Sublime

Aristotle was interested in how we might be good, rather than know goodness. Thus when he taught ethics, his aim was to improve the lives of his pupils at a practical, everyday level. Like Plato, he saw the natural aim of human life, and the best condition of the soul, as eudaimonia, which is roughly synonymous with happiness, or more accurately ‘f

Aristotle also felt strongly that virtue requires action; mere noble intentions are not enough. We are social creatures; a solitary life is not worth living. Our personal happiness, then, was linked to the welfare of the community. With a population consisting of individuals engaged with thinking and discriminating and working out for themselves th

There is a way human beings ought to be and ought to live. This is not because god created them for a purpose—something Aristotle did not hold—but simply because they are a certain kind of living being, and every living species has its own work or function. Human beings have many capacities—Aristotle calls them capacities of soul, but by soul he ju

Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue. Though

Aristotle described his ethical system in his Nicomachean Ethics, which he wrote for his son. It’s an engaging read, surprisingly immediate and accessible in a way that many of these ancient texts are. This was an era when ethical philosophy existed only to provoke real changes in real people, and the language used was not only agreeable but very o