Moral and Intellectual Virtue - Research Paper Example

Happiness It is rational to that pleasure is part of good and virtuous life; pleasure is part of human life since leads to happiness. Happiness in life can only be viewed as an activity rather than a deposition; it is searched for its own benefits and not the benefit of any other thing. In life, all moral or virtuous activities, which share these similar characteristics, are happy actions. There are two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual virtue. A good life for human beings is the life that is active and working well in a manner that is unique and significant to people (Ignacio 56). I think increased choice does not make us happy, and therefore, individual choices should not be paternalistically restricted because happiness is not the highest aim of human conduct. There are those actions which add to pleasurable activities that cannot be taken as always right. Moral virtue does not imply end of life since life can continue with unhappiness, misery, and inactivity. Therefore, moral virtues are gained by behaving virtuously but they can be damaged by either defect or excess. People are free to determine what type of self they will have, what type of people they will be. For instance, people are free to be frivolous or serious, selfish or selfless (Ignacio 67). The most significant thing is that at least one should be in a position to maintain the goal of maximal self-determination as a desirable moral and psychological state. Hence, a fully self-determined person is one that is unconstrained by biology, social constructions or by habit. Such a person will operate without constraints, which in turn enables him or her to make choices in the world to maximize his or her preferences in maintaining tenets of rational choice (Mike 42). Happiness is the central core of living, which depends entirely on cultivation of virtues. Playing the mean is the way of cultivating virtues that includes moral virtues for the attainment of individual happiness. Playing the mean is the virtue between two extreme excesses and deficiency. For instance, exercising the act of justice in getting too little or getting too much. Therefore, human beings make choices depending on the circumstances that surround them by choosing on one option and neglecting the other. The task of ethics or tenets of rational choice were to come up with the highest and the best good that is found in human life. Thus, all human activities always aim at some recognized higher end that we always consider as good. Most activities that human beings incur in life are a means of attaining a higher end. He discussed the nature of vices and virtues that are involved in evaluating morals, the conditions that ascribes moral responsibility towards an individual agent and the methods that one incurs to achieve happiness in life (Greve 96). According to rational choice theory, human beings have well ordered preferences that are significantly impervious to variations in the manner the alternative they experience are defined or the manner in which they are bundled. Therefore, people experience a variety of options or alternatives in life. With these options, they have to choose the one that they prefer as good. With increased options, they compare the alternatives to one another on a single scale of preference or utility or value. After conducting comparisons, people decide so to maximize their preferences. Human self is seen as a bundle of preferences that happen to coexist inside a single skin, and self-determination is the unfettered pursuit of those preferences. Happiness or pleasure is not good in itself because it is incomplete according to its nature. The activities that people engage in are associated with their own distinctive pleasures. Therefore, human beings are guided in nature by their choice or preference for participating in pleasant activities rather than in unpleasant activities (Greve 96). True happiness lies in the behavior that leads to virtue, since this alone provides genuine value and not just amusement. Thus, contemplation is the highest form of ethical activity because it is self-reliant, complete, and continuous which eventually leads to true happiness. Every activity poses a final cause and the aim for the same good. In life, it is difficult to get an infinite regress that is associated with extrinsic goods and thus, there must be the highest good, which all-human activities aim. This is referred to as happiness and the complexities that is involved in actualizing it. Things that are of any variety, acquires characteristic function, which they later perform. Virtues are opposed to intellectual capacity and thus virtues of characters are due to dispositions to act in a given way in response to some similar situations and the habits that one has which makes him behave in a certain way. Good conduct arises from habits, which can be acquired through recurring actions and corrections. This in turn makes ethics a practical discipline. Each virtue is a state that naturally seeks its own means, which is relative in nature. The virtuous habit of any action is an intermediate state between opposed vices of deficiency and excess (Mike 59). Flexibility is paramount as friendliness is far from deficiency than its excesses. This is because few human beings are inclined naturally to undervalue pleasure. Therefore, it is unusual to ignore or overlook of the extremes but to regard the virtue opposite the other vices. The current information on control, depression, and helplessness suggests that freedom of