Reference
- ARISTOTLE (384–322 BCE)Aristotle was born just in time to know PLATO, and worked on every subject under the sun with alarming taxonomical zeal. Substantial amounts of his labours have survived and been very influential historically, but he actually wrote even more than this, including some apparently very lively dialogues in the manner of his illustrious predecessor. None of these have survived, leaving only a dry pseudoscientific collection of notes and theories. Despite, or perhaps because of this, throughout the Middle Ages, no other thinker had as great an influence as Aristotle, and he merited in the thirteenth century alone some five separate papal bans...
- AristotleA Macedonian by birth, Aristotle was the son of a physician who ministered to King Amyntas II of Macedonia—a connection that would later benefit the philosopher. When he was 22 years old, Aristotle moved to Athens to study with Plato, whose pupil he remained until he was 42. On Plato's death, Aristotle moved to the Troadian community of Assos for three years, then on to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, where he remained until 344 BCE In that year King Philip of Macedonia, the son of Aristotle's father's former employer, invited Aristotle to become the tutor to his son Alexander. Accepting, Aristotle occupied that office until 335 BCE, when Alexander, en route to becoming surnamed “the Great,” set out on his conquest of Asia...
- The Nicomachean EthicsAristotle's son Nichomachus probably compiled The Nicomachean Ethics—one of three ethical treatises deriving from the thought of Aristotle—shortly after the philosopher's death. Though a specific date cannot be ascertained, Nicomachus himself is known to have died young in battle, and he must have done the work fairly soon after his father died in 322. It seems that Nicomachus drew on lecture notes and on a treatise, the Eudemian Ethics—compiled by Aristotle's pupil Eudemus—which represented an earlier stage in his father's thought. Aristotle's third discussion of ethics, entitled Magna Moralia (Great Ethics) is probably a compilation drawn from the other two works by a successor member of Aristotle's peripatetic school of philosophy...
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Aristotle on Life - The Big Picture Play
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Shift your perspective from India to the roots of Western thought about life's meaning by beginning your study of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. This introductory lecture sets out the framework of Aristotle's view, as set forth in the lecture notes kept by his son and pupil, Nichomacheus.
Online Resources
- Aristotle: BritannicaAristotle, Greek Aristoteles, (born 384 BCE, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece—died 322, Chalcis, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking...
- Aristotle’s Ethics: Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAristotle conceives of ethical theory as a field distinct from the theoretical sciences. Its methodology must match its subject matter—good action—and must respect the fact that in this field many generalizations hold only for the most part. We study ethics in order to improve our lives, and therefore its principal concern is the nature of human well-being. Aristotle follows Socrates and Plato in taking the virtues to be central to a well-lived life...
- The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle: Project GutenbergThe Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the “philosophy of human affairs;” but more frequently Political or Social Science. In the two works taken together we have their author’s whole theory of human conduct or practical activity, that is, of all human activity which is not directed merely to knowledge or truth. The two parts of this treatise are mutually complementary, but in a literary sense each is independent and self-contained. The proem to the Ethics is an introduction to the whole subject, not merely to the first part; the last chapter of the Ethics points forward to the Politics, and sketches for that part of the treatise the order of enquiry to be pursued (an order which in the actual treatise is not adhered to)...
- Portrait of Aristotle: Getty MuseumPortrait of Aristotle that is likely an adaptation of an Early Hellenistic type. His hair is thick on the sides and around the back; a thin fringe on top of his head masks his baldness. His heavy brow extends over his small eyes. He has a thick beard and moustache. The head was broken off at the neck; the back has been sheared off and there is some damage to the right temple and the nose.
Perspectives
The Nicomachean Ethics
'Happiness, then, is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world.'In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle's guiding question is: what is the best thing for a human being? His answer is happiness, but he means, not something we feel, but rather a specially good kind of life. Happiness is made up of activities in which we use the best human capacities, both ones that contribute to our flourishing as members of a community, and ones that allow us to engage in god-like contemplation. Contemporary ethical writings on the role and importance ofthe moral virtues such as courage and justice have drawn inspiration from this work, which also contains important discussions on responsibility for actions, on the nature of practical reasoning, and on friendship and its role in the best life.This new edition retains and lightly revises David Ross's justly admired translation. It also includes a valuable introduction to this seminal work, and notes designed to elucidate Aristotle's arguments.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Aristotle
In this excellent introduction, Christopher Shields introduces and assesses the whole of Aristotle's philosophy, showing how his powerful conception of human nature shaped much of his thinking on the nature of the soul and the mind, ethics, politics and the arts. Beginning with a brief biography, Christopher Shields carefully explains the fundamental elements of Aristotle's thought: his explanatory framework, his philosophical methodology and his four-causal explanatory scheme. Subsequently he discusses Aristotle's metaphysics and the theory of categories and logical theory and his conception of the human being and soul and body. In the last part, he concentrates on Aristotle's value theory as applied to ethics and politics, and assesses his approach to happiness, virtues and the best life for human beings. He concludes with an appraisal of Aristotelianism today.
Poetics and Rhetoric
Plato had discussed drama and poetry in relation to the ethical and political effects that acting and watching had, as did Aristotle in the Politics. The Poetics by contrast seems to be a modern work: It considers only the aesthetic qualities of a work of art and says nothing at all about its ethical and political effects. While dividing our experiences into distinct categories of the political, the ethical, the religious, and the aesthetic is a recent development, Aristotle himself wrote the Ethics, the Politics, and the Poetics as separate works. We might naturally expect those distinct subjects to be covered in different books, but Aristotle separates them within a culture that didnt think of them as separate spheres of activity. Reading the Poetics, one would never think that there were gods involved in the stories of most tragedies or that tragedies took place as part of religious festivals. If it is easy for us to think of works of art in such isolation, we need to keep in mind how strange it was for a Greek of Aristotles time.
Aristotle - The Highest Good
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowExplore Aristotle's search for the "highest good." It is a search that takes you through his famous "function argument" and offers an explanation of the comprehensive state of being known as eudaimonea, the fully flourishing life that may well elude evaluation until long after death.