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    Health is a preferred indifferent, not a good. — Carmelics
    Home/Virtue Ethics
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    Health is a preferred indifferent, not a good.

    Virtue Ethics
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Health is preferable because it conforms with nature's plans.
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    • 2.Health makes no contribution to the quality of one's life as good or bad, happy or miserable.
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    • 3.Health is not a virtue and does not contribute to virtue.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics that health is a genuine external good constitutive of eudaimonia, not merely preferred.
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    • 2.If health were a mere indifferent, severe illness could not diminish flourishing, yet Aristotle explicitly grants that misfortune undermines happiness.
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    • 3.The Stoic distinction between 'preferred' and 'good' collapses when the preferred systematically enables the exercise of every virtue.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Premise P2 illicitly assumes that contribution to happiness requires being a virtue, but Aristotle's hylomorphic account allows bodily conditions to partly constitute the good life.
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    • 2.If health makes no contribution to life's quality, then the Stoic sage who is tortured on the rack is as happy as one in full health, a conclusion Chrysippus himself found difficult to maintain.
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    Virtue Ethics

    Related

    Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics that health is a genuine external goo...Health is not a virtue and does not contribute to virtue.Health is preferable because it conforms with nature's plans.Health makes no contribution to the quality of one's life as good or bad, happy ...
    +4 moreShow less
    If health makes no contribution to life's quality, then the Stoic sage who is to...If health were a mere indifferent, severe illness could not diminish flourishing...Premise P2 illicitly assumes that contribution to happiness requires being a vir...The Stoic distinction between 'preferred' and 'good' collapses when the preferre...

    Similar

    Since indifferents are not good, the Stoic has no self-interested reas...83%W1 is preferable to W2.81%If indifferents were genuinely good, the Stoic would want them for her...78%Preferred indifferents that serve the community's interest are more in...78%

    Source

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    SEP: ethics-ancient
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    They argue that health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, good reputation, and noble birth are neither good nor bad. Since they can be used well or badly and the good is invariably good, these assets are not good. The virtues, however, are good (DL VII 102–103), since they are perfections of our rationality, and only rationally perfected thoughts and decisions can possibly have the features of harmony and order in which goodness itself consists. Since possessing and exercising virtue is happin
    Extraction notes

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    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit