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Aristotle on Criteria of Moral Good
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
Aristotle'S attitude and procedure in dealing with moral standards suggest that he assumed the following points: a) That he was speaking of something real and given; b) to be discovered and formulated and, if possible, applied; c) that in fact, standards satisfactory for human life — at least satisfactory and perhaps unsurpassable — had already been embodied in Grecian life and art and thought; and if this is the case, then in regard to moral standards, as in regard to many problems, Aristotle is a preserver and savior rather than an innovator and is like “prudence” as he delineates it; d) that if there is a divine source of these Grecian known and lived standards, these are just and true; if there is not, or if we do not know whether there is, they remain just and true; in any case, at least some of them are “by nature.”
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1968
References
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