04 February 2013

13.15. I am a quitter

I quit facebook a couple months back, and I like some of my "friends" a lot better now that I don't have to read their moronic status updates. 

I bet some of them like me better, now, too.

03 February 2013

13.14. How, then, should we teach an ethics course?

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.4)