Moralis Atque Natura Humana
On Living A Good Life
In every living thing in nature, each has the potential to live well, each according to their own capacity. For human beings, the development of our perceptive, cognitive and how effective we are in the world to the development of the lesser in plants and animals is observable. For plants, a flourishing life is simply a matter of growth, nutrition and reproduction. For animals, living well involves perception, sociability and locomotion in their environment. As humans, we identify our happiness and living well with virtuous activity. The soul gives us the capability to do greater than other forms of life as our emotional repertoire enables us to achieve a life of greater depth, happiness and meaning than what is obtainable to animals and plants. To make full use of these potentialities, requires a long process of habituation, practical wisdom, development and learning. We should deliberate on what is most useful for all living things, living for one's improvement and benefit, the flourishing of one’s natural faculties.
Everyone's life has a purpose and the function of one's life is to attain that purpose as the end. The purpose of one's life is human flourishing and happiness that can be achieved by reason and obtaining virtue. To flourish and achieve happiness, we must have a clear understanding of the highest good towards which our life aims, each human being should use their abilities to their absolute fullest potential and should obtain happiness, health and enjoyment through the exercise of their capacities. Human achievements are endowed by purpose and personal autonomy and everyone should take pride in excelling in what they do. Everyone has a natural desire to pursue moral excellence and purpose through action. The proper function of every human being is to live well and this is done through the exercise of one's capacity. Human flourishing is the highest good of aspirations and that toward which all actions aim.
Happiness consists of human flourishing and can be viewed as the condition of living right. To flourish and to be happy involves one being virtuous. People enjoy the exercise of their realised capacities and this enjoyment increases the more that their capacities are realised. Values, reason and emotions help a person to identify what motivates them to act. A virtuous person has a cognitive disposition, which they act to gain what is actually of value to their life. Living a life of virtue is needed for one’s purpose and one’s purpose is a necessity for one’s happiness. The good is what is good for purposeful entities, the activities in which the life functions are most fully realised. A person's nature provides them with the guidance to how they should live their best life, capable of acting according to principles, taking responsibility for their choices and actions that follow. The highest human good consists of good human functioning and that is parallel to the good exercise of the faculty of reason.
A human being’s flourishing requires the use of their individual human potential including their virtues and abilities in the pursuit of their chosen goals and values. Every action a person does is only proper if it leads to the flourishing of the person performing it, and as a result, their flourishing leads to their happiness. What is significant is how each individual manages their own scope of potentialities rather than their past tendencies. Everyone should have the greatest chance to choose their own way of life in accordance to each of their desires and decisions made by them. A good life is one in which a person develops their own strengths in terms of development, realises their own potential and to pursue who they desire to become. The pursuit of happiness is something personal and real for everyone, it is a goal that continues to the end of life with new opportunities that arise along the way and is liberated and directed through the use of reason. This activity must occupy a complete lifetime.
Virtue As A Disposition
The virtuous life is a matter of trying to determine the kind of people we should be and to attend to the development of character within ourselves and the world we live in. The virtues are the essence of our character and our character determine our destiny. The two kinds of virtues are the intellectual and the moral. The intellectual virtues include wisdom, intelligence, prudence, rationality, intuition and reason, and are acquired by inheritance and education and can be taught formally, they involve the knowledge and the understanding of causes and ends. The moral virtues include courage, liberality, magnificence, honour, truthfulness and friendship, and can only acquired through practice, habit and experience, they involve acquiring habits of character and have to do with the appropriate management of emotions. A person who has developed virtues will be naturally disposed to act in ways that are consistent with moral principles.
