I’d like to assert that all acts of virtue or good are acts of incontinence in disguise. I however, am not capable of making such and assertion because there is one specific incident in which good is truly a virtue. This I will address later though.
It is fully possible for us to view the acts of others as good without knowing the underlying reasons they do them. The example I most clearly have in my mind is that of celebrities. When they do good they receive media attention. If they are doing good for this reason it is out of selfishness. The general population is always impressed when the young do good. However, a lot of the young only do good because it looks impressive on a college transcript. I myself am guilty of having done this in the past and I’m sure some of you reading this are as well.
Selfishness is not the only thing that leads to acts of good. The other is fear. What I am thinking about here specifically is religious fear. The fear of what will happen to one after one dies if you one is not good in life, pushes people to be good. Also, the fear of karma. One would not want the bad they do to come back to them.
The last example of good done out of bad, is good done out of guilt. When a person has done something horrid in their lives the guilt is likely to way heavily on them. So in order to make themselves feel better and relieve some of this guilt they may commit acts of good.
I am in no way saying that these acts of good should be stopped because the reasons behind them were not all good. They are, after all, still benefiting other people. All I set out to do was point out the reasons behind them.
The people who do good and have absolutely nothing to gain are the one’s I want to take a closer look at. I truly believe there is no reason behind the good they do other then it is habit, as opening the door for someone has become habit for me. They are the truly virtuous. The roots of their virtue come from doing repeated acts of continence. The main reason I think people do acts of good or continence for other people is out of sympathy. We look at other people and realize we are all human and all have the same needs and wants and desires and when someone else does not have the opportunity to have them we sympathize with them and want to help. Through this constant helping we become virtuous.
It is fully possible for us to view the acts of others as good without knowing the underlying reasons they do them. The example I most clearly have in my mind is that of celebrities. When they do good they receive media attention. If they are doing good for this reason it is out of selfishness. The general population is always impressed when the young do good. However, a lot of the young only do good because it looks impressive on a college transcript. I myself am guilty of having done this in the past and I’m sure some of you reading this are as well.
Selfishness is not the only thing that leads to acts of good. The other is fear. What I am thinking about here specifically is religious fear. The fear of what will happen to one after one dies if you one is not good in life, pushes people to be good. Also, the fear of karma. One would not want the bad they do to come back to them.
The last example of good done out of bad, is good done out of guilt. When a person has done something horrid in their lives the guilt is likely to way heavily on them. So in order to make themselves feel better and relieve some of this guilt they may commit acts of good.
I am in no way saying that these acts of good should be stopped because the reasons behind them were not all good. They are, after all, still benefiting other people. All I set out to do was point out the reasons behind them.
The people who do good and have absolutely nothing to gain are the one’s I want to take a closer look at. I truly believe there is no reason behind the good they do other then it is habit, as opening the door for someone has become habit for me. They are the truly virtuous. The roots of their virtue come from doing repeated acts of continence. The main reason I think people do acts of good or continence for other people is out of sympathy. We look at other people and realize we are all human and all have the same needs and wants and desires and when someone else does not have the opportunity to have them we sympathize with them and want to help. Through this constant helping we become virtuous.
For this entry i drew a great amount of inspiration from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
4 comments:
I recieved a question about the definition of incontinence. It is not the nomrla definition you would find online its from Aristotle. In short, a person who is incontinent knows what is right and wrong but chooses to do wrong anyway.And vice versa, a person who is continent does what is considered moral and right even though they would rather do what was wrong
i wrote about motivation too! i differentiate between selfish and selfless. i love aristotle, incontinence, and nicomachean ethics. yay for your distinctions between different reasons why people do good :]
I believe your right when you state that even though there is good being done many times even this good is done for selfish reasons, but it is good nonetheless. True altruistic people, who are willing to sacrifice something to help others are the ones that are causing genuine good to be done in the world. For example this could be a poor person giving another person directions, money, volunteering, etc.
i totally believe you when you say that there is good being done but that most of the time it is for selfish reasons. i think that most people do good for a reason even if it isnt a selfish one it may just be to make themselves feel better.
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