Ethics #

A systematic study of Aristotelian ethics and moral philosophy. These lectures examine fundamental questions about the nature of good, human desire, and the ultimate end of human life, developing an understanding of virtue, the mean between extremes, and the relationship between happiness and virtuous action.

11 episodes, about 11 hours

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Classes #

Class 1 #

Part 1 of 2 · What Is Good? The First Definition and the Socratic Question of Cause vs. Effect #

38 min Berquist opens the question “what is good?” through Plato’s Meno and Euthyphro and the start of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, arriving at the good as “what all desire” and asking whether things are good because wanted, or wanted because good.

Part 2 of 2 · Answering by Induction: We Want Things Because They Are Good, and Why the Bad Seems Wanted #

64 min Berquist asks whether things are good because we desire them, or desired because they are good, building the answer inductively from food, sleep, pleasure, money, and friendship, and closing with Aquinas’s treatise on love.

Class 2 #

Part 1 of 2 · The Good, the Better, and the Three Kinds of Human Goods #

66 min Berquist argues, against the view that desire makes things good, that things are desired because they are good, then shows why the end is always better than what serves it—applied to Aristotle’s three kinds of human goods and the dispute in Plato’s Apology.

Part 2 of 2 · The End of Man: Own Act, Virtue, and the Act with Reason Done Well #

63 min Berquist works through Book I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, with Plato’s Republic and Symposium in the background, to argue that man’s end is “the act with reason done well.”

Class 3 #

Part 1 of 2 · The Good, the Better and the End of Man: Own Act, Virtue and Proportion #

69 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book I, proving by induction, syllogism, and proportion that man’s end is “the act with reason, done well, throughout life,” using his handout “Note on End or Purpose of Man.”

Part 2 of 2 · Goods of the Soul, Body and Exterior: Socrates vs. the Athenians, and the Scope of Practical Philosophy #

67 min Berquist takes up Aristotle’s division of human goods—soul, body, and exterior—and argues, Socratic-style, why the moral philosopher must weigh all three even while ranking goods of the soul highest.

Class 4 #

Part 1 of 2 · Good, Better, and the End of Man: Review and the Two Kinds of Human Virtue #

62 min Berquist reviews the definitions of “good” and “better” in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and lays out the whole structure of the work, from moral and intellectual virtue through friendship to happiness.

Part 2 of 2 · The Virtues of Reason and the Moral Virtues in Aristotle and Thomas #

68 min Berquist compares two ways of dividing the intellectual virtues in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Aquinas, then explains why the Summa’s Secunda Secundae treats the moral virtues in reverse order from Aristotle’s.

5. Ethics