Rationality and happiness are activities of the soul, and virtue is the excellence of these activities. Humans are the only life forms that have souls, the source of rationality. ... Three things are found in the soul: emotions, capacities, and characteristics. ... There are two different aspects of the soul: the irrational and the rational. ... Two aspects of virtue, the intellectual and the moral, are divided very similarly to these different aspects of soul. ...

• Word Count: 1492
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Another key theme in virtue ethics is moral understanding. ... The last key theme in virtue ethics is moral education. ... He describes that intellectual virtue is born from and grown by teaching, whereas moral virtue comes to us a result of habit, that we get the virtues by first exercising them. ... In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle lays out the idea that all knowledge and every action of man aims at some good, and he claims that the chief good of man is to be happy, and that this good is only achievable through activity of the soul exhibiting excellence; that is being virtu...

• Word Count: 1642
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

He said that happiness does not lie in pleasure but in virtuous activity. By virtuous activity, he meant behaving according to a mean between extremes. ... Plato further claimed that happiness is the natural consequence of a healthy state of the soul. Because moral virtue makes up the health of the soul, all people should desire to be virtuous. ... "Plato argued that it is worse to commit an injustice than to suffer one, because immoral behavior is the symptom of a diseased soul. ...

• Word Count: 1206
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

God, Morality, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy's The Road Erik J. Wielenberg Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is, among other things, a meditation on morality, what makes human life meaningful, and the relationship between these things and God. While the novel is rife with religious imagery and ideas...

• Word Count: 8991
• Approx Pages: 36
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School