Aristotle’s View on Virtue with Respect to Education
To understand anything in life you need to understand nature. We need to understand purpose, or “teleous” in Greek, which is our function. All things by nature have a function and when something serves its function well, it is a good thing. The function of an object is to do its basic purpose such as a knife being able to cut. If the knife cannot cut, it does not serve its purpose and therefore does not need to be around and take up space. The function of a human being is to reason because according to Aristotle, man is the rational animal. So we ask this question, “If a human being cannot reason, does it need to be around and take up space?” The virtuous life, or good life, is the reasonable life. According to Aristotle, as long as we reason well we are good human beings. Virtue is a state that consists of a mean relative to us and consistent with reason. With respect to education it is believed that some things you are born with and some things you are taught. To live a good life we must consider intellectual virtues, virtues of character, and virtue as a whole.
Intellectual virtues are virtues of thought, which some of these you are born with and some are taught to us. These virtues consist of prudence and wisdom. Prudence is forethought, where you plan in advance because you need to see beyond the moment and get ready for the future. With respect to education, this is something we are born with because it is something in our mind that controls our prudence. Wisdom is accumulated knowledge on a subject and this is definitely something that we are born with. You can learn a lot about a subject, which would make you knowledgeable, but having wisdom is something you are born with. Whatever it is, it comes to you naturally. Intellectual virtues are those that we are born with and cannot be taught to, and not everybody contains them.
Virtues of character are virtues that are taught to us at any age,...