Virtues are states of character that find expression both in purpose and in action. They are developed and strengthened through experience and intelligent habits, moral virtue is expressed in good purpose, moral excellence. It is not adequate to just know the proper thing to do, one must also have a strong desire to do it and actually act on it. A virtuous action is much more than being composed and disciplined, it involves the person taking pleasure in the activity that they do. The virtuous person experiences the virtuous action as a harmonious expression of their character including their emotion and reasoning. One’s virtues are fragments of their good qualities, they are not inborn but acquired by practice and lost by neglect. Virtue is determined by the right reason and virtuous action is the result of successful practical reasoning. Our virtues play an essential role in living a good way of life.
The concept of moral responsibility is foundational to ethics, because people should take certain actions and those actions require a choice which determines the action taken, for which they are responsible for. The main answer to how moral responsibility emerge is the freedom of our will as our actions are voluntary with reason behind them, rather than solely a product of instinct. The concept of choice arises as voluntary, something that we consciously choose to do and is an integral part of our moral responsibility, since it is involves the human capacity to deliberate. Human beings must deliberate about which action to take when our habits that we have formed do not clearly apply. Through deliberation, we deliberate about things that can be done that are in our power by what means the desired result is to obtained. The action involved in choice is our deliberate desire, as in order to have chosen a course of action we must have a desire for it.
We ourselves are responsible for our states of character, as habits and states of character emerge from the repetition of certain types of action. Since all individuals are rational, each individual is responsible for the deliberation that leads to their choices. The act of deliberation is under volitional containment and gives rise to the notion of moral responsibility. As we develop over time, we gradually obtain the capacity to deliberate about the best means to achieve a certain desire. In fact, such deliberation becomes absolutely necessary for life and happiness as we develop and our needs expand. Consequently, moral responsibility emerges from the necessity of deliberation in order to achieve happiness. As deliberation gives rise to choice and because choice ultimately contours states of character. A person should be more concerned with their fitness to achieve their desires than with the attainment of the desires themselves. A person needs to pursue rational efforts in pursuing the good and in taking control of their own life.
The Sphere Of Ethics
Our ethical insight and knowledge is grounded in our human nature. As human beings, we have a nature that rules how we act, the refinement of our nature is our end. In essence, we are directed to our moral development and personal enrichment by improving ourselves. The end and meaning of our life is to live rationally and to develop both the moral and intellectual virtues, the fundamental attributes to our human nature, the development of which leads to our flourishing. Our human flourishing is always distinguished and there is an indivisible association between our interest in ourselves and virtue. The virtuous person continuously uses practical wisdom in the pursuit of the good life. We desire and need to gain a knowledge of virtue in order to become virtuous, moral and content. The contrast of a good person is to take pleasure in moral action as flourishing transpires when a person is doing what they should do and what they want to do. We receive our capacities from nature but nature does not cause us to develop into a good people. Since virtues are not capacities, they belong to the genus known as dispositions.
Understanding and practical wisdom operate in the same area even though they are different things. Theoretical wisdom is the knowledge of the things that don't ever change, things that are the highest by nature. Practical wisdom gives instruction, since its aim is to tell us what we should and shouldn't do, and understanding intervenes on these kind of instructions. Practical wisdom is the result of experience, but good sense is an inborn attribute, just as our natural intellect can develop into theoretical wisdom, our natural good sense can develop into practical wisdom. While virtue makes us choose the right ends, practical wisdom makes us choose the right means. As practical wisdom involves moral virtue, moral virtue involves practical wisdom and it is impossible to develop moral virtue without the profound training in practical wisdom. It enables us to choose the right means for achieving the right ends as decided by virtue. A person with practical wisdom controls their natural and instinctive impulses and takes control of their own life to the highest good with a balanced development of their moral character.
As an ethical approach, we must investigate the nature of virtue and learn through experience to discover, consider for ourselves and determine the particulars of the conditions of every situation. People acquire virtues through practice and that a set of existing virtues can lead us toward our natural excellence. Matters of conduct are not only found in dealing with particular cases of conduct, but also with respect to the general ethical theory. Everyone has a natural capacity for good character and this capacity is developed through practice, our character is the structure of habits and is produced by what we do. States of character are connected to the process of habituation as neither can they be taught nor do they naturally exist in us. Intellectual virtue is a process in which it owes its creation and its growth to teaching, for it is a matter of obtaining knowledge and using our mind in the right way. Those states of character which form moral virtue need the proper mental, emotional, and physical activity, they involve deliberating in the right way, feeling pleasure in virtuous action and performing the virtuous action.
