Habbits and Friendship according to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

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Habits and Friendship according to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
The Framework of Virtue by Aristotle
Aristotle argues that virtue is not a just capacity nor a feeling, but an established temperament to respond to the desires in a manner beneficial to the agent working properly as a human being. Actions with virtue need to be pleasurable in themselves, since if people trust in behaving in a given manner, they need to adore acting that way. Consequently, it is most useful for people to establish a dislike and a like for the right and moral things and such outlooks will be inbuilt through practice. The moral or good is not present in declining disposition, but in pursuing an appropriately cultivated disposition (Badiou 287). According to Aristotle, it is not of critical significance that people pursue their roles, but, instead, how they live. Besides, Aristotle mentions that “the virtue ethics has the benefit over a consequentialist model that it provides an explanation for what it would be like to be an agent pursuing the concept” (Badiou 287).
A virtue ethic is concentrated on advancing the morality of the agent’s personality as opposed to that of their particular behaviors. It views deeds as rich signs of the individual people are opting to become; that people as creatures of depth, develop themselves. Virtuous practices have more stability than all other deeds as it is in the activities that those who are truly joyful most completely and frequently spend their lives.

Showing the virtuous way is a form of involving in an activity, a morally educated demeanor that interconnects with persons’ behaviors to offer the existential character of eudaemonia (Badiou 290).
The Principle of the Mean
According to Aristotle, people get to understand the virtues through the act of the creed of the mean and acting that way is itself dependent upon the phronesis virtue. The principle describes the nature of virtue as the practice that is situated at a mean between the immoralities of deficiency and excess that are faced with each particular type of action or sense. Aristotle provided the instance of the virtue courage located between the immoralities of timidity and recklessness. The trinity design of the immoralities on one end, virtue, and immoralities on the other end, relates to all goodness, rather than the intellectual, virtues (Badiou 298). Furthermore, the mean is not essentially to be lying close to the halfway between its excesses. Further, it is comparative to specific settings, that is, to people and situations. A virtuously quantitative reading of the principle of mean would, consequently, be inappropriate. For example, Aristotle cautions that ten pounds of food may be in excess and two pounds too deficient; it does not imply that six pounds of food are the correct quantity for everyone. Intrinsically, the mean needs not to be equated with moderation to a large extent with the practice that is most suitable for the particular circumstance.
Moreover, Aristotle highlights that the virtues, such as trades, are practical expertise where experience make people more skillful at escaping deficiency and excess. In fact, individuals are frequently just able to develop the mean by tentative trial and error. After people have become proficient at reaching the mean, they will do the same in pertinently comparable circumstances and, so, the principle of the mean is not considered particularist, i.e. there are common laws to be observed. The commencement of the mean by Aristotle is acknowledged via emphasizing the superiority of prudence in pursuing all moral virtues (Badiou 298). Although familiarity with the immoralities as extremes will help people in their target for the mean, the broader inference of the principle of the mean is that just via the use of reason to experience can individuals come to understand the right practices. Aristotle mentions that, “Similar to this, then, is thinking it right that, as regards committing injustice, being a coward, and acting licentiously, there is a mean, an excess, and a deficiency: in this way there will be a mean, an excess and of a deficiency, an excess of an excess, and a deficiency of a deficiency” (Badiou 299).
Aristotle also recommends that people frequently prevent the vices that are more in opposition to the virtue being discussed, in such a way that it is easier for people to meet the mean. However, individuals must still be careful of the fact that the vice is closer to the respective virtue than it is easier for people to get stuck in, particularly if it is the one in which they take greater preference. The idea of the existing two vices is used to avoid people from substituting one type of vice with another form, for instance, migrating to asceticism as a refutation of hedonism, and this is the way Aristotle advocates his temperate argument on the quest for desire (Badiou 300).
Aristotle’s Role of Friendship
The focus of Aristotle in regards to friendship is to depict the close association between virtuous acts and friendship. Aristotle is justifying his notion of happiness as virtuous acts by illustrating how nourishing are the links that a virtuous individual can usually expect to obtain. When two persons appreciate that the another individual is a person of moral personality, and they spend time together, involve in duties that employ their virtues, then they create one type of friendship. If these individuals are equally virtuous, their relationship is perfect. However, if there is a large margin in their moral advancement, then, while their friendship may be centered on the other individual’s moral personality, it will be imperfect exactly as a result of their inequality (Badiou 304).
The deficient friendships that Aristotle emphasizes on, nevertheless, are not imbalanced associations centered on moral personality. Instead, they are associations kept intact since each person respects the other individual as the origin of some benefit to himself or some desires he or she attains. The imperfect relationships are deficient and have a smaller obligation to be named friendships since the persons concerned have little faith in each other, often clash, and are willing to disengage their relationship shortly (Badiou 308). Aristotle implies that the unequal associations centered on personality are defective by noting that individuals are friends in the fullest perspective when they gladly spend time together in common tasks, and this regular and close contact is less accessible to people who are not the same in their moral progression.
Aristotle perceives that the quest for one’s happiness, well grasped, calls for ethically virtuous exercise and will, consequently, be of great significance to one’s friends and the broader political society. He claims that self-love is anabsolutely proper feeling, as long as it is shown in the love of virtue. Self-love is truly doomed when it is included in the quest for the portion of external morals, especially authority and wealth, as one can attain since such self-love unavoidably delivers one into a disagreement with others and weakens the permanence of the political society. Aristotle notes that “the person lacking self- restraint acts out of desire, but he does not do so from choice; the self- restrained person, conversely, acts from choice but not out of desire” (Badiou 310).
Furthermore, friendship plays a role in enhancing individual value. Accordingly, friendship is enjoyable as such together with valuable to the friends. Friendship helps encourage self-esteem that is good instrumentally and intrinsically. Also, friendship is a significant source of moral quality specifically as it fundamentally involves performing on behalf of one’s friend, a type of behavior that can have substantial moral value (Badiou 300).

Works Cited
Badiou, Alain. “Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: A New Translation by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins.” (2012): 238-312.