Social Virtues Essays - Philosophy, Ethics, Virtue,

Social Virtues Social Virtues What is being Social, and what virtues do you need to possess to become sociable? Throughout your life you are going to being interacting, and communicating with just about everyone who is living around you and working with you. In my paper I am going to be talking about some of the major virtues you will need to acquire to become a ethically wise and social person according to the three leading ethical philosophers; Aristotle, Kant, and Mills. I chose this topic because I think one of the biggest faults that I have is really not being that social to everyone. I also chose this topic because and a communication major I can learn from all the ideas that I will be reading and experiencing. One of the most powerful thoughts that you must possess when dealing with others basically comes down to the all mighty Golden Rule, Do to others as you want others to do to you. Aristotle discusses that a person with good character has virtue. These virtuous characteristics only come from experience, training, and the ability of always doing good. One of the virtues that Aristotle talks about which deal with the social virtues is the virtue of Friendliness. Friendliness deals with treating everyone equally and with the thought of good in mind when it comes to friends, enemies, old acquaintances, and family. I think that one of the major issues that Aristotle talks about is the meaning of happiness. A good definition of friendliness that I came up with is the transferring of ones happiness to another. Friendliness is all about passing on a part of your happiness to someone that you meet. A good example of this is when you are walking some where and you pass someone that you dont even know and they give you a great big smile and a hello. I dont know about others but when someone smiles at me the only thing that I think of doing is smiling myself. Friendliness is just making someone happy, and passing on your good to others. One of my experiences that I have benefited from that dealt with Friendliness isnt a recent one, but something I will always remember. Coming from a catholic high school we were able to do some service activities, which we did through our religion class. During one of our quarters of religion class we were able to pick some sort of service that would help our surrounding community. The service that we pick is that each weak we went to one of the local retirement homes and got to interact with some of the people that lived at these homes. I really wasnt looking forward on doing this because I had this idea that these people really didnt want us there. When I got there I was pleasantly surprised of how many nice people I met there and how much Ive learned from this experience. When we got there we would do different activities with them like playing cards, and different games, and just talking and watching TV with them. Each week you could see how much happier they were when they had us around to talk to and interact with. You have to understand how lonely they get at these places and how they are just surrounded by older people. I could see I how passed on some of my happiness to them by having different conversations with them of the simplest things I have done during the week. It was also interesting hearing all those older stories that they told us of how things used to be. Just by having us there we brought some of their life back and some of the happiness that they used to have outside of the retirement home. Another social virtue that Aristotle touches on is Truthfulness. When dealing with someone, there has to be that feeling that he or she really is as genuine as they say and present themselves. Aristotle talks about those boasters who build themselves up to be someone who they really arent. Another bad issue is those who really say some nice things about you, but really dont care about you at all. It