In Ancient Greece this word was originally used to indicate the place where a person lived. This meaning changed when Aristotle affirmed that the ethos is what lives within one, that is, his way of being or his character. In this way, it is understood as a second nature, different from the strictly biological one.
According to Aristotle, the way of being of each individual is something acquired and can be shaped
We build our character from our habits, that is, the acts that we repeat on a regular basis. For Aristotle, moral excellence is obtained from habits. In other words, we approach the ideal of justice if we perform just actions and we approach the virtue of generosity through generous actions.
The ethos of an individual, his way of being, would be formed by a set of habits. Those habits that we consider good or beneficial we call virtues and those that are harmful we classify as vices. Logically, the aspiration of a person should be to achieve virtue and avoid vices. To achieve this purpose, Aristotle proposes the strengthening of character, of ethos.
A door that allows a better understanding of the distinction between ethics and morality
For the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, the ethos is directly related to our way of being.
On the other hand, in Roman culture the idea of morality comes from moralis, which means custom. In this way, the ethos is our character and morality is a set of rules of coexistence that regulate our behavior. From the idea of ethos, the basis of the idea of ethics is established, that is, the reflection on our way of life.
While morality has a normative dimension and is based on a set of specific rules, ethics is an assessment or reflection on moral issues.
Ethos, phatos and logos
In Greek culture, the individual ethos can be forged with discipline, since we are not born with an ethos but rather we form it with our habits. Instead, the idea of phatos refers to passion and emotion. For its part, the term logos refers to the idea of reason and language.
For Aristotle, communication involves all three elements. Thus, we transmit ideas with our way of being, while from the individual pathos we express emotions, and all this is articulated by reason and language.
Likewise, in a work of art we can find an ethos, a pathos and a logos, that is, a personality, an emotion and a language.
Photo: Fotolia – Savvapanf
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