Actually reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is worth it. Not because he's right about everything (he has some pretty messed up and weird views), but because it's challenging and good to think on, and chances are you'll take something away for yourself that you wouldn't have gotten from some webpage that took one-liners out of context, some of which aren't even by Aristotle.
It's helpful to read the ethics in light of the metaphysics. Beings aren't fixed but actualize their (possibly-growing) capabilities. Happiness lies in friendship, not fame or power or wealth, not because they're not good to have, but because for we humans as intelligent, social, self-aware beings, we can only actualize our craft and self-understanding in the context of others with some understanding of the craft and insight into each other, particularly with respect to building character, one's own and others'.
The first section is simple but profound: all beings strive for the good for themselves, so we have a starting point to address the good of each and possibly all even across fundamental differences.
> he has some pretty messed up and weird views
They do, but by insisting on rationalizing any view rather than leaving it as a religious given, he sets the stage for destroying bias. Remember, Aristotle trained Alexander, and Alexander's military was successful because they embraced rather than destroying the people conquered (if they didn't fight back), and they even lost a fair bit of his Greek ways.
It’s weird and messed up because Aristotle’s audience isn’t Christian or even Abrahamic the slightest. He’s right about rejecting abstract definitions that aren’t grounded in the elements of a situation however.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Those two sentences seem disconnected.
One very common error people make is to believe that ethics - at least epistemically and for the most part - is sectarian. This view seems to stem from an ultimately nihilistic presupposition that morality is a fiction supplied by the fiction of religion. But that is not the natural law view and thus a view alien to both Aristotle and to Christianity. The natural law view is that human beings have a nature, which is most centrally to be a rational animal with the freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect. Thus, Man has moral responsibility, because he plays a part in choosing what he does. Accordingly, because human nature defines what is good or bad for human beings (that which actualizes human potential in accord with reason vs. that which frustrates or opposes reason and the actualization of potential in accord with it), we bear responsibility for how we exercise our powers. Aristotle wasn't completely, but the core principles in the Metaphysics or his ethical works or in epistemology are - in my view - spot on.
What Christianity does or claims to do is supplement what is knowable by unaided reason with revealed knowledge - the object of faith - which, of course, does have ethical import, but it does not negate or supplant what is knowable by unaided reason.
FWIW, Aquinas drew heavily from Aristotle and had such enormous respect for Aristotle, he referred to him as simply "the Philosopher".
>One very common error people make is to believe that ethics - at least epistemically and for the most part - is sectarian. This view seems to stem from an ultimately nihilistic presupposition that morality is a fiction supplied by the fiction of religion. But that is not the natural law view and thus a view alien to both Aristotle and to Christianity.
I didn’t make that claim in any implied way, I asserted, correctly, that Aristotle is not an Abrahamic thinker.
> The natural law view is that human beings have a nature, which is most centrally to be a rational animal with the freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect. Thus, Man has moral responsibility, because he plays a part in choosing what he does. Accordingly, because human nature defines what is good or bad for human beings (that which actualizes human potential in accord with reason vs. that which frustrates or opposes reason and the actualization of potential in accord with it), we bear responsibility for how we exercise our powers. Aristotle wasn't completely, but the core principles in the Metaphysics or his ethical works or in epistemology are - in my view - spot on.
The Nichomachean Ethics doesn’t discuss ethics within any context of absolute free will even, it is a very qualified doing. Aristotle explicitly points out that the actions of slaves are entirely disqualified from being considered ethical. Most Christian theologies would vehemently disagree precisely because having the supra-knowledge of the Mystery imparted upon one necessarily brings one's being into the dimension of revealed universality. That's not what Aristotle is talking about.
> What Christianity does or claims to do is supplement what is knowable by unaided reason with revealed knowledge - the object of faith - which, of course, does have ethical import, but it does not negate or supplant what is knowable by unaided reason.
All three of the Abrahamic theologies were infected by Neoplatonism, which . The Europeans revived their Neoplatonism through the Muslims even. The Middle Ages Christian theology of the "chain of being" is a riff on Neoplatonist "ladder of being".
Aristotle was describing in Metaphysics a cosmology concerned with unpacking the notion of motion as the actualization of potentiality, hence, "First Mover", which is not at all an Abrahamic idea.
> FWIW, Aquinas drew heavily from Aristotle and had such enormous respect for Aristotle, he referred to him as simply "the Philosopher".
This doesn’t interact with my point since it requires us first to ask how he read Aristotle, whom was not an Abrahamic thinker. An aside, but the Muslims called Aristotle “The Philosopher” (Ibn Rashud, Ibn Sina), and that tradition was received through the Muslims by their European readers.
He thought some humans were slaves by nature and women were naturally inferior to men.
edit: whoa, I didn't realize how racist this guy was. He could be classified as a eugenicist I suppose.
He also believed in spontaneous generation (fair, without technology we have now it would be really confusing to understand where all kinds of things come from).
Seemed to believe infinity was impossible yet also that the heavens are infinite. Maybe he distinguished between the earthly and heavenly planes, but still seemed to think they were similarly constructed from elements.
> He thought some humans were slaves by nature and women were naturally inferior to men.
