Aristotle, Egoist or Altruist?
Subject Areas : Ethics and Islamic Education
Keywords: morality, modesty, megalomania, Muslim ethicists, moral philosophers.m ,
Abstract :
"One of the discrepant issues between the Aristotle experts is the relationship between the Aristotle's ethics and the moral theories of egoism or altruism forming the two opposing readings from his ethical theory. Accordingly, some prescribed Aristotle as egoist and some others prescribed him as altruist. The final judgment of the two readings depends on the distinction between the two types of impressions from the egoist or altruist theories: An impression relating to an outside fulfillment and a purely abstract impression (philosophical) from the two theories. Based on the first impression, the possibility of analyzing the Aristotle’s ethics in the form of egoist or altruist is basically cancelled because egoists or altruists know moral goodness as synonymous with profit or pleasure not wisdom. In addition, these two theories have a more formal approach to normative ethics and do not undergo any priori judgment about moral concepts; while Aristotle has completely foregone ideas about these concepts and provides a detailed list of them to his audience. However upon the second impression, since we can consider wisdom like profit and pleasure as the basis of a value judgement about the human actions, the primary basis for the analysis of Aristotle's ethics from the perspective of egoist or altruist is provided. However, in this case the Aristotle's character-oriented approach in ethics against the action-oriented approach of the mentioned two theories can take the possibility of analyzing the Aristotle’s ethics from the perspective of egoist or altruist down to uncertainty.
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