Give an example with explanation of a person you have come across with noble values
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Answer:
Paul Ricoeur describes character as something, which cannot be separated from the person (Ricoeur 1992, 122). It has “a permanence which we say belongs to us” (Ricoeur 1992, 118). Ricoeur defines “character” as “the set of distinctive marks which permit the re-identification of a human individual as being the same.”4 We cannot separate character from the person and say here is the person and there is his or her character. A person can be distinguished from his or her actions, what was done is different from who did it. But the same distinction cannot be made between character and action. But Ricoeur's discussion of character seems to include much more than moral character as can be seen from the following statement:
By means of this stability, borrowed from acquired habits and identifications—in other words, from dispositions—character assures at once numerical identity, qualitative identity, uninterrupted continuity across change, and, finally, permanence in time which defines sameness. (Ricoeur 1992, 122)
“Personality” might be a more comprehensive term for such a broad definition than “character” (Audi 1991, 307). This broader category can then include nature or traits, about which one could turn to biology for explanations (Ricoeur 1992, 120 note 5); and position or capacity or reputation, which is the expertise of sociology or the like; and many other aspects of the person.
The rational side, including “moral excellence and firmness,” can more easily be found under the term “moral character.”5 From this moral aspect come evaluation, judgment, decision, choice resulting in right or wrong, and moral or immoral action.6 It is this last aspect—moral character—which is most involved in a physician's moral decisions. Character then involves goodness and wickedness, that is, ethics. In this case, one must turn to philosophy (and anthropology), and especially the study of ethics, for assistance and understanding.
A more detailed definition of character, or, more specifically, being of good character, can be found in the three facets of dispositions, desires, and tendencies:
having steady and permanent dispositions to do what is right and to refrain from doing what is wrong; having morally desirable wishes, desires, purposes, and goals; and having the tendency to respond emotionally toward things in the morally appropriate way.7
The habits, actions, and emotional responses of the person of good character all are united and directed toward the moral and the good.
Aristotle's famous four categories of character (the virtuous, the continent, the incontinent, and the vice-filled8) in the Nicomachean Ethics reflect aspects of this deeper definition.9 In the vice-filled person, reason and appetite are united; and reason is a slave to passions and appetites. The vice-filled person chooses what his or her appetites command. In the incontinent person, reason and appetite are not united; and appetite wins out more often than reason. There is correct knowledge of the right thing to do and desire to do it, to be a virtuous person, but one fails more than one wins; and appetite overrides reason. In the continent person, reason and appetite are not united; but reason wins out more often than appetite. The desire is there; and the right thing gets done more frequently than not. In the virtuous person, reason and appetite are united; and appetite is controlled by reason so the right thing gets done (most of the time). In addition, these categories admit of degrees; one person may be more continent or less incontinent. Also, persons are not static; they (usually) move within a category or between categories during the course of their lifetime. Most persons fall into the categories of continent and incontinent; they know the good and are more or less able to