The notion that all human individual are of equal worth isn't exactly common. You may think it's weird, but it was fairly standard worldview for a lot of humanity for a lot of history. Your outlook may simply be shaped by living in a Christian-based culture:
While I think curiosity is a natural human trait, doing "science" is not 'as natural', as certain metaphysical assumptions need to be in place before it can really be done, and not all worldviews/cultures accepted them:
many humans are still slaves by nature -- look at how averse many folks in the society are to rational and pragmatic thinking, being enslaved by religion, ideology and showing indifference to human suffering, and endless worship of wealthy.
We need to distinguish between "many people are born into slavery" and "many people are meant to be slaves by their inborn nature". The former is true, the latter is not, even in the example you've given.
Also, he was referring to people performing labour, not people adhering to spiritual belief or ideological systems.
I see what you mean, but I don't think this means what he believed was true. I see it as categorically different. People adhering to beliefs without critical thought vs being forced into labour due to their 'nature' are very different matters.
being born into slavery is a random fact -- life happens and they had no control over it really.
many people are meant to be slaves is also a fact -- it is not like everyone is gifted cerebrally, or even blessed to be in an environment where, by the time they are adults, have been shown a good formula for life; so consequently a section of the society is destined to be just slaves, it just needs the presence of a manipulator.
Aristotle, being an endless questioning guy he was, might have figured this out, although i'm not sure.
I'm going to firmly disagree and insist that no one should ever be a slave, and they are not meant to be slaves, regardless of their intellectual capacity or whether they were shown a good formula for life. Human society is in a failed state anywhere in which someone is forced into slavery.
I think you're committing a naturalistic fallacy, and I don't agree at all that people are ever meant to be slaves.
The most I can agree to is that "some humans are born into slavery due to chance". This is factual. That people are meant to be slaves is not a fact. Perhaps we have a language barrier here.
By 'destined' I assume you mean 'there was never a way their life would play out other than them becoming slaves'. But the word 'meant' and 'destiny' carry a meaning of "it is the right thing to happen", which I think we all agree is not the case.
You literally posted that some people are effectively born slaves, that's beneath contempt and if you said it to my face I would certainly have been far, far less kind. Also you definitely need to spend a while researching what comprises being an adult.
"Meant" is the problem here - if you think "meant" by your mentioned "manipulator", then yes - the elites are evidently holding that worldview for millennia. But "meant" - as in "natural order of things" / "higher purpose" is obviously not a fact, and should be strongly denounced.
>He thought some humans were slaves by nature and women were naturally inferior to men.
These are unfortunately still all too common beliefs. The latter has mostly been folded into racial essentialism and racial realist beliefs, because slavery is no longer legal (13th amendment loophole notwithstanding) and you can still find people arguing women are intellectually inferior and incapable of rational thought.
The whole anti-DEI movement is based on the premise that non-whites and women categorically don't deserve the same status in the workforce as white men, and the only reason they have "equality" is due to anti-white racism.
A bit off topic, but I'm guessing Aristotle himself would say that chasing "status in the workforce" (as opposed to leisure, riches, wisdom, power etc) is itself a good example of slavish disposition. Status in the bosses' eyes, amirite?
He stated, in a separate work, that women had fewer teeth as an example of his views on their inferiority. Makes you want to take everything he said with a grain of salt.
In his defense (sorry if defending him offends here), women probably did, at the time, often have fewer teeth due to worse dental care.
Women and men have identical dental anatomy, so no, it's not wisdom teeth. Women would technically be earlier and thus have more, if you get into the details.
Aristotle has flaws, that's all.
I love his work on happiness. On the academic side of Philosophy, I believe his conception stands alongside what is typically called "Hedonism" defining the two major schools of thought, obviously with modern takes and twists. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on "Happiness" if you're interested.
The thing I always come back to is Aristotle's belief that if you release an object being circled about your head by rope, it will move perpendicular to the tangent line of the circle. This is trivial to disconfirm by experiment. It moves parallel to the tangent. It's just that science of his school of thought was rationalist. They believed in the power of thought more than the power of experiment. You can surely observe the lifecycle of women and men and see they develop and shed teeth in exactly the same ways and same number, but why bother doing that if you earnestly believe you can just intuit laws of nature purely by thinking really hard?
To be clear, I'm a huge Aristotle fan. He's a towering intellect I will never come close to equaling. His ideas set the stage for very nearly all western thought. It just goes to show that everyone everywhere has deficiencies and blind spots. The smartest person who ever lived can still be wrong in extremely obvious ways in retrospect. Intelligence is no guarantee you're going to actually be right about very much.
FWIW, I got a lot more about virtue ethics from reading Plato's works, the Stoics, and Cicero. Aristotle is somewhat dry and tedious to read. Go for him if you're into formal logic and related technical systems. But if you're truly interested in virtue ethics and have some reading discipline, try Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
On Marcus Aurelius: he's often recommended mindlessly (especially in tech circles). I actually to suggest to read him last. He does have valuable things to say, but he's the most depressive of the Big Three Stoics. You can better appreciate Aurelius if you've already digested some Socratic dialogues and Epictetus. One of the top-most Stoicism scholars (A. A. Long) describes Marcus Aurelius this way: "a melancholy emperor, who was hardly a card-carrying Stoic".
FWIW, here's[1] my recommended reading order and top English translations from five years ago. Cut out the cheap rehashes by people such as Ryan Holiday and stick to the originals. A bonus note[2] on the Roman gem, Cicero, from six years ago.