States of character have two significant attributes, those existing by nature and those existing by choice. The natural attributes obtain the potentiality and later manifest the activity, while in the case of those identified by choice, we acquire them by exercising them. The faculties of our senses, by which help us understand and perceive the world around us, exist by nature. As soon as we develop and acquire the potentiality for such activity, the activity naturally follows, we do not have to practice hearing in order to hear or practice seeing in order to see. Contrarily, learning to walk is an activity characterised by choice, for it is not naturally accomplished once a certain level of physical development has been attained. We learn to walk by actually practicing walking and repeating the whole process of it over and over again until the action becomes a second nature to us. As virtue is distinguished by choice, it as an action that we learn by doing. Virtue does not naturally occur within us, as our senses do, but rather a state of character we can develop only by exercising it over time.
The Virtue Of Magnanimity
Greatness of soul, is the heart of the virtue that is magnanimity. It is an essential virtue for every human being who desires to do great in their lives. The magnanimous person pursues greatness in proportion to their ability, has attitude of benevolence and takes delight in doing great deeds. Such a person attempts and achieves great things because they are appropriate expressions of the excellence that they possess. The magnanimous person is the greatest in each virtue. It is a sort of crowning ornament to the virtues, for it makes them greater, and it does not arise without them. It is impossible to be magnanimous without being noble and good. The magnanimous person is distinguished by their actions and attitude towards what comes their way. The right concern with one's own worth involves not only grasping it but valuing it and the desire to fulfill its complete potential. The magnanimous person's concern for great things is more immense than a concern to obtain external goods, more importantly, they are more concerned with aiming at excellent action and are worthy of respect and honour.
The area of courage is an important aspect of life. It governs only situations involving both fear and confidence. To be courageous, one must choose and act rightly. The person of courage acts courageously in the right manner at the right time, endures for the right purpose with the right motivation. The right reason is that courageous acts are conducted with their aim on the correct purpose, the final cause. We praise the courageous person because they are able to endure pain, not because they control themselves from the pleasurable, but because the first is more difficult. The virtuous person performs virtuous acts that are motivated by good desires without any inner conflict. Courage has more to do with fearful things than bold things, although of course it involves both. The courageous person feels fear but their fear does not push them toward cowardly acts, their fear pushes them toward courageous acts. Every activity aims at the end that corresponds to the disposition of which it manifests. For a thing is defined by its end, the courageous person performs actions that manifest courage for the sake of that which is noble.
Magnanimity is a virtue that belongs to great people, and if one is great, then one must be good and completely virtuous. It is a supervening attribute that occurs as a consequence of one achieving a completely virtuous character. The supervening attribute seems to have complementary powers to the extent that it adds something more to a person’s character, and it makes the virtues that gave it birth even more magnificent. The perfect virtue of courage takes on another and superior level of excellence and the same is true for all of the other virtues. The magnanimous person is one who is aware of the excellence that they embody. The good life for human beings is the life of virtue and therefore it is in our interest to be virtuous. In all things, the great souled person is dignified, self aware, courageous, strong, calm and acts only on matters involving great significance. Virtue, honour and self awareness support them from most of what individuals of lesser virtue undergo in their lives. Magnanimity belongs to the completely virtuous person who knows well who they are and their greatness.
