In The Nichomachean Ethics, named for their first editor, Aristotles son Nicomachus, Aristotle sets out to discover the good life for man: the life of happiness.
For Aristotle, happiness is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. Virtue is shown in the deliberate choice of actions as part of a worked-out plan of life, a plan that takes a middle course between excess and deficiency. This is the famous doctrine of the golden mean. Courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and rashness, justice between a mans getting more or less than his due.
The supreme happiness, according to Aristotle, is to be found in a life of philosophical contemplation; but as this is only possible for a few, a secondary kind of happiness is available in a virtuous life of political activity and public munificence.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, scientist, and physician whose writings profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy and remain central to philosophy curricula today. At age twenty-one he became a student under Plato in Athens. In 342 he became the tutor of young Alexander the Great in Macedonia. After that, Aristotle returned to Athens to establish his own school and research institute, the Lyceum.
Nadia May has been nominated as an AudioFile Golden Voice five years running and is a winner of thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. She is the co-founder of TheatreFirst, a theater company in the San Francisco Bay Area where she currently lives.
"The most
beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion
is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt
in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." --Albert
Einstein
"Seek and 'ye shall find,
knock and the door will be opened, ask and it shall be given
unto thee." --A
Biblical Passage"The true understanding of
both the Creator and the creation is considered to be the
transcendental or metaphysical knowledge." --
Bhagavad Gita"For every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction." -- Isaac
Newton
"I
think in metaphysical terms. I would call that increasing the
speed of the vibration of
life." --Neale
Donald Walsh"Nothing is impossible for those who act after
wise council and careful
thought." --
Turuvalluvar"To
everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under
heaven." --
Ecclesiastes
