Balance of Character Lead to a Good Life

Student Learning Outcome: 1- Sense of Purpose

Description of Artifact: This artifact is about how the balance of your character and how it can in turn give you a better life. Your purpose is to find that balance so that you can be the best version of your self, and give yourself the best life possible.Once you know what your ethics and morals are you as a person will better understand what and why you do the things you do and what the purpose of your being is.

Artifact Alignment: Being able to balance your character helps you identify the sense of purpose to your overall life.

Future Goal: In my future classroom and with the growth I hope to gain from there, I hope to formulate arguments for ethical decision making for my teaching and my students. I hope to solidify the morals, values, and theological principles within my own teaching so that my students can understand empathy, respect, and equality inside and outside the classroom.

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Aristotle defines virtue as, “a rational mean between two extremes of excess and deficiency with respect to an emotion” (Crothers). He strongly claims that, in order to have a good life, one must have a balance between these ‘extremes’ and also have a strong character. Regardless of being rich, poor, a doctor, or a farmer, a person can achieve a good life with a strong virtue and a good balanced character. In the following essay I will be arguing that the claim made by Aristotle is true and supporting it through evidence I find through Aristotle's literature and modern day life.

We all live our lives trying to get to one end goal. To get to that goal, we go through an obstacle of ends and means. Aristotle says that we all strive for the ‘end’ and to get to it we go through ‘means’. Life is a continuous string of ends and means that all lead to the end goal of a happy life. For example, we go to college in order to get a degree and a stable career. Unfortunately, even our ends are means to something else, the good life, like having a stable career in order to fulfil all physiological needs and buy yourself material items that make you happy. 

In order to achieve the state of the good life, happiness, one has to have equal balance of physiological, developmental, and social needs, as well as a strong sense of virtue. Every person has to have food and water, have been raised respectfully with all needs, and have a society in which they can be a part of and interact with. Some people may say that the ‘good life’ or ‘happiness’ is not the same for all people. The way that Aristotle argued this was simply by saying there are natural and acquired desires. Simply, we all need food, the physiological need, but some people prefer fruit over vegetables. In the end, we all need food to achieve the physiological need, but the way we get there may be a little different. Later on in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that, “He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1101a10). I agree with this way of achieving a good life because regardless of who you are and how much you own, your balance of character can guide you to the good life of happiness. 

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle mentions virtue a lot, stating that, “Virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, being determined by rational principle as determined by the moderate man of practical wisdom” (Nicomachean Ethics, 0206a15). Virtue is the balancing of excess and deficiency in our lives and being able to rationally choose what is best for us. For example, in order for one to achieve self control, we must have a balance of impulse and indecisiveness. 

The idea of having a strong sense of virtue, in order to reach the end goal of a good life, is very true. If we have an imbalance in our actions and our character, we can be led to many obstacles that will steer us off the road to the good life, the end with pure happiness. If we have that imbalance in our character, our moral virtues can be affected strongly, and these virtues are important in helping us decide what is right from wrong. 

Aristotle argues that one must have a balanced character in order to be happy and that can be seen through anything that one does. He states that one of the 3 factors that all humans need in order to reach this end of happiness is the social aspect: a community that you can be a part of, a group of people who care for eachother. Without a balance in character, a person lacks the social aspect of your life, starting off by relationships with other people in the community. 

The modern day saying ‘money doesn't buy happiness’ relates strongly to what Aristotle was preaching. Simply, having more money than the person next to you does not determine which one of you has a good life. You could be rich, yet lack the social, developmental, or physiological aspect of life. You could be rich, but have an imbalance in character that leads you to make the wrong decisions. Wealth and social status does not simply determine what kind of a life you have in the end, what does determine it is having a balance of physiological needs, developmental needs, social needs, and a character. I strongly agree with Aristotle's argument that one must have a balanced stable character in order to be happy.