It doesn't help that nowadays Aurelius is being held up as some beacon of masculinity nowadays. I mean there are much worse role models but so many folks have been reductionist about his views and it can be problematic. There is some good ideas but they have become idolized.
I found the views of the Neoplatonists to be fascinating even if one doesn't subscribe to those views.
Generally, read broadly and from multiple points of view.
> It doesn't help that nowadays Aurelius is being held up as some beacon of masculinity nowadays.
Yeah, it's people like Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday and others who write titles such as "how to think like a Roman emperor" (a terrible title if you know anything about Aurelius or Stoicism in some depth) and other tech bros are to blame. They drummed up excessive hype for Aurelius, he's good marketing material.
Neoplatonists: I tried reading Plotinus, but it didn't resonate with me, afraid. But it was a weak attempt.
Yeah, I think Plato's dialogues are unparalleled. I love the rigour, drama, and how they don't end with a clear conclusion ("aporia"), forcing you to find your own.
Well Aristotle's attempt to find a demonstrative science (or what we would refer to as science today) also led him to an aporia between universal categories and individual substance. It's just that Aristotle's aporia cannot be understood in Platonic terms.
The level of precision a subject can reach is peculiar to that subject, but it doesn't follow that nothing can be accurately predicated of it:
"It is characteristic of such knowledge [ethics] that it should be deficient in “exactness,” in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws."
"[T]he man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician."
Pretty low effort article I like the quotes but yeah.
My favorite part is the useless comment bellow each quote like:
"The commenter above has stated that the quote is not from aristotle, this is important for the article"
Roughly translating something my grandfather once said: 'a quote is not something to be parroted, but to be pondered'. Unfortunately all the provided quotes are in English, so they're unlikely to actually be things Aristotle wrote or said; rather they're translations which may have different nuances or meanings. That doesn't mean they're not worth pondering, though (or parroting, if they are worthy of it and applicable to a situation).
Pretty much. I have a list of little sayings I have pondered over the years. I started it in 2020 thinking I might end up a few dozen, it is now well over 600. They are things to think over and not just accept blindly.
It stemmed from the idea from Buddhism that 'a thousand words mean nothing compared to a single word that brings peace'. Some of the most profound and useful sayings I have come across have been just single lined things. That doesn't mean that it is the only way to communicate, not even close, just that they have a very useful place but only in context.
As for the translations, I recommend people look at multiple translations of ancient texts to see how they vary wildly. The Tao Te Ching is a great example because of how many options you have available. Some are poetic, others are fairly blunt. Others just completely miss the point. It is fun to see.
> 11. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
That's a poor way of framing his beliefs about this. The correct framing is more like “Virtue and being a Good Human Being is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
Happiness should stem from being a good human being; happiness itself is not the origin of virtue or purpose.
If personal sacrifice brings genuine well-being to your family or community, that could be a very virtuous and rewarding thing to do, and as such, should make you content and satisfied with your actions and their outcomes. That's how you find eudaemonia; that state of 'happiness' he's describing. While you haven't sought out your immediate personal happiness or gratification, you can still feel good in a morally derivative, intellectual manner (which could also make you genuinely happy or content, too). The bible is big on this theme, as well.
Humans are political animals to Aristotle, and our prosociality and duty to others was crucial to how we measured ourselves and our obligations to society. Personal happiness in a contemporary, conventional sense wasn't very important in that scope. Our ability to be satisfied with, and take gratification from, our service to others was a major part of how you'd derive that contentedness and eudaimonic state of mind.
It seems important to make that distinction, because most people's interpretation of that quote (I don't think it's an actual quote) would be relatively hedonic or epicurean. Everything you do should be in the pursuit of feeling good.
It's unfortunate that the Greek word eudamonia, which is the one Aristotle used, gets translated into English as "happiness", which is open to so many misunderstandings, particularly in our current culture. There isn't really a single English word that means "being a good human being". "Virtue" or "virtuousness" might once have served, but I think its connotations have shifted in a way that makes it no longer suitable for expressing the concept that Aristotle had in mind.
I’ve wondered at times if this is partially due to cultural changes. We’re less interested in prosocial traits and how we fit into social hierarchies/personal duties and more interested in personal happiness or gratification.
I’m not sure. It appears this way from what I read, but it’s hard to know having not been alive 2000 years ago.
Funnily enough, people attributing "smart sounding" quotes to Aristotle has been a headache for historians for as long as Aristotle's writing has been around. The more things change...
he's quiet possibly referring to happiness as a relationship (with family, friends, colleagues, citizens etc) rather than just by oneself / isolation / individual. he famously said "man by nature is a political animal" (or social if you prefer)
I would submit that all social relationships have power dynamics. Politics is about allocation of resources more than power accumulation. You may be conflating the two because more power allows you to allocate resources with less intereference.
Much of this is either simply not Aristotle, or a paraphrase from one of his works incorrectly attributed to another.
My slop meter is pinging.
Edit:
Between the misattributions, fabricated quotes, listicle format, thin explanatory paragraphs, and use of “delve” (posted Nov 2024 - during ChatGPT’s Delve Era), this is a pretty embarrassing thing for a Liberal Arts college to post.
It’s also embarrassing to see a philosopher summarized in quotes or sayings when their real thesis is probably the opposite of what the snippet suggests,
Philosophy is not about clever observations! They are developing systems and arguments you have to actually read to understand.
