Aristotle’s Moral Philosophy  By Michael Gakuran | | Philosophy
| 2 Comments |  aristotleAristotle’s Nicomachean ethics focus on
the virtues (aretê) or ‘excellences of character’ and as such he
is known as a virtue theorist. He emphasises the importance of
ethics as a practical discipline rather than a theoretical one
and as such he is interested in finding out the things we need
to live well and how we might cultivate the right virtues in
order to have a happy and ‘flourishing’ life.  This
‘flourishing’ or happiness is known as eudaimonia. Aristotle
thinks it of great importance to raise people so that they gain
the right skills and are able to use reason effectively to
discover how best to act in any given situation. In other words,
one cannot acquire practical wisdom and understand virtues by
purely studying them, one must actually learn by practising
virtuous actions. It’s rather like trying to learn social skills
just by reading lots of books. One may know all there is to know
about how to act in a given