Care to reply to Aristotle?

Here’s one:

You may or may not be familiar with how this classic argument plays out. So what? What’s your reaction? Do you have anything to say to Aristotle at this point?

What does “honour” mean here? If it means public admiration, arguably that is a base end in political life, going for the cheers, the prestige, the picture posters, the book tours, the prize-ribbons of public life, instead of focusing on how best to serve society; but a civically useful one, as it allows the public to reward performance in public office with admiration or scorn. Thus, honour is an instrument of democracy. About which Aristotle was iffy.

I could add some more from Aristotle:

I see no argument here, merely an unsupported assertation.

I’d rip into Aristotle for things way more important than this.

Given that he was struggling to crawl out of the muck and muddle that was pre-classical thought, I’m willing to cut him some slack. But I agree that by modern standards of argumentation, his points were fairly weak.

Being only tangentially familiar with the classics, is this meant to be a decision between hedonism and altruism - with the type of altruism being acts that inure to the public benefit such as building a temple to Athena or other god, building roads or public buildings, etc.

It might be a decent argument for what ought to make you happy. It might even be true for what makes someone happy when they look back on their life. But I think many would choose hedonism over public service and never have any regrets about it.

It’s just Aristotle mentioning that different people have different beliefs as to what the purpose in life is ("the good), with some people saying it’s pleasure, some saying it’s honor, and some saying it’s wealth, and him coming to the conclusion that all three are unsuitable ends.

I really don’t know what to say to a person who is so clearly locked in his own back-ground and culture.

This made me laugh :slight_smile: Maybe you’re not trying to be funny…

You do touch on what I’m getting at though. Often I feel like the “Some magical guy said so” model of ethics drives people mad. What is right and wrong? Why, here’s a list! Why are they on the list? Unverifiable magic guy said so, that’s why!

Why doesn’t our culture have an ethical system based on reasons? Is it that the concepts fall apart with scrutiny? Or ethics become stale for different times? Is Artistotle’s classic debate just worn out, or never was any good in the first place?

Then what, in Aristotle’s view, would be a suitable end?

I hope it is not “philosophy.” You cannot, after all, expect everyone to be philosopher.

Pretty much happiness through virtuous living. It’s all laid out in the Nichomachean Ethics.

Captain Amazing is right. Aristotle calls happiness “the end of action.”

He gets drawn to his concept of excellence, and goes on to define human good: “human good turns out to be activity of the soul in conformity with excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in conformity with the best and most complete.” His notion of the soul seems different from what comes later in history; he makes claims like “reason is in the soul” and “happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with complete excellence”. He gets woo about it only in passing and is probably referring to something that would be described in more conventional terms today.

As it pertains to notions of ethics and pleasure, he says:

I don’t know if somebody has to be exactly a philosopher to love excellence or justice, but it does seem to drift that way at least a little.
I want to know what people think about the ideas themselves, but I’m also curious to hear people’s opinions on whether this approach can accomplish anything worthwhile vs. simply leading to the loony bin.

People tried that. it failed. badly. As it turne out, people disagreed on the reasons, the conclusions, or more commonly, on the entire concept: there was never any reason for them to go along with it. In the end, all morality must be based on arbitrary ideas. Trying to base it on some special reason just wound being a laughable pretense of rationality for what was a very irrational thing.

Most of what I’ve heard about Aristotle lately is from watching QI; whenever they mention him, it’s about how he was ridiculously wrong about something (though usually about something biological). What, if anything, did he actually get right?

Formal logic?

Well, his pupil, Alexander the Great, conquered the known world…

I’d tell Aristotle to get a life.

Hey Aristotle! you talkin’ shit about Sardanapallus? That’s my bro, bro. Don’t talk shit about him, his parties are the bomb. You talk shit about him someones gonna fuck your shit up, not me man, but someone, you hear what I’m saying? Cause Sardanapallus is a straight up motherfucker, allright. So just step off, Aristotle.

But historians agree he probably never paid much attention to his tutor.