It is a guiding principle of the moral virtues. The practical wisdom of magnanimity leads the moral virtues to a beautiful ordering and as it is a source of value for the moral virtues, it makes them greater. The moral virtues are intermediary states that can be expressed at any given moment, magnanimity appears to be the excellence of the soul that is created over time. As the characteristic of our life that gives guidance and value to the moral virtues, as well as it leads us to the highest good, magnanimity is not only worthy of honour, but is the most worthy of honour. To be magnanimous, we must properly understand what we are worthy of and must have the right attitude to our deserved honour. The magnanimous person, is a distinctive individual that is identified by both supreme greatness and moral goodness, bestowing upon them nobility and honour respectively. The dynamic element of magnanimity is our enlightened consideration of self and in possessing true understanding of our own greatness. Human beings can obtain magnanimity as an end of the moral virtues.
Human Nature And Flourishing
Human beings are a unique species who have the ability to establish their cognition, to select and to direct their actions and to create distinctive ways of living. It is in the nature of every human being to have a directional process of self development, conscious striving for their personal endeavours. Human nature entails the individuality of each human being, and because all individual human beings are individualised, each person needs to live in a harmonious way with the individual being that they are. Human nature places the framework of human flourishing, as individual human flourishing is diverse and personal. The virtues initiate direction for our human flourishing but the determination of what kind of flourishing is most desirable for each person requires much consideration of what is distinctive to each individual. Morality is embedded in the nature of rationality. Human choice has the innate potential for human flourishing, the choice to live is a rational choice because of what is the ultimate end for each human being. The proper understanding of our flourishing depends upon our capabilities, our desires, our choices, our interests, circumstances and our biological nature.
Each person must identify the things that are potentially valuable to them and they must take appropriate actions to pursue those things. All of a human beings circumstances and conditions are things for their rationality to consider and to work on as they pursue to live a good life. As well to providing the means to maintain our life, moral values also make our life worth living. The good with respect to our human actions is the fact that they are contributive to our self interest and there is a close relationship between our effective functionings and our well being. It is significant to develop our potential by engaging in meaningful pursuits that are in harmony with our values. Voluntary activities present immense opportunities for increasing our happiness. When the work we do involves rational activity, it can be seen as an ingredient of happiness. A happy person is one who knows that what they have earned is an appropriate reward for their efforts, creations and achievements. Happiness has an intrinsic bond with one’s life as a whole. A human being attains happiness to the degree that their potentialities and their capabilities are rationally utilised over their whole lifetime.
Good action is a substantial part of our happiness and the most flourishing life is a life that includes contemplative activity. Actions should express correct reason and avoid inadequacy. As good human beings, we make the choices that are beneficial and fine to us. When the occasions arise, we are courageous, truthful, generous, innovative, temperate, friendly and magnanimous in the right moments. Pleasure is good for guiding us in moral action, as we desire pleasure for life and life for pleasure. Reason guides the virtuous person, for our life is choice worthy, only a certain kind of life is worth living. The virtues are those states which inspire activities which work out best for ourselves. The intelligent person knows what is good for them, that person is flourishing because of the types of things they do and the ways they do them, they act in accordance with reason and chooses what is expedient. Virtuous actions are the actions that make something that is already choice worthy, even greater, and since pleasure and life are coherent, virtuous actions lead to our pleasure in the result that they bring. We find by reason and by empirical means what is virtuous and how to achieve happiness in our lives.
A good life is a life devoted to the expression of qualities of virtue and passion that exhibit meaning in our lives. The state of our character depends upon the practicing of good actions that in turn actually make us good people. Each individual acts when they are motivated to do so. For a human being, thinking and free will are involved in the action process. Our human nature shows us that we have needs and these needs are the commencement of the motivation pattern and they have a biological foundation. Our values emerge out of the relationship between ourselves and what we require for our well being. A flourishing life depends upon the evaluation and attainment of our values. Our prime moral commitment and interest is to attain our mature state as a flourishing human being. Meraki is the labour of love, to do something with real passion, with absolute devotion and is done with all our heart, the essence of ourselves that is put into what we choose to do and how we live our life.
