Aristotle

For Aristotle, virtue involves the disposition to act in a certain way that is deemed by one's society to be morally excellent. Virtue is therefore related to how one behaves rather than to the...

According to Wikipedia.com, hamartia is a term that was developed by Aristotle and: ...can simply be seen as a character’s flaw or error...hamartia is the tragic flaw of the protagonist in a given...

Aristotle was a proponent of what's called virtue ethics. This is a school of moral philosophy that locates morality in the attainment of virtue, or moral excellence. Examples of virtues would...

Aristotle considers the soul to be the principle of life, which means that he holds that all living things have souls, not just human beings. His main work on psychology is called “De Anima,” which...

Aristotle's model for communication focuses heavily on the importance of understanding one's audience. In order to employ effective audience-centered communication, the speaker must employ ethos to...

Aristotle, judging by his writings, was extremely interested in contemplating the nature of man, that most intractable of subjects. Man’s role in society and the motivations that drive him to act...

"Sleep-test ethics" refers to a concept of ethical evaluation that is based on one's personal instincts, which could also be called one's "gut feelings" or "moral compass." The idea is that if...

As mentioned in the previous post, Aristotle addresses the idea of catharsis in his text Poetics. Within the text, he describes catharsis as the purging of emotions, such as fear and pity....

In very basic terms, "primary substance" refers to individual things, whether they're individual human beings, dogs, cats, trees, rocks, or anything else. Primary substances are specific things...

Although Aristotle did not really use the modern scientific method, his methods did set the stage for full-fledged science later on. Aristotle was organized in his approach to science. He would...

Examples of primary substances are animals, apples, trees, and mountains. Secondary matter is comparable to form. This is to say that secondary matter is "said of" or "inhering in" a primary...

Jeffrey Skilling said that he liked to employ "guys with spikes" when he was CEO of Enron. By this, Skilling seems to have meant people who were tough and aggressive, able to attack rivals and...

Aristotle defined three main modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Each of these allows a speaker to utilize a different method of persuasion, and frequently all three work together to...

This question has stimulated a good deal of philosophical debate among scholars down the centuries. Nevertheless, the general consensus seems to be that Aristotle believed that the intellect was...

Aristotle ties truth to wisdom and knowledge and examines it as a part of metaphysics. The treatise Metaphysics lays his arguments forth. Aristotle's epistemology contends that finding knowledge...

Wisdom is a virtue which is not a mean between extremes. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes a virtue as the "golden mean" between two extremes. This is a recognition that a virtue...

Aristotle emphasizes that the very best life is a life of eudaimonia, or happiness. Aristotle reasons that the kind of happiness that he is referring to is good and desirable without being...

Aristotle argues that the supreme good for man is happiness. His rationalization is that the supreme good will also be the highest end, the end we pursue only for its own sake. To arrive at the...

Excellent question! First, definitions are in order: Artificial selection, sometimes called "selective breeding," is the process of manipulating genetics to bring out qualities that the breeders...

It is important to start with Plato to answer this question. By far Plato's negative view of imitation (mimesis) is more common than Aristotle's view. Plato believed that imitation was bad, because...

Plato's disparagement of mimesis can only be understood in relation to his theory of Forms. Very briefly—and simply—put, Plato believed that what was ultimately real inhered in what he called...

When Aristotle divided “poetry” into epic, lyric, and dramatic, he was concerning himself with the kinds of narration that separated them. When he defined drama as “imitation of an action by...

Pathos is a rhetorical device used to persuade an audience by appealing to its emotions. As groups of people tend to be more emotionally suggestible than individuals, pathos is often used in...

Aristotle's theory of the mean emphasizes that virtue is often found between the extremes of excess and deficiency—that is, that courage can be found as the mean of cowardice (a deficiency of...

Aristotle defines two types of virtue. Moral virtue is an inclination to act in the right manner and is defined as having just enough. Intellectual virtue is acquired through benefaction and...

The concepts of moral excellence and the good are closely related in the works of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the supreme good is happiness. Most of the good things in life are a means to an end, but...

Aristotle is renowned for various works including his Nicomachean Ethics. In studying the basis of what makes a person strive towards his or her goals, Aristotle maintains that performing "good"...

According to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, ideal ethics were understood by finding the mean of two extreme positions. For example, "courage," a virtue, was the mean between rashness and...

In Metaphysics, Aristotle lays out his four causes as answers to "why" questions. In other words, if we were to ask why something is as it is, we would want to answer it with respect to the...

For Aristotle, an understanding of how to live the good life did not rely on an inductive contemplation of natural laws—as was the case in science—but rather the application of practical reason to...

Aristotle discusses the four causes (Greek: aitia) in the Physics and Metaphysics. These are the four types of explanation concerning why and, to a degree, how objects come into being. This theory...

According to the Golden Mean principle, all character traits have two extremes—excess and deficiency. Aristotle further states that character traits cannot be distinguished from technical...

Realism claims that the physical world exists outside of one’s own perception. Think about the words you are reading on this page. The page is filled with lines that your mind then recognizes as...

Aristotle has a very good reason to make the claim that some actions are always wrong—namely, that by their very nature, they are vices. That is why, when we speak of theft or murder, we use...

This quote can be tough to parse because Aristotle links two different ideas to each other very quickly and without any explanation as to why he jumped from one to the other. The first idea is...

Aristotle, as did and have many others, defined “virtue” as “excellence” in whatever activity in which one is engaged (a concept that Machiavelli would later refine in a more ruthless context)....

The object of ethics is the distinction between good and evil. According to Plato, there is an absolute good which belongs to the transcendental realm of Forms, whereas Aristotle thinks that good...

In Aristotle's Poetics, he says: Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy; for we must not demand...

Aristotle calls the things he considers to be the most real "substances". Substances are the things that the universe is made out of. Today, western science teaches that subatomic particles make up...

Aristotle divided animals into "those without blood" and "those with blood," a dichotomy that roughly corresponds to the modern classifications of vertebrates and invertebrates. He divided animals...

For Aristotle as well as most classical writers, mimesis was a central concept, meaning "to copy" or "to imitate." The Classicists saw the world as a reflection. While Plato disapproved of poets...

This is an excellent question. Some preliminary information is necessary to answer your question. First, the Greeks defined virtue (arete) as excellence. So, a virtuous builder would be an...

Aristotle classified propositions into four types, which are still used today. These classifications are universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative, and particular negative....

Both of Aristotle’s treatises on Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachaen Ethics, begin with a discussion of happiness, which Aristotle regards as the supreme good, since it is an end in...

Studying Aristotle's philosophy can be very useful. Aristotle famously philosophized about a variety of subjects, from ethics to natural science. His works can encourage us to consistently search...

Aristotle addresses the concept of virtue in his written works, the “Nicomachean Ethics” and the “Eudemian Ethics.” For the ancient Greeks, virtue (called “arete”) meant excellence, and could be...