I giggled when reading "Educating the mind without the heart is no education at all". Hehe that must have failed when he taught Alexander the "Great" who would start wars, raze cities and murder whole populations. Or maybe Aristotle only realized this afterwards.
Entertaining an idea is understanding it. And, there is some research to show that understanding an idea is believing it. Hence, understanding an idea and not believing it is very effortful.
> The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up[1], Esquire, February 1936
I see this quote a lot and can never find it in original sources for Aristotle. It seems to be a misattribution from the foreword of Religion and the Pursuit of Truth by Lowell L Bennion
"The earliest that this quotation appears in print is in Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (1959) by Lowell Bennion."
or
"First attributed to Aristotle in Lowell L. Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (1959). Unfound as such.
Sometimes thought (though I feel it's a bit of a stretch) a misinterpretation of Nicomachean Ethics 1.3.4 (1094b): "For it is the mark of an educated person to search for the same kind of clarity in each topic to the extent that the nature of the matter accepts it.""
If you ever wondered, those are among the things that made that single person standing out of the crowd od Humanity for more than two thousands years.<3
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
Reminds me of Charlie Munger's Inversion principle that he borrowed from German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi's man muss immer umkehren. https://fs.blog/inversion/
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
This Amjad Masad comment lives rent-free in my head: "Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself ... people don't update their beliefs when new evidence comes to light ... The drive to avoid cognitive dissonance shackles you to your existing beliefs (see confirmation bias)". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11799477 (2016).
I've thought about this. Aristotle doesn't draw as hard of a line between right and wrong behavior or advocate for specific actions, with the right action depending on circumstance, and to finding the middle path. Traditional religions might be a bit more hardline, with specific rules or commandments. It's easier to identify with belonging to a particular group when the line between belonging and not belonging is more crisp and defined by particular practices.
These come from my own musings not someone else's - but bearing sycophancy in mind, I asked Claude and it told me this is basically the "strict church thesis" from sociology of religion, and linked me this paper, I think it lines up with my takes written from someone who has had this idea before: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/230409
There actually were religions founded around the philosophers. The mathematikoi were a cult of followers of Pythagoras that believed everything was Number, and they believed they could purify their souls by learning theorems. And the Neoplatonists founded a religious school based on the works of Plato (with significant elaboration by Plotinus). Christianity ultimately incorporated many Neoplatonic beliefs, along with Stoic beliefs that stemmed from Heraclitus, who argued everything was Logos, which has one translation as Word, which is an opening statement in the Bible’s book of John. Aristotle’s works also went on to have a transformative impact on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through Maimonides, Aquinas, and Averroes, who all interpreted his works.
I agree it’s still interesting that major religions were not founded at the time of the early philosophers — maybe it’s because religion as we conceive of it today depends on a type of bureaucracy that wasn’t achievable in the classical era?
It's a category mistake. People try to naturalize Jesus as a "great teacher", but the one thing you cannot do is frame Jesus as another wise man and good teacher! The man claimed to be God. Anyone who makes a claim like is either insane, a liar, or, in fact, God. "Greater teacher, full stop" is simply not an option.
Which is to say that the founding of the Church by Jesus is not rooted in some wise teachings, but in claims about his identity. If his claim of Godhood is false, then the Church and the Christian faith are total charlatanism.
Actually reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is worth it. Not because he's right about everything (he has some pretty messed up and weird views), but because it's challenging and good to think on, and chances are you'll take something away for yourself that you wouldn't have gotten from some webpage that took one-liners out of context, some of which aren't even by Aristotle.
It's helpful to read the ethics in light of the metaphysics. Beings aren't fixed but actualize their (possibly-growing) capabilities. Happiness lies in friendship, not fame or power or wealth, not because they're not good to have, but because for we humans as intelligent, social, self-aware beings, we can only actualize our craft and self-understanding in the context of others with some understanding of the craft and insight into each other, particularly with respect to building character, one's own and others'.
The first section is simple but profound: all beings strive for the good for themselves, so we have a starting point to address the good of each and possibly all even across fundamental differences.
> he has some pretty messed up and weird views
They do, but by insisting on rationalizing any view rather than leaving it as a religious given, he sets the stage for destroying bias. Remember, Aristotle trained Alexander, and Alexander's military was successful because they embraced rather than destroying the people conquered (if they didn't fight back), and they even lost a fair bit of his Greek ways.
It’s weird and messed up because Aristotle’s audience isn’t Christian or even Abrahamic the slightest. He’s right about rejecting abstract definitions that aren’t grounded in the elements of a situation however.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Those two sentences seem disconnected.
One very common error people make is to believe that ethics - at least epistemically and for the most part - is sectarian. This view seems to stem from an ultimately nihilistic presupposition that morality is a fiction supplied by the fiction of religion. But that is not the natural law view and thus a view alien to both Aristotle and to Christianity. The natural law view is that human beings have a nature, which is most centrally to be a rational animal with the freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect. Thus, Man has moral responsibility, because he plays a part in choosing what he does. Accordingly, because human nature defines what is good or bad for human beings (that which actualizes human potential in accord with reason vs. that which frustrates or opposes reason and the actualization of potential in accord with it), we bear responsibility for how we exercise our powers. Aristotle wasn't completely, but the core principles in the Metaphysics or his ethical works or in epistemology are - in my view - spot on.