© Patrick Graven
In every living thing in nature, each has the potential to live well, each according to their own capacity. For human beings, the development of our perceptive, cognitive and how effective we are in the world to the development of the lesser in plants and animals is observable. For plants, a flourishing life is simply a matter of growth, nutrition and reproduction. For animals, living well involves perception, sociability and locomotion in their environment. As humans, we identify our happiness and living well with virtuous activity. The soul gives us the capability to do greater than other forms of life as our emotional repertoire enables us to achieve a life of greater depth, happiness and meaning than what is obtainable to animals and plants. To make full use of these potentialities, requires a long process of habituation, practical wisdom, development and learning. We should deliberate on what is most useful for all living things, living for one's improvement and benefit, the flourishing of one’s natural faculties.
Everyone's life has a purpose and the function of one's life is to attain that purpose as the end. The purpose of one's life is human flourishing and happiness that can be achieved by reason and obtaining virtue. To flourish and achieve happiness, we must have a clear understanding of the highest good towards which our life aims, each human being should use their abilities to their absolute fullest potential and should obtain happiness, health and enjoyment through the exercise of their capacities. Human achievements are endowed by purpose and personal autonomy and everyone should take pride in excelling in what they do. Everyone has a natural desire to pursue moral excellence and purpose through action. The proper function of every human being is to live well and this is done through the exercise of one's capacity. Human flourishing is the highest good of aspirations and that toward which all actions aim.
Happiness consists of human flourishing and can be viewed as the condition of living right. To flourish and to be happy involves one being virtuous. People enjoy the exercise of their realised capacities and this enjoyment increases the more that their capacities are realised. Values, reason and emotions help a person to identify what motivates them to act. A virtuous person has a cognitive disposition, which they act to gain what is actually of value to their life. Living a life of virtue is needed for one’s purpose and one’s purpose is a necessity for one’s happiness. The good is what is good for purposeful entities, the activities in which the life functions are most fully realised. A person's nature provides them with the guidance to how they should live their best life, capable of acting according to principles, taking responsibility for their choices and actions that follow. The highest human good consists of good human functioning and that is parallel to the good exercise of the faculty of reason.
A human being’s flourishing requires the use of their individual human potential including their virtues and abilities in the pursuit of their chosen goals and values. Every action a person does is only proper if it leads to the flourishing of the person performing it, and as a result, their flourishing leads to their happiness. What is significant is how each individual manages their own scope of potentialities rather than their past tendencies. Everyone should have the greatest chance to choose their own way of life in accordance to each of their desires and decisions made by them. A good life is one in which a person develops their own strengths in terms of development, realises their own potential and to pursue who they desire to become. The pursuit of happiness is something personal and real for everyone, it is a goal that continues to the end of life with new opportunities that arise along the way and is liberated and directed through the use of reason. This activity must occupy a complete lifetime.
Virtue As A Disposition
The virtuous life is a matter of trying to determine the kind of people we should be and to attend to the development of character within ourselves and the world we live in. The virtues are the essence of our character and our character determine our destiny. The two kinds of virtues are the intellectual and the moral. The intellectual virtues include wisdom, intelligence, prudence, rationality, intuition and reason, and are acquired by inheritance and education and can be taught formally, they involve the knowledge and the understanding of causes and ends. The moral virtues include courage, liberality, magnificence, honour, truthfulness and friendship, and can only acquired through practice, habit and experience, they involve acquiring habits of character and have to do with the appropriate management of emotions. A person who has developed virtues will be naturally disposed to act in ways that are consistent with moral principles.
Virtues are states of character that find expression both in purpose and in action. They are developed and strengthened through experience and intelligent habits, moral virtue is expressed in good purpose, moral excellence. It is not adequate to just know the proper thing to do, one must also have a strong desire to do it and actually act on it. A virtuous action is much more than being composed and disciplined, it involves the person taking pleasure in the activity that they do. The virtuous person experiences the virtuous action as a harmonious expression of their character including their emotion and reasoning. One’s virtues are fragments of their good qualities, they are not inborn but acquired by practice and lost by neglect. Virtue is determined by the right reason and virtuous action is the result of successful practical reasoning. Our virtues play an essential role in living a good way of life.
