Ethics is one of the oldest disciplines, the object of which includes ethics and morality. Ethics studies the place of morality in other social relations, analyzes its nature and internal structure, explores its origins and historical development, and theoretically substantiates its systems. Since 300 BC when the ethics was firstly designated as a special area of study till the present day, the interest in understanding does not get subsided. Such philosophers as Aristotle and Kant addressed to ethical issues at various times. Their views on ethics were different and so are of particular interest for the research.
The identification of morality with the moral character of individuals, and relevant to them usual patterns of behavior, for the first time was reasonably deployed and almost exhaustively theoretically formalized by Aristotle. Aristotle distinguished in man a specific group of qualities, which apply to his ethos (character and disposition) and differ from the qualities of body and mind. These qualities (or virtues, which are understood as good qualities or the best condition of anything) he called the ethical and science about them – ethics.
Ethical virtues, according to Aristotle, are an expression of identity of active principle in man. The soul of man, according to Aristotle has a complex structure, composed of rational and irrational parts (Broadie, 1993). Ethical virtues arise at the interfaces of these parts and make an area of their intersection and interaction. They are not peculiar to either to gods or animals, because the gods have no affect, and the animals don’t have the mind. Ethical virtues reflect the actual human nature in man, the correct operation of the soul, when its sensible and affective parts are connected together so that the first dominates, while the second follows its instructions just as a son obeys his father. They record reasonably participative nature of the human soul in its perfect expression.
Aristotle...