What Christianity does or claims to do is supplement what is knowable by unaided reason with revealed knowledge - the object of faith - which, of course, does have ethical import, but it does not negate or supplant what is knowable by unaided reason.
FWIW, Aquinas drew heavily from Aristotle and had such enormous respect for Aristotle, he referred to him as simply "the Philosopher".
>One very common error people make is to believe that ethics - at least epistemically and for the most part - is sectarian. This view seems to stem from an ultimately nihilistic presupposition that morality is a fiction supplied by the fiction of religion. But that is not the natural law view and thus a view alien to both Aristotle and to Christianity.
I didn’t make that claim in any implied way, I asserted, correctly, that Aristotle is not an Abrahamic thinker.
> The natural law view is that human beings have a nature, which is most centrally to be a rational animal with the freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect. Thus, Man has moral responsibility, because he plays a part in choosing what he does. Accordingly, because human nature defines what is good or bad for human beings (that which actualizes human potential in accord with reason vs. that which frustrates or opposes reason and the actualization of potential in accord with it), we bear responsibility for how we exercise our powers. Aristotle wasn't completely, but the core principles in the Metaphysics or his ethical works or in epistemology are - in my view - spot on.
The Nichomachean Ethics doesn’t discuss ethics within any context of absolute free will even, it is a very qualified doing. Aristotle explicitly points out that the actions of slaves are entirely disqualified from being considered ethical. Most Christian theologies would vehemently disagree precisely because having the supra-knowledge of the Mystery imparted upon one necessarily brings one's being into the dimension of revealed universality. That's not what Aristotle is talking about.
> What Christianity does or claims to do is supplement what is knowable by unaided reason with revealed knowledge - the object of faith - which, of course, does have ethical import, but it does not negate or supplant what is knowable by unaided reason.
All three of the Abrahamic theologies were infected by Neoplatonism, which . The Europeans revived their Neoplatonism through the Muslims even. The Middle Ages Christian theology of the "chain of being" is a riff on Neoplatonist "ladder of being".
Aristotle was describing in Metaphysics a cosmology concerned with unpacking the notion of motion as the actualization of potentiality, hence, "First Mover", which is not at all an Abrahamic idea.
> FWIW, Aquinas drew heavily from Aristotle and had such enormous respect for Aristotle, he referred to him as simply "the Philosopher".
This doesn’t interact with my point since it requires us first to ask how he read Aristotle, whom was not an Abrahamic thinker. An aside, but the Muslims called Aristotle “The Philosopher” (Ibn Rashud, Ibn Sina), and that tradition was received through the Muslims by their European readers.
> he has some pretty messed up and weird views
What’s an example?
He thought some humans were slaves by nature and women were naturally inferior to men.
edit: whoa, I didn't realize how racist this guy was. He could be classified as a eugenicist I suppose.
He also believed in spontaneous generation (fair, without technology we have now it would be really confusing to understand where all kinds of things come from).
Seemed to believe infinity was impossible yet also that the heavens are infinite. Maybe he distinguished between the earthly and heavenly planes, but still seemed to think they were similarly constructed from elements.
The list goes on.
> He thought some humans were slaves by nature and women were naturally inferior to men.
The notion that all human individual are of equal worth isn't exactly common. You may think it's weird, but it was fairly standard worldview for a lot of humanity for a lot of history. Your outlook may simply be shaped by living in a Christian-based culture:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Holland_book)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor...
While I think curiosity is a natural human trait, doing "science" is not 'as natural', as certain metaphysical assumptions need to be in place before it can really be done, and not all worldviews/cultures accepted them:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Provid...
many humans are still slaves by nature -- look at how averse many folks in the society are to rational and pragmatic thinking, being enslaved by religion, ideology and showing indifference to human suffering, and endless worship of wealthy.
We need to distinguish between "many people are born into slavery" and "many people are meant to be slaves by their inborn nature". The former is true, the latter is not, even in the example you've given.
Also, he was referring to people performing labour, not people adhering to spiritual belief or ideological systems.
I see what you mean, but I don't think this means what he believed was true. I see it as categorically different. People adhering to beliefs without critical thought vs being forced into labour due to their 'nature' are very different matters.
being born into slavery is a random fact -- life happens and they had no control over it really.
many people are meant to be slaves is also a fact -- it is not like everyone is gifted cerebrally, or even blessed to be in an environment where, by the time they are adults, have been shown a good formula for life; so consequently a section of the society is destined to be just slaves, it just needs the presence of a manipulator.
Aristotle, being an endless questioning guy he was, might have figured this out, although i'm not sure.
I'm going to firmly disagree and insist that no one should ever be a slave, and they are not meant to be slaves, regardless of their intellectual capacity or whether they were shown a good formula for life. Human society is in a failed state anywhere in which someone is forced into slavery.
I think you're committing a naturalistic fallacy, and I don't agree at all that people are ever meant to be slaves.
The most I can agree to is that "some humans are born into slavery due to chance". This is factual. That people are meant to be slaves is not a fact. Perhaps we have a language barrier here.
'meant' was used to the effect of 'destined';
I've no disagreements with your position or moral principles. But spherical cow is different from reality.
By 'destined' I assume you mean 'there was never a way their life would play out other than them becoming slaves'. But the word 'meant' and 'destiny' carry a meaning of "it is the right thing to happen", which I think we all agree is not the case.