The concept of moral responsibility is foundational to ethics, because people should take certain actions and those actions require a choice which determines the action taken, for which they are responsible for. The main answer to how moral responsibility emerge is the freedom of our will as our actions are voluntary with reason behind them, rather than solely a product of instinct. The concept of choice arises as voluntary, something that we consciously choose to do and is an integral part of our moral responsibility, since it is involves the human capacity to deliberate. Human beings must deliberate about which action to take when our habits that we have formed do not clearly apply. Through deliberation, we deliberate about things that can be done that are in our power by what means the desired result is to obtained. The action involved in choice is our deliberate desire, as in order to have chosen a course of action we must have a desire for it.
We ourselves are responsible for our states of character, as habits and states of character emerge from the repetition of certain types of action. Since all individuals are rational, each individual is responsible for the deliberation that leads to their choices. The act of deliberation is under volitional containment and gives rise to the notion of moral responsibility. As we develop over time, we gradually obtain the capacity to deliberate about the best means to achieve a certain desire. In fact, such deliberation becomes absolutely necessary for life and happiness as we develop and our needs expand. Consequently, moral responsibility emerges from the necessity of deliberation in order to achieve happiness. As deliberation gives rise to choice and because choice ultimately contours states of character. A person should be more concerned with their fitness to achieve their desires than with the attainment of the desires themselves. A person needs to pursue rational efforts in pursuing the good and in taking control of their own life.
The Sphere Of Ethics
Our ethical insight and knowledge is grounded in our human nature. As human beings, we have a nature that rules how we act, the refinement of our nature is our end. In essence, we are directed to our moral development and personal enrichment by improving ourselves. The end and meaning of our life is to live rationally and to develop both the moral and intellectual virtues, the fundamental attributes to our human nature, the development of which leads to our flourishing. Our human flourishing is always distinguished and there is an indivisible association between our interest in ourselves and virtue. The virtuous person continuously uses practical wisdom in the pursuit of the good life. We desire and need to gain a knowledge of virtue in order to become virtuous, moral and content. The contrast of a good person is to take pleasure in moral action as flourishing transpires when a person is doing what they should do and what they want to do. We receive our capacities from nature but nature does not cause us to develop into a good people. Since virtues are not capacities, they belong to the genus known as dispositions.
Understanding and practical wisdom operate in the same area even though they are different things. Theoretical wisdom is the knowledge of the things that don't ever change, things that are the highest by nature. Practical wisdom gives instruction, since its aim is to tell us what we should and shouldn't do, and understanding intervenes on these kind of instructions. Practical wisdom is the result of experience, but good sense is an inborn attribute, just as our natural intellect can develop into theoretical wisdom, our natural good sense can develop into practical wisdom. While virtue makes us choose the right ends, practical wisdom makes us choose the right means. As practical wisdom involves moral virtue, moral virtue involves practical wisdom and it is impossible to develop moral virtue without the profound training in practical wisdom. It enables us to choose the right means for achieving the right ends as decided by virtue. A person with practical wisdom controls their natural and instinctive impulses and takes control of their own life to the highest good with a balanced development of their moral character.
As an ethical approach, we must investigate the nature of virtue and learn through experience to discover, consider for ourselves and determine the particulars of the conditions of every situation. People acquire virtues through practice and that a set of existing virtues can lead us toward our natural excellence. Matters of conduct are not only found in dealing with particular cases of conduct, but also with respect to the general ethical theory. Everyone has a natural capacity for good character and this capacity is developed through practice, our character is the structure of habits and is produced by what we do. States of character are connected to the process of habituation as neither can they be taught nor do they naturally exist in us. Intellectual virtue is a process in which it owes its creation and its growth to teaching, for it is a matter of obtaining knowledge and using our mind in the right way. Those states of character which form moral virtue need the proper mental, emotional, and physical activity, they involve deliberating in the right way, feeling pleasure in virtuous action and performing the virtuous action.
