Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric

Since class started, I found Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics the most interesting and intriguing.  In preparation for this blog, I did more reading and analyzing and actually made a connection that I had embarrassingly not before: Aristotle’s concept of virtue in Nicomachean Ethics is directly related to his concept of ethos in rhetoric.  

The English word ethics directly comes from the Greek word ethos.  Ethos simply means character.  In order to be a successful rhetorician, it is important to possess concrete ethos, or good character.  Honorable ethos is constituted by virtues, so a virtuous person has good character – a good person exhibits all virtues.

According to Aristotle, a good person either possesses all virtues or none, though some may be more predominant in someone’s character than others.  Aristotle’s definition of a good person is someone who is happy, and the end goal is Supreme Good.  A person achieves Supreme Good when he or she lives his or her life in accordance with virtue.  “A good person will always behave in a virtuous manner.”  A good person won’t ever engage in “mean-spiritedness” even if provoked.  

“So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, by that which a prudent man would use to determine it.”  In other words, virtue isn’t a feeling.  Feelings move us to act a certain way, but virtue positions us to act a certain way.  Virtue determines the way we behave.  There is intellectual virtue and moral virtue.  Intellectual virtue is learned by instruction, and moral virtue is learned by habit and practice.  Aristotle says that everyone is born with the opportunity to be morally virtuous, but a good person behaves this way as much as possible to train himself or herself to be morally virtuous.  I think ethos is more correlated with moral virtue, because a person that sticks to his or her word is given credibility.

Aristotle says that a virtuous person “chooses to behave in the right way.”  The only fault I find in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is that his concept of a good person and virtue is all easier said than done (sorry for the cliché).  Also, I suppose I find fault in in it, because of my Christian beliefs.  Simply being a good person does not bring you ultimate happiness, although it does help, because we are all sinners; no one is perfect.  I think it is possible to be a good person and possess virtue and ethos without behaving in the perfect manner.  In my opinion, the Supreme Good is Jesus Christ. Everything that Aristotle describes as a good person in Nicomachean Ethics, describes a person that possesses ethos, as in rhetoric. 

  
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Loeb-Harvard UP,                1975. 3-25 (Book I, Chapters 1-6), 117-141 (Book III, Chapters 1-3).