Virtue

     This week in class, we have learned about Aristotle and virtue ethics. Aristotle insists that a virtuous person will best deal with adversity. I think that virtue is having the right attitude toward both pain and pleasure. For example, if you are a part of a sports team and you are going through hell week and conditioning extremely hard and your coach gives you a speech about determination, hard work and giving it all you have is what makes you a team mate and a team.  If you give up, you are letting your team down even more than you are letting yourself down.  Then, you are in the middle of your grueling workout and you are doing a 5 minute plank.  You are in terrible pain, are shaking uncontrollably and are miserable.  None of your team mates can see you and your coach turns his/her back. Do you drop from your plank to the ground and wait to get up until they eventually look back at you?  The obvious answer is no, however I find it hard to believe that every single person would not.  They did not only let down themselves, but their team mates as well.  There are two kinds of virtue.  Intellectual virtue is the virtue of knowledge or understanding.  Practical virtue is the virtue of action and feeling.  People identify themselves as honest and hardworking all of the time, however truly being these things would mean that they abide by these characteristics always, and practice these habits. This would mean most "good" people would know that that is not the right thing to do by practical virtue, but if they did drop, do things dishonestly or give up a lot, they could not really be honest or hardworking.  To be a true hard worker, you must make it a habit to go the extra mile.  It is not the easiest way, but it is virtuous.