> Aristotle, being an endless questioning guy he was
I dunno--as far as I can tell Aristotle never asked the slaves who supported his philosophical lifestyle what they thought about it.
> Aristotle never asked the slaves who supported his philosophical lifestyle what they thought about it.
My guess is he likely did with the slaves he freed or made provisions for in his will (and preserved by Diogenes Laërtius)
"many people are meant to be slaves is also a fact" - you definitely need to spend a while researching what comprises a fact.
'meant' was a wrong choice of word which i stated above.
you come across as a child by being snarky - you definitely need to spend some time learning how to behave like an adult.
You literally posted that some people are effectively born slaves, that's beneath contempt and if you said it to my face I would certainly have been far, far less kind. Also you definitely need to spend a while researching what comprises being an adult.
"Meant" is the problem here - if you think "meant" by your mentioned "manipulator", then yes - the elites are evidently holding that worldview for millennia. But "meant" - as in "natural order of things" / "higher purpose" is obviously not a fact, and should be strongly denounced.
>He thought some humans were slaves by nature and women were naturally inferior to men.
These are unfortunately still all too common beliefs. The latter has mostly been folded into racial essentialism and racial realist beliefs, because slavery is no longer legal (13th amendment loophole notwithstanding) and you can still find people arguing women are intellectually inferior and incapable of rational thought.
The whole anti-DEI movement is based on the premise that non-whites and women categorically don't deserve the same status in the workforce as white men, and the only reason they have "equality" is due to anti-white racism.
A bit off topic, but I'm guessing Aristotle himself would say that chasing "status in the workforce" (as opposed to leisure, riches, wisdom, power etc) is itself a good example of slavish disposition. Status in the bosses' eyes, amirite?
He stated, in a separate work, that women had fewer teeth as an example of his views on their inferiority. Makes you want to take everything he said with a grain of salt.
In his defense (sorry if defending him offends here), women probably did, at the time, often have fewer teeth due to worse dental care.
https://sourcelibrary.org/book/problemata-text-beginning-omn...
An original source for this. I wonder if wisdom teeth affected this count? It’s so odd of a claim
Women and men have identical dental anatomy, so no, it's not wisdom teeth. Women would technically be earlier and thus have more, if you get into the details.
Aristotle has flaws, that's all.
I love his work on happiness. On the academic side of Philosophy, I believe his conception stands alongside what is typically called "Hedonism" defining the two major schools of thought, obviously with modern takes and twists. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on "Happiness" if you're interested.
I learned today that I have 28 teeth. Anyone have 32?
The thing I always come back to is Aristotle's belief that if you release an object being circled about your head by rope, it will move perpendicular to the tangent line of the circle. This is trivial to disconfirm by experiment. It moves parallel to the tangent. It's just that science of his school of thought was rationalist. They believed in the power of thought more than the power of experiment. You can surely observe the lifecycle of women and men and see they develop and shed teeth in exactly the same ways and same number, but why bother doing that if you earnestly believe you can just intuit laws of nature purely by thinking really hard?
To be clear, I'm a huge Aristotle fan. He's a towering intellect I will never come close to equaling. His ideas set the stage for very nearly all western thought. It just goes to show that everyone everywhere has deficiencies and blind spots. The smartest person who ever lived can still be wrong in extremely obvious ways in retrospect. Intelligence is no guarantee you're going to actually be right about very much.
It's hard to square this with my impression of Aristotle as a kind of early empiricist, cataloging and dissecting animals.
Sorry for defending Aristotle? Have we lost the plot as a society?
I think they are just signaling their political/religious affiliation.
FWIW, I got a lot more about virtue ethics from reading Plato's works, the Stoics, and Cicero. Aristotle is somewhat dry and tedious to read. Go for him if you're into formal logic and related technical systems. But if you're truly interested in virtue ethics and have some reading discipline, try Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
On Marcus Aurelius: he's often recommended mindlessly (especially in tech circles). I actually to suggest to read him last. He does have valuable things to say, but he's the most depressive of the Big Three Stoics. You can better appreciate Aurelius if you've already digested some Socratic dialogues and Epictetus. One of the top-most Stoicism scholars (A. A. Long) describes Marcus Aurelius this way: "a melancholy emperor, who was hardly a card-carrying Stoic".
FWIW, here's[1] my recommended reading order and top English translations from five years ago. Cut out the cheap rehashes by people such as Ryan Holiday and stick to the originals. A bonus note[2] on the Roman gem, Cicero, from six years ago.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990579
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638573
It doesn't help that nowadays Aurelius is being held up as some beacon of masculinity nowadays. I mean there are much worse role models but so many folks have been reductionist about his views and it can be problematic. There is some good ideas but they have become idolized.
I found the views of the Neoplatonists to be fascinating even if one doesn't subscribe to those views.
Generally, read broadly and from multiple points of view.
> It doesn't help that nowadays Aurelius is being held up as some beacon of masculinity nowadays.
Yeah, it's people like Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday and others who write titles such as "how to think like a Roman emperor" (a terrible title if you know anything about Aurelius or Stoicism in some depth) and other tech bros are to blame. They drummed up excessive hype for Aurelius, he's good marketing material.
Neoplatonists: I tried reading Plotinus, but it didn't resonate with me, afraid. But it was a weak attempt.
