Aristotle's ethics is a common sense ethics built on naturalism
and self-realization. Of all the classical theories considered
here, his is the farthest from an ethics of self-interest. I. With
respect to the good, right, happiness, the good is not a
disposition.
Main Points of Aristotle's Ethical Philosophy-
The highest good and the end toward which all human activity is
directed is happiness, which can be defined as continuous
contemplation of eternal and universal truth.
One attains happiness by a virtuous life and the development of
reason and the faculty of theoretical wisdom. For this one requires
sufficient external goods to ensure health, leisure, and the
opportunity for virtuous action.
Moral virtue is a relative mean between extremes of excess and
deficiency, and in general the moral life is one of moderation in
all things except virtue. No human appetite or desire is bad if it
is controlled by reason according to a moral principle. Moral
virtue is acquired by a combination of knowledge, habituation, and
self-discipline.
Virtuous acts require conscious choice and moral purpose or
motivation. Man has personal moral responsibility for his
actions.
Moral virtue cannot be achieved abstractly — it requires moral
action in a social environment. Ethics and politics are closely
related, for politics is the science of creating a society in which
men can live the good life and develop their full potential.
The entire Greek political thought revolves around the
important concept of justice. This is an abstract concept and is
difficult to define it in fixed terms, as it is viewed differently
by different thinkers. But for Aristotle, justice is of two types,
viz., universal justice and particular justice. The former refers
to obedience to laws—that one should be virtuous.
Distributive Justice:-Aristotle was of the opinion that this
form of justice is the most powerful law to prevent any revolution,
as this justice believes in proper and proportionate allocation of
offices, honours, goods and services as per their requirement being
a citizen of the state.
This justice is mostly concerned with political privileges.
Aristotle advocated that every political organization must have its
own distributive justice.
He, however, rejected democratic as well as oligarchic criteria
of justice and permitted the allocation of offices to the virtuous
only owing to their highest contributions to the society, because
the virtuous people are few. Aristotle believed that most of the
offices should be allocated to those few only.
Corrective Justice:-All laws related to commercial transactions
are dealt within the remedial and corrective actions. It aims to
restore what an individual had lost due to the injustice of the
society. This justice prevents from encroachments of one right over
the other.
Aristotle opined that corrective justice relates to voluntary
and commercial activities such as hire, sale and furnishing
security. These actions involve aggression on life, property, honor
and freedom. In brief, this justice aims at virtue and moral
excellence of character and it is for this reason, it is called
corrective justice.