Golden Library of Ancient Greece Volume 10 – Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Part B

Aristotle, in his work “Nicomachean Ethics”, believes that man is the highest living organism of all. Based on this belief, he systematized the concept of virtue, which is the highest acquired good for people - a person does not have it from birth, but can acquire various virtues during his life, which in essence shapes his ethos and character. He believes that the powers that man possesses are three, the passions, the powers and the exis (ex, future I have). The virtues are the way in which we experience and manifest the passions and are acquired through habit, ethos, over a long period of time. Virtue, therefore, is linked to exis, which is a state of character that can be conquered. Virtue can be acquired not only by right reason, which helps one find the mean, but also by real and not barren knowledge, which according to Aristotle is the main purpose of one's research and pursuit. The purpose, therefore, is the existence of goals for which efforts are made to be fulfilled, so that virtue is acquired each time. Another basic condition is the observance of the mean (meson), that is, the existence of the measure based on which the extremes of deficiency (ellipsis) or excess (hyperbolin) are avoided. Therefore, by following this path, man becomes good by approaching the perfection and the idea (daemon) of the soul that Aristotle calls bliss (eutphia). Bliss is the highest good, the achievement of which all individual goods aim.