Plato is delightfully weird and engaging and way more fun to read than Aristotle, agreed.
Yeah, I think Plato's dialogues are unparalleled. I love the rigour, drama, and how they don't end with a clear conclusion ("aporia"), forcing you to find your own.
Well Aristotle's attempt to find a demonstrative science (or what we would refer to as science today) also led him to an aporia between universal categories and individual substance. It's just that Aristotle's aporia cannot be understood in Platonic terms.
The level of precision a subject can reach is peculiar to that subject, but it doesn't follow that nothing can be accurately predicated of it:
"It is characteristic of such knowledge [ethics] that it should be deficient in “exactness,” in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws."
"[T]he man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8438/8438-h/8438-h.htm
Aristotle is very good, but Plato is perfect. Some random quotes:
Only the dead have seen the end of war
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
The first quote is not even a quote from Aristotle but from Will Durant’s book, The Story of Philosophy (1926)
The saying is a paraphrase of Aristotle's ideas on virtue.
Technically the words are that of Durant but the core idea is Aristotle.
Pretty low effort article I like the quotes but yeah.
My favorite part is the useless comment bellow each quote like: "The commenter above has stated that the quote is not from aristotle, this is important for the article"
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet" -- Sun Tzu
I thought that was Descartes
Roughly translating something my grandfather once said: 'a quote is not something to be parroted, but to be pondered'. Unfortunately all the provided quotes are in English, so they're unlikely to actually be things Aristotle wrote or said; rather they're translations which may have different nuances or meanings. That doesn't mean they're not worth pondering, though (or parroting, if they are worthy of it and applicable to a situation).
Pretty much. I have a list of little sayings I have pondered over the years. I started it in 2020 thinking I might end up a few dozen, it is now well over 600. They are things to think over and not just accept blindly.
It stemmed from the idea from Buddhism that 'a thousand words mean nothing compared to a single word that brings peace'. Some of the most profound and useful sayings I have come across have been just single lined things. That doesn't mean that it is the only way to communicate, not even close, just that they have a very useful place but only in context.
As for the translations, I recommend people look at multiple translations of ancient texts to see how they vary wildly. The Tao Te Ching is a great example because of how many options you have available. Some are poetic, others are fairly blunt. Others just completely miss the point. It is fun to see.
> 11. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
That's a poor way of framing his beliefs about this. The correct framing is more like “Virtue and being a Good Human Being is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
Happiness should stem from being a good human being; happiness itself is not the origin of virtue or purpose.
If personal sacrifice brings genuine well-being to your family or community, that could be a very virtuous and rewarding thing to do, and as such, should make you content and satisfied with your actions and their outcomes. That's how you find eudaemonia; that state of 'happiness' he's describing. While you haven't sought out your immediate personal happiness or gratification, you can still feel good in a morally derivative, intellectual manner (which could also make you genuinely happy or content, too). The bible is big on this theme, as well.
Humans are political animals to Aristotle, and our prosociality and duty to others was crucial to how we measured ourselves and our obligations to society. Personal happiness in a contemporary, conventional sense wasn't very important in that scope. Our ability to be satisfied with, and take gratification from, our service to others was a major part of how you'd derive that contentedness and eudaimonic state of mind.
It seems important to make that distinction, because most people's interpretation of that quote (I don't think it's an actual quote) would be relatively hedonic or epicurean. Everything you do should be in the pursuit of feeling good.
It's unfortunate that the Greek word eudamonia, which is the one Aristotle used, gets translated into English as "happiness", which is open to so many misunderstandings, particularly in our current culture. There isn't really a single English word that means "being a good human being". "Virtue" or "virtuousness" might once have served, but I think its connotations have shifted in a way that makes it no longer suitable for expressing the concept that Aristotle had in mind.
I’ve wondered at times if this is partially due to cultural changes. We’re less interested in prosocial traits and how we fit into social hierarchies/personal duties and more interested in personal happiness or gratification.
I’m not sure. It appears this way from what I read, but it’s hard to know having not been alive 2000 years ago.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle never said this. It's Will Durant.
https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-tim...
https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/s2n3s/source...
This invalidates the post for me, it takes it from academic research to fanboy posting.
Funnily enough, people attributing "smart sounding" quotes to Aristotle has been a headache for historians for as long as Aristotle's writing has been around. The more things change...
The saying is a paraphrase of Aristotle's ideas on virtue.
Technically the words are that of Durant but the core idea is Aristotle.
> 2. "Happiness depends upon ourselves."
he's quiet possibly referring to happiness as a relationship (with family, friends, colleagues, citizens etc) rather than just by oneself / isolation / individual. he famously said "man by nature is a political animal" (or social if you prefer)
I expect it’s more similar to the Buddhist idea that happiness is cultivated in your own mind. It’s driven internally rather than externally.
Specifically, meaning making. The same situation can be perceived as negative, neutral, or positive all depending on how the individual interprets it.
The classic example that's a bit wrong is a glass of water half empty or half full.
The true optimist doesn't see it as half full, he sees it as full. Half with water, half with air (being grateful for the air as well.)
The neutral person sees it as half full, and the depressive sees it as half empty.
That's near the opposite of what Aristotle intended. He wrote about happiness as virtuous action, living well. He wasn't so internally oriented.