choice is not it is cracked up to be, at least not with respect to psychological well-being. For instance, the story of weight and diet where people know that they can do little about body weight and diet, the culture reveals to us that obesity is a matter of choice, personal control, and personal responsibility. An individual is challenged to look good and that if we do not we have ourselves to blame (Greve 159). Human beings like other animals are adapted to a particular state of struggle for life and the mere lack or absence of effort or energy from life eliminates an important ingredient of happiness (Satchidananda 85). Therefore, the hardship or difficulties of life may frustrate us. As such, we should realize and learn to appreciate the challenges that life presents. Without life difficulties, we would be bored and probably be unhappy. However, Russell asserts that human beings should try their best to overcome these difficulties since failure to overcome them will lead to unhappiness. In my own opinion, I think that every person in society would like to have a good life. As such, pleasure is part of good and virtuous life; pleasure is part of human life since it leads to happiness. Therefore, happiness in life can only be viewed as an activity and it is not a deposition; it is searched for its own benefits and not the benefit of any other thing (Holowchak 189). Happy people are those without inner division or feelings against the society. They should be attached to themselves and the world too in order to gain happiness. Desires can at times be a nuisance and can easily drive one to trouble especially in cases where there exist two impulses. For instance, the initial desire can push one to purchase beautiful things but on the other hand, the second impulse that one should not buy them but if one follows the first impulse of desire, she or he is likely to go broke (Sissela 74). However, the desire based on one’s basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing are more reasonable and should be dealt with without a second thought (Holowchak 200). Desire to some extent can be negative or positive depending on the situation or one’s background. For example, there is no harm for one from a successful background to desire a car as it will assist in operating his or her daily activities. However, for one from a poor background it can be troublesome as this brings an uncomfortable feeling to the surrounding population such as being jealous but to the owner the car brings fulfillment and enjoyment (Sissela 82-85). Self-satisfaction alone does not determine the negativity or positivity of a desire or an activity. All the non-virtuous actions committed by people may appear to be a feeling of satisfaction at the time of action but that cannot justify the actions (McMahon 993). Therefore, the ultimate consequence of the action is the determinant of the positivity or negativity of the action (Schwartz 236). There are two ways of obtaining inner fulfillment and that is happiness. One way is by acquiring anything that one needs and desires for instance; finance shelters, cars, the perfect partner, and body. However, according to Lama, if one’s desires and wants are not monitored, later on, one will run against something that he or she wants but cannot get. The reliable way to acquire happiness is not to possess what we want but instead to want and appreciate what we got already. Happy life to an extent can be viewed as good life. However, professional moralists have excessively turned it into self-denial and thus emphasizing in the wrong area (Ziyad 118). Despite the fact that virtues are habits of disposition, which act in a definite way. Habits are acquired when one engages in suitable conduct on definite situations and that in so doing; it requires that one think about what one engages in doing that action in a given way. Furthermore, no demonstrative knowledge of sort employment in aesthetics and science judgment in relation to craft is relevant to morality. The understanding can be applied to exploring the origin of things while wisdom traces any demonstrable connections, which are among them (Ziyad 125). Modern rational choice asserts that the assumption of complete information is unrealistic. Rather than assuming that people posses all the necessary information for making choices, rational theorists perceive information in itself as good, something that has a value or price and is suitable for consumption together with traditional goods. Summarily, despite the fact that we exist in a world where everything is matter of choice, we do not have to choose what is not pleasant. Further, were we to live in a world of choices, our systems of rational choice would be overwhelmed rather than empowered. Works Cited Ignacio, Gotz. Conception of Happiness. New York: University Press of America, 2009. Print. Sissela, Bok. Exploring happiness: From Aristotle to brain science. Yale: Yale University Press, 2010. Print. Greve, Bent. Happiness. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print. Ziyad, Marar. The happiness paradox. London: Reaktion Books, 2004. Print. Holowchak, Andrew. Happiness and Greek ethical thought. London: Continum international publishing, 2004. Print. Mike, Martin. Happiness and good life. Cary: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print. Schwartz, Benjamin. Self determination: The tyranny of freedom. New York: Swarthmore College, 2003. Print. Satchidananda, Swami. How to find happiness. Buckingham: Integral Yoga Publishing, 2011. 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