384–322 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle was born in Stagira, studied in Plato’s Academy, and later founded the Lyceum in Athens. He is not a British empiricist, though he insists that knowledge of nature begins from what we encounter. In ethics he asks what a human life looks like when its capacities are exercised well, and he treats the polis as a setting of that life rather than as an optional club.
Also in the atlas
- Substance and explanation
- Virtue and flourishing
- Political life
Reading, not a syllabus ranking
- Nicomachean Ethics — Virtue, practical wisdom, friendship, and the human good.
- Politics — The claim that a human being is a political animal, and the study of constitutions.
- De Anima — A study of soul as the form of a living body, not a casual dualism.
Questions for reflection
- What is the difference between a life that is pleasant and a life that goes well?
- Which obligations come from being a citizen rather than from a promise?
Aristotle is the main atlas entry for virtue ethics, which the moral axis does not score. His relation to empiricism is thematic, not an identity with Locke or Hume.