this. So the self-realization is more necessary and helps in other aspects of life. Like Socrates, he also emphasized on the self-awareness, which will make the person realize his true self and will help him in making decisions. And he said that man should not only live, but should live well with behaviors, which are directed by the moderate v irtue, and the concept of virtue is same as given by the Socrates. "Virtue denotes doing the right thing, to the right person, at the right time, to the proper extent, in the correct fashion, for the right reason." (Sahakian, Ideas of the Great Philosophers. pp 32-33). Describing ethics in people behavior is not so difficult, because it is the way that people behave. People usually say that they think of the things, which are bad, and they know this properly. Despite knowing that the act is wrong, they will keep on doing it and will never realize that they are doing the same thing, which they think is wrong. For example, almost all the people agree that stealing is wrong and many people agree that it is a crime, but they still download hundreds of songs, in the format of .mp3, audio or even different images from the web, which is not legal