Views of Aristotle and Nietzsche About Good Life Essay

Views of Aristotle

The views of Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, are used by many people across the world to make decisions that are critical and to manage people in organizations by understanding their views about good life. His views begin by analyzing the meaning of ends and means. He explains that when people set goals, the goals are their ends and that is what they want to achieve. The means that people choose to achieve their goals are dependent on the ease of each, their likeliness, the quick of success and such reasons. Out of this analysis, it is reasonable to believe that practical thinking is useful in making decisions and it does not make any sense until it is combined with a purposeful action. The other view was that once we achieve one end, it becomes a guidance towards getting another one which is more important to us. For example, once we have bought the car, we have achieved the end. However, it helps us to get to work earlier or to class on time and we achieve that as a new end. That end also helps us to live a good life and we can make more money to buy a home, which is also a new end and the trend continues (Young n.p). Aristotle's views were that there is no time when we get to our final end of a good life.

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However, people have different needs in life and they aim for different goals. Some want to accumulate wealth, others want to be famous and to have power and others want to live a religious life among others. It is therefore hard to define the exact good life for everyone. His views concluded that people struggle to plan life in a way that all that we do in our lives is about achieving a certain high goal that is good for all of us. He also stated that all people have acquired desires related to our wants and also our natural desires that respond to pour needs and are common to everyone. The acquired desires are the ones that relate to what people think are good and natural desires are good for everyone whether they want them or not. For example, good health is good for everyone, food, clothing, and shelter are similarly good and necessary for everyone. Others are the knowledge, skills, love, honor, and self-esteem and friendship among others that are good to the soul. Aristotle also concluded that the gap between knowing a good life and achieving it can only be closed by having a good moral character and developing good habits or virtues. Such virtues were defined as intellectual and moral if they relate to the mind and regular disposition respectively. Therefore, if people have a habit of making the wrong choices, they live poorly and vice versa (Young n.p). They also need to have moderation, justice, and courage. Aristotle also concluded that people need to be lucky or fortunate.

Views of Friedrich Nietzsche

The views of Nietzsche are different from those of Aristotle. According to the explanations given in Wikipedia, the philosopher believed that the good life is about striving to achieve individual excellence. It involves going through wars and struggles that can only be won if people behave well and ready to strive hard to achieve the targets. His views were based on a view that people cannot fully rely on the traditional view of morality and that behaving morally does not guarantee a good life. He also noted that a good life does not necessarily mean social happiness. To achieve a good life, one needs to be strengthened with wars and victories. Power, conquering, pain, and adventure are some of the tools that people should use to achieve what a good life is according to him. A person who enjoys solitude, creativity and strong will to act lives a good life (Friedrich n.p). The views suggest that people who have a good life are the ones who love in hyper-masculinity and fascist lives. The philosopher's views were different from those of Aristotle in that he has little regard for joy and moral or ethical status in life. According to him, the good life can also be achieved even if one is not happy.

Reasons why the views are wrong

The first reason why the above views are wrong is that the philosopher does not find it necessary to have good morals to be happy in life. However, from the general views of how people live, those who are associated with bad morals are usually unhappy and involved in many regrettable conditions. One way of explaining a good life is by showing good moral standards. The moral people practice most of the critical expression of justice and ethics. They are associated with loyalty, kindness, selflessness, guidance to others, loyalty, and strong principles and so on. Such people are also associated with trustworthiness, honesty, and courage which improve their engagement with families, friends and workmates. A virtuous person is also likely to get power, wealth, favor and joy which defines the good life that most of the people strive to achieve. From this explanation, the views of Nietzsche are wrong. In a similar way, a case study on social media shows that social behavior is associated with a good life and an increase in knowledge (Morgan, Mason & Nahon 3490). People who do not seek knowledge and are not morally upright are less likely to have a good life compared to those that have a morally upright life.

The meaning of this to the views of both of the philosophers is that their reasoning can be disputed in many different ways depending on the evidence about life. The evidence is how people live and what behavior leads to what almost everybody desires. For example, good morals and virtues lead to better relationships with other people and eventually lead to power and prosperity. The views of Aristotle can be disputed on the ground that they do not give the exact ways through which one can achieve the morals required to get a good life. The theory also failed to consider the different factors that affect the achievement of these good morals and these include financial challenges and poor leadership of the families and governments. Poverty can also deny people a chance to improve their lives and to achieve their goals in life. According to the explanations in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the conditions that Nietzsche explained in his philosophy as the sources of good life are usually associated with sadness and immorality (Leiter n.p). The views of Aristotle remain more viable than those of Nietzsche and the research gap that remains is what good life can mean for all people without exceptions.

Works Cited

Friedrich, Nietzsche. "Beyond Good and Evil." Wikipedia (2015).

Leiter, Brian, "Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/>

Morgan, Jonathan T., Robert M. Mason, and Karine Nahon. "Negotiating cultural values in social media: A case study from Wikipedia." System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on. IEEE, 2014.

Young, Mark A. Negotiating the good life: Aristotle and the civil society. Wikipedia, 2017.