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Aristotle

384–322 BCE, Stagira and Athens

Classical Greek

Character is a habit; you become good by practising good.

Virtue ethicsThe golden meanEudaimoniaPractical wisdomFour causes
“We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”
Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1103a34 (the popular 'we are what we repeatedly do' line is Will Durant summarising this passage)

The life

Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece. His father was physician to the Macedonian court, which gave him both a biological cast of mind and a lifelong connection to Macedon that would later make him politically suspect in Athens.

At seventeen he joined Plato's Academy and stayed for twenty years, until Plato's death. Passed over for its leadership, he left, spent time doing marine biology on Lesbos, and tutored the young Alexander of Macedon.

In 335 BCE he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum. When Alexander died in 323 and anti-Macedonian feeling surged, Aristotle left the city, reportedly saying he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy. He died the following year.

What shaped the ideas

Aristotle worked at the moment the Greek city-state was being swallowed by empire, and his instincts ran opposite to Plato's. Where Plato looked past the physical world, Aristotle dissected it: he collected constitutions, classified animals, catalogued arguments.

He wanted explanations that stayed inside the world rather than appealing to a separate realm. That is why his Forms live in the things themselves, and why his ethics starts from what people actually do rather than from an ideal city.

Core arguments

  1. 01

    The function argument

    The human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.

    A knife is good if it cuts well; anything with a characteristic activity is good by doing it well. What is distinctive about humans is reasoning. So a good human life is one that exercises reason excellently, over a whole life rather than a good afternoon.

  2. 02

    Eudaimonia

    The final end is flourishing, not pleasure or honour.

    We pursue money for other things, honour for the reassurance it gives, pleasure for its own sake but not sufficiently. The genuine end must be something chosen always for itself and never for anything else, and complete enough that adding to it would not improve it. Only flourishing fits.

  3. 03

    The golden mean

    Each virtue sits between a deficiency and an excess, relative to the person and situation.

    Courage lies between cowardice and recklessness, generosity between meanness and extravagance. The mean is not an arithmetic midpoint: the right amount of fear depends on who you are and what is happening. Getting it right is a skill, which is why it takes practice.

  4. 04

    Habituation

    Virtues are acquired by repetition, not by being taught propositions.

    You learn to build by building and to play the harp by playing it. Character works the same way: repeated just acts produce a just disposition. This is why upbringing matters so much, and why knowing the right answer does not make you good.

  5. 05

    Practical wisdom

    Virtue requires phronesis, the judgement to see what this situation calls for.

    Rules underdetermine action. Being honest does not tell you whether to speak now or later, gently or bluntly. Practical wisdom is the perception that fits the general disposition to the particular case, and it cannot be reduced to a procedure.

Commonly got wrong

  • The golden mean is not "everything in moderation". Aristotle says some actions, such as murder and adultery, admit no mean at all: there is no correct amount of them.
  • The mean is not an average. It is relative to the agent and the circumstances, which is why it needs practical wisdom rather than a formula.
  • Aristotle's authority held back science for centuries, but that is mostly his readers' fault. He revised constantly and treated his conclusions as provisional; medieval commentators treated them as settled.
  • His defence of natural slavery and his claims about women are not incidental blemishes but structural parts of the Politics, and reading him well means confronting that.

Works

  • Nicomachean Ethics c. 340 BCE

    Flourishing, virtue, the mean, friendship, pleasure. The founding text of virtue ethics.

  • Politics c. 335–323 BCE

    Humans as political animals, constitutions compared. Also contains his defence of natural slavery.

  • Metaphysics c. 350–322 BCE

    Being, substance, the unmoved mover.

  • Organon c. 350 BCE

    The logical works. The syllogism dominated logic for two thousand years.

  • Poetics c. 335 BCE

    Tragedy, plot, catharsis. Still the backbone of screenwriting manuals.

Nicomachean Ethics Books I and II. Book I sets up flourishing, Book II gives you the mean and habituation.

Why they still get taught

He invented formal logic, biology as a field, and the vocabulary of substance, essence and potential that philosophy still runs on. Virtue ethics is now the third major option in moral philosophy, and it is his.

Chapters