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- Hacker News
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle never said this. It's Will Durant.
https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-tim...
https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/s2n3s/source...
This invalidates the post for me, it takes it from academic research to fanboy posting.
by great_wubwub - > 11. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
That's a poor way of framing his beliefs about this. The correct framing is more like “Virtue and being a Good Human Being is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
Happiness should stem from being a good human being; happiness itself is not the origin of virtue or purpose.
If personal sacrifice brings genuine well-being to your family or community, that could be a very virtuous and rewarding thing to do, and as such, should make you content and satisfied with your actions and their outcomes. That's how you find eudaemonia; that state of 'happiness' he's describing. While you haven't sought out your immediate personal happiness or gratification, you can still feel good in a morally derivative, intellectual manner (which could also make you genuinely happy or content, too). The bible is big on this theme, as well.
Humans are political animals to Aristotle, and our prosociality and duty to others was crucial to how we measured ourselves and our obligations to society. Personal happiness in a contemporary, conventional sense wasn't very important in that scope. Our ability to be satisfied with, and take gratification from, our service to others was a major part of how you'd derive that contentedness and eudaimonic state of mind.
It seems important to make that distinction, because most people's interpretation of that quote (I don't think it's an actual quote) would be relatively hedonic or epicurean. Everything you do should be in the pursuit of feeling good.
- Roughly translating something my grandfather once said: 'a quote is not something to be parroted, but to be pondered'. Unfortunately all the provided quotes are in English, so they're unlikely to actually be things Aristotle wrote or said; rather they're translations which may have different nuances or meanings. That doesn't mean they're not worth pondering, though (or parroting, if they are worthy of it and applicable to a situation).by tmtvl
- The first quote is not even a quote from Aristotle but from Will Durant’s book, The Story of Philosophy (1926)by technics256
- Aristotle is very good, but Plato is perfect. Some random quotes:
Only the dead have seen the end of war
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
by tsoukase - FWIW, I got a lot more about virtue ethics from reading Plato's works, the Stoics, and Cicero. Aristotle is somewhat dry and tedious to read. Go for him if you're into formal logic and related technical systems. But if you're truly interested in virtue ethics and have some reading discipline, try Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
On Marcus Aurelius: he's often recommended mindlessly (especially in tech circles). I actually to suggest to read him last. He does have valuable things to say, but he's the most depressive of the Big Three Stoics. You can better appreciate Aurelius if you've already digested some Socratic dialogues and Epictetus. One of the top-most Stoicism scholars (A. A. Long) describes Marcus Aurelius this way: "a melancholy emperor, who was hardly a card-carrying Stoic".
FWIW, here's[1] my recommended reading order and top English translations from five years ago. Cut out the cheap rehashes by people such as Ryan Holiday and stick to the originals. A bonus note[2] on the Roman gem, Cicero, from six years ago.
by kashyapc - The level of precision a subject can reach is peculiar to that subject, but it doesn't follow that nothing can be accurately predicated of it:
"It is characteristic of such knowledge [ethics] that it should be deficient in “exactness,” in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws."
"[T]he man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician."
by geye1234 - Actually reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is worth it. Not because he's right about everything (he has some pretty messed up and weird views), but because it's challenging and good to think on, and chances are you'll take something away for yourself that you wouldn't have gotten from some webpage that took one-liners out of context, some of which aren't even by Aristotle.by RGS1811