Aristotle

Aristotle was sent to Athens at about the age of seventeen to study in Plato's Academy, then a pre-eminent place of learning in the Greek world. Once in Athens, Aristotle remained associated with the Academy until Plato's death in 347, at which time he left for Assos, in Asia Minor, on the northwest coast of present-day Turkey. There he continued the philosophical activity he had begun in the Academy, but in all likelihood also began to expand his researches into marine biology.

Aristotle of Stagira was a Greek philosopher, logician, and scientist and one of the most influential ancient thinkers. As a young man, Aristotle entered Plato's Academy in Athens, where he studied for 20 years. Subsequently, he was invited by Philip of Macedon to tutor his son, the future Alexander the Great. Aristotle later returned to Athens to found his own school, the Lyceum, and write some of his most important treatises. After Alexander's sudden death, Aristotle had to flee Athens because of his Macedonian affiliation, and he died soon after.

Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, making contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates. He was more empirically-minded than Plato or Socrates and is famous for rejecting Plato's theory of forms.

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who set up a rival academy, The Lyceum, to challenge Plato's Academy. Aristotle wrote influential works in a range of disciplines - politics, physics, ethics, economics - and had a profound impact on Western thought.

Almost 2,500 years ago, Aristotle wrote his book, Rhetoric. It remains today one of the best books on persuasion ever written. Such a book comes in handy during an event like an election, since an election is what Aristotle might have called a "rhetorical situation." It is an event in which two or more people are each trying to persuade the public that he or she is the best person for the job. In his book, Aristotle says that there are three ways in which people are persuaded: ethos, logos, and pathos. ... Pathos has to do with the emotional state of the audience: does the speaker reach the hearts of his hearers?

When we turn to another famous ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 B.C. – 322 B.C.), we find little of the political regimentation that characterizes his teacher, Plato. For Aristotle, the appropriate behavior is the "golden mean," that is, the avoidance of "extreme" ... goals ... While he hopes that wise policies may help to improve the conditions and actions of men, Aristotle recognizes that man possesses a human nature that cannot be molded or bent or transformed to conform to some ideal of a perfect State populated by transformed people in the way that Plato believed was in principle desirable and possible.

Thus, if Aristotle's rational epistemology did not prevent him from defending racism, slavery, and statism, this could only be because Aristotle himself did not understand the logical implications of his own epistemology. And if later defenders of racism, slavery, and statism were profoundly influenced by Aristotle's theories, this was only because they, too, did not appreciate that such theories were inconsistent with Aristotle's theory of knowledge.

The virtues came to be gathered by the Greeks, the Romans, the Stoics, the Church, Adam Smith, and recent 'virtue ethicists' into a coherent ethical framework. Until the framework somewhat mysteriously fell out of favor among theorists in the late 18th century, most Westerners did not think in Platonic terms ... They thought in Aristotelian terms of Many Virtues, plural. 'We shall better understand the nature of the ethical character,' said Aristotle, 'if we examine its qualities one by one.'

In fact, the father of dialectics, the man whom Hegel himself called the "fountainhead" of dialectical inquiry, was Aristotle. In works such as the Topics—the very first theoretical treatise on dialectics—Aristotle presented numerous techniques by which one might gain a more complete picture of an issue by varying one's "point of view." The Topics serves as a grand discussion of how shifts in one's perspective can reveal different things about the objects of our inquiry, and about the perspectives from which those objects are viewed.

Aristotle believes that most of his fellow Greeks are mistaken about the nature of the human good, identifying it with wealth or power rather than with virtuous activity. ... Aristotle's theories have been seen as a mere transcription of existing mores only because modern scholars have mistakenly read Aristotle's outlook back into the mores that he is in fact criticizing. ... But a careful reading of his works shows that Aristotle was keenly aware of, and bitterly opposed to, the centralizing political trends of his day.

In Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order, the authors attempt to ground a defense of (classical) liberal values in the tradition of inquiry initiated by Aristotle. That seems to be quite a challenge, given that Aristotle himself, apart from a few lines critical of Plato's proposals for communism and the abolition of property, was in general either hostile to or unaware of (understandable, given the times) most of the principal elements of classical-liberal political thought ...

Spencer is a genuine contextualist, sensitive to the reciprocal relations among parts within a whole. It was Aristotle who first explored the mutual implications of "correlatives," such as "master" and "slave." Hegel stressed the same notion in his analysis of the relationship between "lord" and "bondsman." Like Aristotle and Hegel, Spencer explains "that correlatives imply one another," as surely as a father implies a child, a child the father. ... Spencer absorbs the organic metaphor from Aristotle in much the same way as Hegel did.

The concern of ethics, according to Aristotle, is to learn how such a being must think and act in order to flourish individually and as a member of society; the object of consideration is "the practical life of man as possessing reason." That's why prudence (or practical wisdom) finds a place on his list of virtues. In Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics, Henry B. Veatch elaborates why ethics may be regarded as the art of living, although ... it is an art unlike all other arts ... In the Aristotelian (eudaemonist or virtue-ethics) approach, a concern with consequences is obviously justified ...

Smith's reference to "ancient philosophy" is a reference to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, for whom this chasm would be unfathomable ... The concern of ethics, according to Aristotle, is to learn how [a social] being must think and act in order to flourish individually and as a member of society; the objective is "the practical life of man as possessing reason." That's why prudence (or practical wisdom) finds a place on his list of virtues. In Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics, Henry B. Veatch elaborates on why ethics may be regarded as the art of living ...

Aristotle argues that a complete science must start with a self-evident axiom and, by the use of deduction, exfoliate the entire discipline. ... Aristotle also discusses the necessity of self-evident principles in the Nicomachean Ethics. He notes that to justify a proposition, one would normally proceed by citing another proposition. But if matters are left at this, the task is not finished. What in turn justifies the proposition advanced in support of one's original claim?

There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, 'Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out.' These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when 'one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.'

What are the grounds for accepting the constitutive model of virtue, including justice? Turning to Aristotle, Long writes, "For Aristotle, a human being is essentially a logikon animal and a politikon animal ... To be a rational animal is to be a language-using animal, a conversing animal, a discursive animal ... Being politikon is for Aristotle an expression of being logikon; just as logikon animals naturally conduct their private affairs through reason rather than through unreflective passion, so they naturally conduct their common affairs through public discourse and rational persuasion, rather than through violence ..."

Aristotle, 384-322 BC, joined Plato's Academy in Athens at eighteen and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. He was not a citizen of Athens. His writings constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy. He tutored Alexander the Great. That experience provided him with an abundance of supplies to work with. He established a library in the Lyceum.

Not all freely made choices, after all, are good. Some of them are bad. So what's the distinction? The distinction, I think—and I'm going to draw on Aristotle—is when we employ the concept of good judgment, the person of good judgment is the one who makes wise, virtuous choices. So take another step back. How do you get to be a person of good judgment? Well, there are two things that are necessary. First of all, as Aristotle said, you have to practice it. You can't have good judgment if you don't practice. Judgment is a skill. It's like other skills.