Sublime

La grande leçon d’Aristote est que la vie humaine est elle-même une praxis – elle n’a pas d’autre finalité qu’elle-même ! Elle est inutile ! Et c’est là toute sa beauté et son importance. Elle n’est pas pratique, elle est une pratique.

for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good.

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. The world is bad; let us learn to be independent of it.

Recognition reveals that, because things are not what they seemed, what a person has done or is about to do is not what he thought it was

We think that human beings, at least in ethical theory, all have equal rights, and that justice involves equality; Aristotle thinks that justice involves, not equality, but right proportion, which is only sometimes equality

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

Plato, as we’ve just seen, had set out his ethical system whereby such ethical notions as goodness, virtue and justice were identified as far-off, objective concepts, known to us only by their pale imitations that we are able to perceive here on Earth. No amount of human introspection could bring us closer to these eternal truths; instead, it was t

“Speak as common people do,” Aristotle advised, “but think as wise men do.”