‘Because what we must learn to do, we learn in the doing: we become a master builder by building and a zither-player by playing the zither. So, too, do we become just by carrying out just deeds, moderate through acts of moderation, brave through acts of bravery’ (Aristotle).
This quote from Aristotle comes to mind as I consider the highly simplistic explanations and responses that have emanated from the government and its supporters in the controversy that surrounds the specialty hospital.
Aristotle was the founder of practical philosophy, which embraces both ethics and politics as they are concerned with our attaining the means to live the good life. He was a purveyor of virtue ethics, which focused not on what men do but on what they are and how they become what they are.
Aristotle believed that the highest human good, the condition after which we consistently seek for its own sake is ‘happiness’. Even when we choose honour, pleasure, etc., we choose them because we believe they will bring us happiness. A virtue is a necessary condition for our being happy.
It is also ‘… a condition by which the person becomes good and by which he carries out his own tasks well.