But while each of these has some value, none of them can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. The key question Aristotle seeks to answer in these lectures is “What is the ultimate purpose of human existence?” What is that end or goal for which we should direct all of our activities? Everywhere we see people seeking pleasure, wealth, and a good reputation. One of Aristotle’s most influential works is the Nicomachean Ethics, where he presents a theory of happiness that is still relevant today, over 2,300 years later. According to Aristotle, this view of education is necessary if we are to produce a society of happy as well as productive individuals. Along with his teacher Plato, he was one of the strongest advocates of a liberal arts education, which stresses the education of the whole person, including one’s moral character, rather than merely learning a set of skills. Here we can see that as long as the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true, no matter what we substitute for “men or “is mortal.” Aristotle’s brand of logic dominated this area of thought until the rise of modern symbolic logic in the late 19th Century.Īristotle was the founder of the Lyceum, the first scientific institute, based in Athens, Greece. Consider the following syllogism: All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore, Socrates is mortal. He was the first to devise a formal system for reasoning, whereby the validity of an argument is determined by its structure rather than its content. Some of these classifications are still used today, such as the species-genus system taught in biology classes. Thomas Aquinas simply refers to Aristotle as “The Philosopher” as though there were no other.Īristotle was the first to classify areas of human knowledge into distinct disciplines such as mathematics, biology, and ethics. Indeed, the medieval outlook is sometimes considered to be the “Aristotelian worldview” and St. Although we do not actually possess any of Aristotle’s own writings intended for publication, we have volumes of the lecture notes he delivered for his students through these Aristotle was to exercise his profound influence through the ages. He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates. The Middle Path was a minimal requirement for the meditative life, and not the source of virtue in itself.Īristotle is one of the greatest thinkers in the history of western science and philosophy, making contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. For Aristotle the mean was a method of achieving virtue, but for Buddha the Middle Path referred to a peaceful way of life which negotiated the extremes of harsh asceticism and sensual pleasure seeking. Aristotle’s doctrine of the Mean is reminiscent of Buddha’s Middle Path, but there are intriguing differences. In this way he introduced the idea of a science of happiness in the classical sense, in terms of a new field of knowledge.Įssentially, Aristotle argues that virtue is achieved by maintaining the Mean, which is the balance between two excesses. Yet as we shall see, Aristotle was convinced that a genuinely happy life required the fulfillment of a broad range of conditions, including physical as well as mental well-being. That is, happiness depends on the cultivation of virtue, though his virtues are somewhat more individualistic than the essentially social virtues of the Confucians. Living during the same period as Mencius, but on the other side of the world, he draws some similar conclusions. As a result, he devotes more space to the topic of happiness than any thinker prior to the modern era. “ Happiness depends on ourselves.” More than anybody else, Aristotle enshrines happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself.
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