Aristotle and ethics

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Aristotle was one of the two great founders of the entire Western philosophical tradition. He was taught by Plato – who was really the founder – absorbed everything Plato had told him and then developed it in numerous fascinating and subtle ways, also in ways that I think are much more relevant to the 21st century.

He was the greatest intellectual of all time because he was as equally interested in natural science as in what we call the humanities and philosophical subjects, but what interests me most is that he founded ethics. That is the fully developed philosophical inquiry into how we should behave and how our behaviour will affect our psychological state. Plato only thought about that from the point of view of the top down, so he invented an ideal republic. The actual well-being and behaviour of the citizens as individuals is very much secondary to the total organism. Aristotle took it the other way around and started with the human being, the individual, and worked outwards and upwards to how the whole community would look.

A moral philosophy

For anybody embarking on a personal journey towards self-knowledge, happiness and secular ethics, it is a moral philosophy which guides you in terms of how to live, but with no theological element in it at all. No divine rules; no religion. Anybody who wants those cannot do better than starting with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where he starts with the individual human. What’s going on in that human’s mind, and how can that human live the best possible life given the cards he or she was given at birth?

Humans are animals

He thinks that humans are animals. In fact, he’s one of the first-ever people to suggest that we’re not some special race invented as a super race by the gods. He thinks that we have very much in common with all the other fauna on the planet, but that we’ve got something they haven’t which is the rational principle: we can think in abstract and rational ways to plan our lives, deliberate and take decisions. But we must never forget that we are animals, because we won’t be able to become fully developed moral agents – which only the human being can do amongst the fauna – unless we acknowledge that we are grounded in biological needs, instincts and desires. If we deny that we’re animals or try to repress the animal in us, then we will never be able to flourish properly.

Communities, cooperation and communication

Aristotle thinks that instincts and desires are natural. They exist in all animals so that they can survive and they can reproduce. Hunger leads them to want to eat; sex drive leads them to want to reproduce; cold and heat lead them to find different kinds of shelter. He’s very interested in animals. He wrote four great works of zoology – he’s the founding father of zoology as well as ethics – and in those he emphasises what we’ve got in common with certain animals. For example, like bees we like to live together in large communities, and cooperate and work together. He’s noticed that birds do have language. They have some kind of communication with each other. He’s noticed that very many species couple for life. He’s very interested in the idea of forming long-term relationships with just one partner in order to reproduce and bring up children.

So he’s constantly comparing human communities and human individual psychological development with what he has empirically observed. This is very important; he did this detailed study of how other wildlife operates, but – and this for me, given the ecological crisis facing us in the 21st century, is one of the most important things – he’s quite explicit that because we alone in the animal world have the ability to plan, deliberate and take action, pre-emptive action, we have actually a moral obligation to all other animals to help look after them rather than just exploit them. We’ve got this incredible thing which he called the deliberating part of our soul – the rational part, the part that deliberates and takes decisions – and we’re totally abusing it if we don’t go and help keep the wonderful environment that planet Earth is for all the wildlife on it.

Re-examining our commonly held beliefs

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Aristotle really believed that human beings, as a collective through history, are quite sensible. He used to start from what was commonly believed about things. These are called the endoxa; it just means generally received opinions. So you actually start with them on any particular issue, whether it’s, “Should you encourage huge wealth acquisition in a society?” or, “Should you refrain from adultery?” You start from these ethical issues and you say what is genuinely, generally said about them and you treat those ideas with respect, scrutinise them, reject them if they don’t stand up to scrutiny – if, for example, they’re based in superstition, not science – reject some, modify others.

He thinks that we, as a human race, should be continually re-examining our endoxa, our commonly held beliefs and opinions, and using this deliberative, rational part of our brain to improve and bring them closer to perfection. But he says that is a process; it’s an action philosophy, ethics. You’re actually doing something with it the whole time. It’s an activity, not a state. The ancient Epicureans wanted to just get to this state of no-hassle ataraxia. Proper philosophy lies in constant intellectual activity, and he thinks that that is the highest of all the capacities that human beings have. When we’re operating our intellectual capacities to think about how to live better ethical lives, or better lives in a community or better lives in the environment, we are actually being the best possible human that we can be, and that is human happiness. When you are actively doing human excellence during those moments you are happy.

Aristotle’s focus on function

One thing that unites all these achievements in different disciplines, as we now call them, is that what he is always interested in is the function of anything, whether it’s an animal, civic institution, theatre or a painting. It is the function, not what Plato had called an ideal Form. Plato thought we had to look for the crystallised essences of things, not what they were for, and Aristotle is always wanting to find out what is the function of something: what is it supposed to do, or what is he or she supposed to do? How can we best create a world in which they will be able to do that to the best of their ability?

Each of us and every living thing, plant or animal, and indeed every inanimate object – a temple or a chair – has a function, something it’s designed to do. It’s only when it’s actually put into action doing that that it achieves its true potential. So the goal you are trying to achieve, or the high point or the acme, the pinnacle of flourishing for anything, is the true consummation of what it can do, when its true capacities and capabilities are fully realised. That aim is its telos.

A fully formed telos

Everything in the world has a telos that is a fully formed, fully finished, final, perfect form. So an acorn starts as an acorn, but it’s when it becomes its most mature, adult, glorious oak tree that it’s achieved its telos. This is very much interlinked with the idea of the potentiality that everything has. So let’s think about the acorn. Its telos is to become a magnificent, fully mature oak tree. So that’s why Aristotle’s philosophy is called teleological; that acorn has the potential inside it, encoded, that through time it will change.

And Aristotle is absolutely definite that everything is constantly changing. That acorn has the potential and that is its dunamis. That’s the word we get dynamite from. Unfortunately, Nobel decided to call something very destructive after ancient Greek when in fact it’s incredibly constructive. So a little baby, a newborn baby, has the dunamis to become a fully formed, magnificent, mature adult, doing whatever talent it is that that little baby has been inborn with, to the best of their ability, having received good education, good parenting, appropriate training, appropriate care.

Now, this is very important for his whole analysis of the natural world. Every little animal starts off as something, grows into its full teleological perfection and, before it withers away, has made sure that it’s reproduced so that there’s a permanent cycle of individual members of any one species reproducing themselves and then teleologically developing into maturity. When it comes to humans, though, he’s very clear.

The best guide to what you’re good at

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This has been a huge, important guiding principle for me in my own personal ethics and my parenting, that it’s very easy to stop a baby achieving its full potential. It is very easy not to give it the right kind of attention, not to cuddle it, not to teach it the alphabet, not to provide it with nutritious food, not to try and find out crucially what the true telos of that baby might be. You know, it might be that they’re going to be a magnificent cook. It might be that they’re going to be a world-class philosopher. It might be that they’re going to be a great gardener. It might be that they’re going to excel at parenting, home care and all the other ranges of human talents.

However, he’s very aware that poverty impedes that in vast swathes of the human population, along with cruelty or neglect. Cruelty towards or neglect of children are huge impediments to every individual achieving that true telos. So as somebody who’s been in education all my life, as well as a parent, I very much made it my concern to try to find out and help the young decide or identify – more identify – what they really love to do. Because Aristotle is quite clear that what you really love to do is the best guide to what you’re good at.

Discover more about

Aristotle's influence on today's world

Hall, E. (2019). Aristotle's Way: Ten Ways Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life. Vintage.

Hall, E. (2017). 'Master of Those Who Know': Aristotle as Role Model for the Twenty-first Century Academician. European Review, 25(1), 3–19.

Aristotle's ethics: the journey towards happiness