Philosophies of Work: Virtue Ethics II

Wed, Feb 14

Plato, who preceded Aristotle and was his teacher, and St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived more than a thousand years after Aristotle, fill out our picture of a virtue ethics approach to work. Though Aquinas's views are basically Aristotelian, he approaches questions of work from a completely different angle. Instead of framing his discussion in political terms, Aquinas had to frame his contribution in terms of the religious life. And instead of assuming that happiness here on earth was man's final end, Aquinas argues that our ultimate aim is a contemplative communion with God in heaven. Plato, meanwhile, presents a distinctively social view of human life, one on which our individual flourishing depends on a certain social order. In this class, we'll see whether these core assumptions innovate on Aristotle's basic picture, and whether they are closer or further from our own concerns when asking questions about the philosophy of work.

Goals - by the end of today's class, you will:

1. Understand (and be able to contrast) Plato's and  Aristotle's disagreements about the nature of a proper human social order;
2. Understand Aquinas’s (basically Aristotelian) view of the role of work in the good life; and
3. Appreciate how Plato's and Aquinas's views on contemplation as the end (or purpose) of human life can be integrated with Aristotle's approach to the philosophy of work.