Social and political are very different, unless you are overly concerned with accumulating power within your social relationships.
I would submit that all social relationships have power dynamics. Politics is about allocation of resources more than power accumulation. You may be conflating the two because more power allows you to allocate resources with less intereference.
It's more social, the translation of political is coming from polis; man is by nature meant to be part of a city or community.
In the original its meaning is being part of a greater unit.
of course they are. his original quote says 'political' but often translations or quotes may say 'social' (informally).
Much of this is either simply not Aristotle, or a paraphrase from one of his works incorrectly attributed to another. My slop meter is pinging.
Edit:
Between the misattributions, fabricated quotes, listicle format, thin explanatory paragraphs, and use of “delve” (posted Nov 2024 - during ChatGPT’s Delve Era), this is a pretty embarrassing thing for a Liberal Arts college to post.
It’s also embarrassing to see a philosopher summarized in quotes or sayings when their real thesis is probably the opposite of what the snippet suggests,
Philosophy is not about clever observations! They are developing systems and arguments you have to actually read to understand.
Thanks for delving, I hadn't picked up on the misattributions. But I'm looking to read some of those books now given the comments here.
Daoist conceptions of virtue can be described as “cosmic spontaneity”
https://sourcelibrary.org/book/chuang-tzu-mystic-moralist-an...
I giggled when reading "Educating the mind without the heart is no education at all". Hehe that must have failed when he taught Alexander the "Great" who would start wars, raze cities and murder whole populations. Or maybe Aristotle only realized this afterwards.
Somehow, number 9 is right after number 6.
My Philosophy 101 in college was Nichomean Ethics, and I think to this day was one of the most important classes I ever took.
https://www.backstory.today/b/y2v04s
> "Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies."
What a cool way to convey the benefits of having strong friendships.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
> entertain a thought without accepting it
Entertaining an idea is understanding it. And, there is some research to show that understanding an idea is believing it. Hence, understanding an idea and not believing it is very effortful.
[1] https://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/gilbe...
> The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up[1], Esquire, February 1936
[1] https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a4310/the-crack-up (https://web.archive.org/web/20250328074803/https://www.esqui...)
I see this quote a lot and can never find it in original sources for Aristotle. It seems to be a misattribution from the foreword of Religion and the Pursuit of Truth by Lowell L Bennion
https://archive.org/details/religionpursuito0000lowe/page/n5...
Who cares? The idea is pretty powerful.
From Aristotle?
Along the same lines: "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." -- Robert Frost
>From Aristotle?
apparently not, actually:
"The earliest that this quotation appears in print is in Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (1959) by Lowell Bennion."
or
"First attributed to Aristotle in Lowell L. Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (1959). Unfound as such.
Sometimes thought (though I feel it's a bit of a stretch) a misinterpretation of Nicomachean Ethics 1.3.4 (1094b): "For it is the mark of an educated person to search for the same kind of clarity in each topic to the extent that the nature of the matter accepts it.""
Maybe, yes "maybe" Robert got inspiration from a guy who lived two thousands years earlier.
If you ever wondered, those are among the things that made that single person standing out of the crowd od Humanity for more than two thousands years.<3
cf. Why people that are often right change their minds often, https://fs.blog/some-advice-from-jeff-bezos/
Nice!
bro just read the book Aristotle did not run a twitter account
it do be like that
You know I always found it odd/unfair how religions were founded around Jesus, Muhammed etc but not for Aristotle, Socrates etc.
I've thought about this. Aristotle doesn't draw as hard of a line between right and wrong behavior or advocate for specific actions, with the right action depending on circumstance, and to finding the middle path. Traditional religions might be a bit more hardline, with specific rules or commandments. It's easier to identify with belonging to a particular group when the line between belonging and not belonging is more crisp and defined by particular practices.
Would love to know if others have takes.
These come from my own musings not someone else's - but bearing sycophancy in mind, I asked Claude and it told me this is basically the "strict church thesis" from sociology of religion, and linked me this paper, I think it lines up with my takes written from someone who has had this idea before: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/230409
There actually were religions founded around the philosophers. The mathematikoi were a cult of followers of Pythagoras that believed everything was Number, and they believed they could purify their souls by learning theorems. And the Neoplatonists founded a religious school based on the works of Plato (with significant elaboration by Plotinus). Christianity ultimately incorporated many Neoplatonic beliefs, along with Stoic beliefs that stemmed from Heraclitus, who argued everything was Logos, which has one translation as Word, which is an opening statement in the Bible’s book of John. Aristotle’s works also went on to have a transformative impact on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through Maimonides, Aquinas, and Averroes, who all interpreted his works.
I agree it’s still interesting that major religions were not founded at the time of the early philosophers — maybe it’s because religion as we conceive of it today depends on a type of bureaucracy that wasn’t achievable in the classical era?
The Greek philosophers were more wise, humble, and didn’t think they’re deities.
It's a category mistake. People try to naturalize Jesus as a "great teacher", but the one thing you cannot do is frame Jesus as another wise man and good teacher! The man claimed to be God. Anyone who makes a claim like is either insane, a liar, or, in fact, God. "Greater teacher, full stop" is simply not an option.
Which is to say that the founding of the Church by Jesus is not rooted in some wise teachings, but in claims about his identity. If his claim of Godhood is false, then the Church and the Christian faith are total charlatanism.