CLASSICAL
PHILOSOPHY 2
HU-2053 BS-English 4

Aristotle:
•Aristotle was born 384-322 B.C in the Macedonian region
of northeastern Greece.
•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.
•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.
•Although speculation concerning Aristotle’s influence upon
the developing Alexander has proven irresistible to
historians, in fact little concrete is known about their
interaction.

Works:
 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.
 In his lifetime, Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises,
of which only 31 survive.
 Unfortunately for us, these works are in the form of
lecture notes and draft manuscripts never intended for
general readership, so they do not demonstrate his
reputed polished prose style which attracted many
great followers, including the Roman Cicero.

Works:
 Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who
contributed the foundation of both symbolic logic and
scientific thinking to Western philosophy.
 He also made advances in the branch of philosophy
known as metaphysics, moving away from the idealism
of his mentor Plato to a more empirical and less
mystical view of the nature of reality.
 Aristotle was the first philosopher to seriously advance
a theory of Virtue Ethics, which remains one of the
three major schools of ethical thought taken most
seriously by contemporary philosophers. With all these
contributions, he may have been the single most
important philosopher in history until at least the late
18th century.

Aristotle's Philosophy Through History
 As a young man, Aristotle studied at Plato’s school
and remained there until Plato’s death.
 Afterward, he served as a tutor to Alexander the
Great, a fact about his past that hurt his standing with
many people once Alexander began to conquer the
majority of the known world.
 Like his mentor Plato, most of Aristotle’s work was lost
initially. Unlike Plato, his actual works were never
recovered and instead we only have class notes from
his students to give us an idea of what Aristotle’s
views and beliefs actually were.
 The views of Plato and the later philosopher Plotinus
were judged more compatible with Christianity then
the scientific and essentially pagan views of Aristotle.

Aristotle's Philosophy Through History
 Aristotle rejected the idea of Plato’s “Theory of the
forms,” which stated that the idealized essence of an
object existed apart from that object.
 Plato thought that physical things were
representations of idealized perfect forms that existed
on another plane of reality.
 Aristotle thought that the essence of an object existed
with the thing itself.
 In this way, he also rejected the idea of a soul that
existed outside of the physical body, instead believing
that human consciousness resided completely with
the physical form.
 Aristotle thought simply that the best way to gain
knowledge was through “natural philosophy,” which is
what we would now call science.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 Nicomachean Ethics is a philosophical inquiry into
the nature of the good life for a human being.
 Aristotle begins the work by positing that there
exists some ultimate good toward which, in the
final analysis, all human actions ultimately aim.
 The necessary characteristics of the ultimate
good are that it is complete, final, self-sufficient
and continuous.
 This good toward which all human actions
implicity or explicitly aim is happiness ‹
in Greek,
"eudaimonia," which can also be translated as
blessedness or living well, and which is not a
static state of being but a type of activity.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 To discover the nature of human happiness it is
necessary to determine what the function of a
human being is, for a person's happiness will consist
in fulfilling the natural function toward which his
being is directed.
 This natural function must be something which is
specific to human beings, which is essential to being
human. A person is primarily his intellect. While the
spirited and desiring parts of the soul are also
important, the rational part of the soul is what one
can most properly consider a person's identity.
 The activity which only human beings can perform is
intellectual; it is activity of the highest part of the soul
(the rational part) according to reason.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 Human happiness, therefore, consists in activity of
the soul according to reason. In practical terms,
this activity is expressed through ethical virtue,
when a person directs his actions according to
reason. The very highest human life, however,
consists in contemplation of the greatest goods.
More will be said later on this topic, which is the
culmination of the Ethics.
 Ethical virtue "is a habit disposed toward action by
deliberate choice, being at the mean relative to
us, and defined by reason as a prudent man
would define it." Each of the elements of this
definition is important.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 Virtue is not simply an isolated action but a
habit of acting well.
 For an action to be virtuous a person must do
it deliberately, knowing what he is doing, and
doing it because it is a noble action.
 In each specific situation, the virtuous action is
a mean between two extremes.
 Finally, prudence is necessary for ethical virtue
because it is the intellectual virtue by which a
person is able to determine the mean specific
to each situation.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 The first virtue discussed is bravery. It is a
mean between rashness and cowardice.
 A brave man is one who faces and fears what
he should for the right reason, in the right
manner and at the right time.
 A brave man performs his actions for the sake
of what is noble. A brave man is thus one who
is fearless in facing a noble death.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 The next virtue is temperance. It is a mean
with regard to bodily pleasures.
 The intemperate man desires pleasurable
things and chooses them because they are
pleasurable; he is pained when he fails to get
what he desires.
 A temperate man is moderately disposed with
regard to pleasures and pains. He loves such
pleasures as right reason dictates.
 Temperance keeps the desiring part of the
soul in harmony with reason.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 Generosity is the third virtue which Aristotle
examines.
 With regard to property, generosity is a mean
between wastefulness and stinginess.
 A generous man will give to the right person, the
right amounts and at the right times.
 He will also take proper care of his possessions.
 Generosity does not depend on the quantity of the
giving but on the habit of the giver, which takes
into account the amount which the giver himself
has and is able to give away.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 The next virtue is munificence, which consists
giving large amounts for suitable occasions.
 The deficiency of this virtue is called
meanness and the excess is ostentation.
 A munificent man spends gladly and lavishly,
not calculating costs, but always for a noble
purpose.

Nicomachean Ethics Summary
 Magnanimity, the fifth virtue Aristotle discusses,
is one of the peaks of virtue.
 A magnanimous man claims and deserves great
honors.
 Someone who deserves honors but doesn't claim
them is low-minded, and someone who claims
honors but doesn't deserve them is vain.
 It is better to be vain than low-minded, because
vanity will be naturally corrected by life
experience.
 A magnanimous man is great in each of the
virtues, and is a sort of ornament of virtues
because he shows how good a virtuous life is.