The Christian Vanguard

Here is the last assignment on Aristotle I turned in for my class. Footnotes have been omitted. I'm done with this class. Booyah.  Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics is primarily concerned with what the good, or best, life is. Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics is primarily concerned with what the virtuous life is, which is what the best life is to have been as discovered in Book I. Aristotle develops this by first noting that all acts have some end to which they aim. But even these aims may have a greater aim for which they strive for, so there must be some final end where all the striving is terminated. Aristotle found that it is happiness which all other things strive for. In order to find out what makes us happy, Aristotle wants to know what the end of man is since a good man is he who functions well. That function, which is a rational activity of his human soul, is to be virtuous. Having laid down the more broad inquiry of what kind of life we should be striving for, he then...

I turned this in for a class assignment. Footnotes have not been included.  Aristotle recognizes that generally, men say that happiness is the highest of goods to which men aim. However, since some men say that to have health or wealth when one is sick or poor is happiness, or that some ideal above those appetitive pleasures is what happiness is, the disagreement among men makes it unclear as to what the answer is. So, Aristotle points out that there is an end to which all ends strive. A man practices medicine to obtain health, but what is the end of health? The end of strategy is victory, but what is the end of victory? All these ends have a final end, or good, to which they strive. It is final in the sense that the line of questioning or justification terminates there. That end for which other ends strive has nothing else which it strives for. This is what happiness is. It does not make sense to ask what it is that happiness strives for. It is an end unto itself. Since happi...

Another assignment for my class. Footnotes have been omitted.  Aristotle thinks it is important to ascertain the function of a man because human happiness is an end of an action. So in order to know what is good and bad for human happiness, we must know what mans function is. To determine what it's function is, we have to determine what kind of soul it has. If the function of a flute player is to play the flute, then playing the flute well is what makes the flute player a good flute player. Likewise with man, whatever our function is, doing that function well is what makes us a good man. The powers and function of man is not to be found in the body alone, but in the soul since material bodies are just potentiality and souls is what actualizes the matter into the kind of bodies that they are. So, as body-soul composites are those which exist by nature, that is they have an internal principle of change, they also have an end, or function. Further, for anything that has a form it ...

The following is a short assignment I turned in for my class. Footnotes are omitted.  Aristotle’s argument for teleology is a disjunctive syllogism. Things are either a result of a coincidence or an end. Things are not the result of coincidences. Therefore, they are a result of an end. Aristotle considers a problem of explaining why things happen. Rain happens but it does so not for the sake of the crops, which do benefit from the rainfall. If it can be said that it happens out of necessity, that is for material causes devoid of final causes, why should it not be said for all else that we think would have an end, like teeth? According to this view, the reason these things are observed is because those with those incidental features happened to survive. Aristotle’s argument against this is to say that it cannot explain why these things, if they are accidents, why they happen regularly. Coincidental causes, as they are causes without an end for the sake of which they strive, can...

A few days ago, I wrote about my experiences and confusion about kissing . I called it pointless because there didn't seem to be a final cause to it, but this just means I've emphasized this to the exclusion of the more phenomenal aspects to it. I focused on the final cause and purpose to the body parts and their acts, and thereby reduced the person to mere body parts. I suppose what I forgot was that when we kiss, or at least when I kiss, I kiss you because as you are an object of beauty, I want to be united to you not just as a body, but to you embodied, the distinction being that you are more than a sum of your parts. 

I had often wondered whether the hours long make out sessions with my then girlfriend were occasions to sin . We figured they were, so for that, and a few other reasons, we decided to slow down, a lot. This was interesting for me because I've never kissed a girl like that before, and to go from basically no experience to nearly crashing and burning, it had me thinking: What the heck is kissing? Like, okay, it's when one person presses their lips against someone else, generally on the lips as well, or maybe the cheek, or maybe even the forehead. But like, what does it do?  So, like, sex. We know what sex is, and we can describe it in such a way that refers to the final cause of sex, which is procreation. To refer to sex without final causes is to be a somewhat deficient explanation of what sex is. What then is the point of kissing? I can't figure it out. Why the lips? Why not my index finder? I mean, sure, me poking your face over and over again with my finger is probab...