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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.
> he has some pretty messed up and weird views
What’s an example?
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."
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.
Plato is delightfully weird and engaging and way more fun to read than Aristotle, agreed.
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)
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet" -- Sun Tzu
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"
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.
“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.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
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.
cf. Why people that are often right change their minds often, https://fs.blog/some-advice-from-jeff-bezos/
> 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.
Social and political are very different, unless you are overly concerned with accumulating power within your social relationships.
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...
My Philosophy 101 in college was Nichomean Ethics, and I think to this day was one of the most important classes I ever took.
> "Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies."
What a cool way to convey the benefits of having strong friendships.
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.
“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...
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...
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
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
Quote lists are kinda hit or miss.
Half the time
Nice!
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.
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 do be like that
bro just read the book Aristotle did not run a twitter account