States of character have two significant attributes, those existing by nature and those existing by choice. The natural attributes obtain the potentiality and later manifest the activity, while in the case of those identified by choice, we acquire them by exercising them. The faculties of our senses, by which help us understand and perceive the world around us, exist by nature. As soon as we develop and acquire the potentiality for such activity, the activity naturally follows, we do not have to practice hearing in order to hear or practice seeing in order to see. Contrarily, learning to walk is an activity characterised by choice, for it is not naturally accomplished once a certain level of physical development has been attained. We learn to walk by actually practicing walking and repeating the whole process of it over and over again until the action becomes a second nature to us. As virtue is distinguished by choice, it as an action that we learn by doing. Virtue does not naturally occur within us, as our senses do, but rather a state of character we can develop only by exercising it over time.
The Virtue Of Magnanimity
Greatness of soul, is the heart of the virtue that is magnanimity. It is an essential virtue for every human being who desires to do great in their lives. The magnanimous person pursues greatness in proportion to their ability, has attitude of benevolence and takes delight in doing great deeds. Such a person attempts and achieves great things because they are appropriate expressions of the excellence that they possess. The magnanimous person is the greatest in each virtue. It is a sort of crowning ornament to the virtues, for it makes them greater, and it does not arise without them. It is impossible to be magnanimous without being noble and good. The magnanimous person is distinguished by their actions and attitude towards what comes their way. The right concern with one's own worth involves not only grasping it but valuing it and the desire to fulfill its complete potential. The magnanimous person's concern for great things is more immense than a concern to obtain external goods, more importantly, they are more concerned with aiming at excellent action and are worthy of respect and honour.
The area of courage is an important aspect of life. It governs only situations involving both fear and confidence. To be courageous, one must choose and act rightly. The person of courage acts courageously in the right manner at the right time, endures for the right purpose with the right motivation. The right reason is that courageous acts are conducted with their aim on the correct purpose, the final cause. We praise the courageous person because they are able to endure pain, not because they control themselves from the pleasurable, but because the first is more difficult. The virtuous person performs virtuous acts that are motivated by good desires without any inner conflict. Courage has more to do with fearful things than bold things, although of course it involves both. The courageous person feels fear but their fear does not push them toward cowardly acts, their fear pushes them toward courageous acts. Every activity aims at the end that corresponds to the disposition of which it manifests. For a thing is defined by its end, the courageous person performs actions that manifest courage for the sake of that which is noble.
Magnanimity is a virtue that belongs to great people, and if one is great, then one must be good and completely virtuous. It is a supervening attribute that occurs as a consequence of one achieving a completely virtuous character. The supervening attribute seems to have complementary powers to the extent that it adds something more to a person’s character, and it makes the virtues that gave it birth even more magnificent. The perfect virtue of courage takes on another and superior level of excellence and the same is true for all of the other virtues. The magnanimous person is one who is aware of the excellence that they embody. The good life for human beings is the life of virtue and therefore it is in our interest to be virtuous. In all things, the great souled person is dignified, self aware, courageous, strong, calm and acts only on matters involving great significance. Virtue, honour and self awareness support them from most of what individuals of lesser virtue undergo in their lives. Magnanimity belongs to the completely virtuous person who knows well who they are and their greatness.
