Aristotle's Philosophy: Matter, Happiness, Virtue, and Politics

Accidental Changes

When these changes are substantial, the substance is generated and is corrupted. Matter also includes the absolutely indeterminate concept, certainly a subject very close to that area from the Platonic demiurge that configured sensitive objects in the world according to the models of ideas.

Ends and Goods

There are many ends and goods, some of which are subject in a chain to more important ones. The supreme good that we would like to achieve by itself does make a supreme good, there are no others. This is the type of interpretation of happiness.

Three Interpretations of Happiness

• Happiness equals pleasure (vulgar nature)
• Happiness in political or public life, glory, and seeking honor
• Happiness in contemplative or intellectual knowledge

The belief that leads to man's own work will be the activity of the soul according to what is most exciting in it. The most human excellences are intellectual, and happiness must consist of activities in line with that under a form of intellectual activity: contemplation.

Aristotle gives preference to goods to explain the soul's fulfillment and happiness in a person's life, but this does not prevent distancing from Platonic intellectualism. External goods are indispensable to happiness.

Virtue

Aristotle means by virtue of the soul that virtue is an activity. He distinguishes two faculties in the soul as rational: one endowed with reason and one not.

Types of Virtues

Intellectuals: states that are created by education and habit-forming habits through which truth is reached. He distinguishes between two rational faculties:

• The faculty of science (looks at items that are required)
• Faculty of reasoning (addresses what may be otherwise)

Prudence is the fundamental virtue of ethics. The wise politician directs his action not by automatically applying a set of rules, but is capable of deliberation, discerning what is wrong or good at a specific time.

Ethics

Ethics concerns individual status, the choice situated in a mean relative to ourselves, as determined by a rational principle in the direction in which a prudent man would determine it.

Two Kinds of Political Structure

There are two kinds of political structure:

1. One in which the governing principle is right and governs the common interest.
2. One that governs in the interest of the best state.

Theoretically, it should be monarchical or aristocratic, as the realization of virtue is easier. An aristocratic republic establishes a preferred equilibrium between the owners and the poor. The ideal is the middle republic in which the middle class sets the standard of Aristotelian political action.

The links between free and slave, rich and poor, vary in forms, and the evolution of the state is not considered a problem of these groups. He does not question the existence of three classes from the economic point of view: artisans, farmers, and merchants. For Aristotle, agriculture should not be done by slaves, as they should have rights because civil activity does not allow a virtuous life.