It is a guiding principle of the moral virtues. The practical wisdom of magnanimity leads the moral virtues to a beautiful ordering and as it is a source of value for the moral virtues, it makes them greater. The moral virtues are intermediary states that can be expressed at any given moment, magnanimity appears to be the excellence of the soul that is created over time. As the characteristic of our life that gives guidance and value to the moral virtues, as well as it leads us to the highest good, magnanimity is not only worthy of honour, but is the most worthy of honour. To be magnanimous, we must properly understand what we are worthy of and must have the right attitude to our deserved honour. The magnanimous person, is a distinctive individual that is identified by both supreme greatness and moral goodness, bestowing upon them nobility and honour respectively. The dynamic element of magnanimity is our enlightened consideration of self and in possessing true understanding of our own greatness. Human beings can obtain magnanimity as an end of the moral virtues.
Human Nature And Flourishing
Human beings are a unique species who have the ability to establish their cognition, to select and to direct their actions and to create distinctive ways of living. It is in the nature of every human being to have a directional process of self development, conscious striving for their personal endeavours. Human nature entails the individuality of each human being, and because all individual human beings are individualised, each person needs to live in a harmonious way with the individual being that they are. Human nature places the framework of human flourishing, as individual human flourishing is diverse and personal. The virtues initiate direction for our human flourishing but the determination of what kind of flourishing is most desirable for each person requires much consideration of what is distinctive to each individual. Morality is embedded in the nature of rationality. Human choice has the innate potential for human flourishing, the choice to live is a rational choice because of what is the ultimate end for each human being. The proper understanding of our flourishing depends upon our capabilities, our desires, our choices, our interests, circumstances and our biological nature.
Each person must identify the things that are potentially valuable to them and they must take appropriate actions to pursue those things. All of a human beings circumstances and conditions are things for their rationality to consider and to work on as they pursue to live a good life. As well to providing the means to maintain our life, moral values also make our life worth living. The good with respect to our human actions is the fact that they are contributive to our self interest and there is a close relationship between our effective functionings and our well being. It is significant to develop our potential by engaging in meaningful pursuits that are in harmony with our values. Voluntary activities present immense opportunities for increasing our happiness. When the work we do involves rational activity, it can be seen as an ingredient of happiness. A happy person is one who knows that what they have earned is an appropriate reward for their efforts, creations and achievements. Happiness has an intrinsic bond with one’s life as a whole. A human being attains happiness to the degree that their potentialities and their capabilities are rationally utilised over their whole lifetime.
Good action is a substantial part of our happiness and the most flourishing life is a life that includes contemplative activity. Actions should express correct reason and avoid inadequacy. As good human beings, we make the choices that are beneficial and fine to us. When the occasions arise, we are courageous, truthful, generous, innovative, temperate, friendly and magnanimous in the right moments. Pleasure is good for guiding us in moral action, as we desire pleasure for life and life for pleasure. Reason guides the virtuous person, for our life is choice worthy, only a certain kind of life is worth living. The virtues are those states which inspire activities which work out best for ourselves. The intelligent person knows what is good for them, that person is flourishing because of the types of things they do and the ways they do them, they act in accordance with reason and chooses what is expedient. Virtuous actions are the actions that make something that is already choice worthy, even greater, and since pleasure and life are coherent, virtuous actions lead to our pleasure in the result that they bring. We find by reason and by empirical means what is virtuous and how to achieve happiness in our lives.
A good life is a life devoted to the expression of qualities of virtue and passion that exhibit meaning in our lives. The state of our character depends upon the practicing of good actions that in turn actually make us good people. Each individual acts when they are motivated to do so. For a human being, thinking and free will are involved in the action process. Our human nature shows us that we have needs and these needs are the commencement of the motivation pattern and they have a biological foundation. Our values emerge out of the relationship between ourselves and what we require for our well being. A flourishing life depends upon the evaluation and attainment of our values. Our prime moral commitment and interest is to attain our mature state as a flourishing human being. Meraki is the labour of love, to do something with real passion, with absolute devotion and is done with all our heart, the essence of ourselves that is put into what we choose to do and how we live our life.
© Patrick Graven
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