7 Life Lessons From Aristotle

Aristotle is a Promethean figure in the history of the world who lived between 384 to 322 BC.

He is considered the father of logic, biology, political science, zoology, embryology,of natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, and even of meteorology.

He was first a student of Plato, then, when Plato retired, he left the academia which Plato founded and became the tutor of Alexander the Great and the other two future kings, Ptolemy and Cassander.

He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.

Unfortunately, only a third of his magnificent work has survived.

For example, the treatises Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul, and Poetics have influenced more than two millennia of scientists and theologians alike, both fascinated by his ideas.

Being the founder of so many disciplines and having such a tumultuous life living in the company of great kings, Aristotle has many life lessons to offer us.

So with that in mind, in this video, we bring you 7 life lessons from Aristotle.

1. Don't run away from your problems

Aristotle says... To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice, and while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object, but to escape some ill.

It is easy to be optimistic when everything in our lives goes well, but it is much harder when we are faced with problems or even tragedies.

It is important to focus on the solution if you can fix the problem, or if you can't fix it, it is important to find peace with the situation and focus on what you have learned from the experience.

Aristotle invented the concept of catharsis in his book Poetics, explaining that a negative experience can always teach us a moral lesson.

But if there is a solution for the respective problem, if it is something you can change, then you should be brave and face reality and do everything you can to solve the problem.

Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great and he taught him what it means to have the courage to face your problems.

Alexander was a great visionary and strategist.

He conquered many battles even when his army was outnumbered, he didn't shy away from anything,

even if it was against a huge army of people accompanied by two hundred elephants.

Following the teachings of Aristotle and the bravery of Alexander the Great, we should try to be a little more courageous in life, to not run away from our problems.

Before running away from people, problems or circumstances, it is always better to look reality in the eye and we can understand that what we thought was terribly scary is not actually as scary as you think.

Even if you don't have the power to change things for the better by yourself, you can always ask for help.

You will eventually find someone to help you overcome the problem.

For example, if you have seemingly insurmountable debts with the bank, instead of hiding yourself in a corner ruminating over your problems,

you would be better off talking to your friends and members of your family and through them you may even find a solution to help you pay your debts.

Don't hide in your desperation, be proactive and share your problem with others in order to find the best solution.

However, there are some situations where there is nothing else you can do, other than to think what kind of moral lesson you can learn from the event.

For example, if somebody close to you betrayed you, a close friend stole a fortune from you or a spouse cheated on you,

your moral lesson would be to get to know the other people better before you confide in them or even marry them before you give them your full trust.

Don't judge yourself too harshly for this mistake, but rather develop a life principle to never trust someone before you really know them.

2. Try to find the golden mean

Aristotle tells us, "...virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency."

One of the main ideas of Aristotle's teachings is the idea of finding balance.

In the book Neomachian Ethics, Aristotle identified that what makes people good and successful is a set of eleven virtues.

Courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, pride, patience, truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, and modesty.

Each virtue is the balance between two extremes.

For example, courage is in the middle of cowardice and rashness.

A courageous person is neither too much of a coward nor too rash.

Similarly, losing your temper is a vice.

It is much wiser to find a middle ground and use a moderate amount of anger when you try to express your fury about something.

You wouldn't want to explode over anything you dislike, living every day with high blood pressure, but you also don't want to keep quiet and let people take advantage of you.

You need to find the happy medium.

A balanced person, Aristotle argues,will be a virtuous and happy person. They have found the golden mean.

They have found the golden mean.

In our modern-day society, where everything is so easily available, a lot of us fail to apply this rule.

We either over-consume or stain our shells out of fear and anxiety.

We either succumb to the extreme of excess, which can take form in the accumulation of wealth, food, drugs, and alcohol, or descend into deficiency like inadequate attention to education, intellectual pursuits, or healthy sport and lifestyle activities.

We all know that lack of sleep or too much drinking can harm our health, and yet we keep continuing to fall into this trap time after time.

What makes this living in excess or deficiency so tempting for most of us is that we care more for our short-term gratification.

On the other hands, respecting this golden mean, and maintaining equilibrium requires willpower and long-term thinking abilities, and finding that balance is a very important aspect of our well-being.

Balancing your desires will strengthen your willpower, build your self-confidence, and will keep you focused on your long-term goals.

3. Have dignity and grace.

To quote Aristotle,"...the ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances."

Dignity and grace are not accidents.

They are the result of a clear intention.

After Alexander the Great died, people started to develop negative sentiment for him.

Aristotle was accused of impiety and forced to run away from Athens, leaving for Chalcis in Euboea Island, retiring from political and social life.

Although saddened by this, Aristotle left with dignity and grace, but not without saying, " I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy,"

meaning that he will continue his work in philosophy no matter what the Athenians do.

Dignity and grace come with having a noble purpose in life.

In the case of Aristotle, whose name in ancient Greek means the best purpose, this noble purpose in life was philosophy.

When you know your noble purpose, you can more easily ignore the many others criticizing you at the bottom of your tree, your tree representing your journey towards a noble goal.

Your decisions made with dignity and grace have a bigger importance in determining your destiny than the events and circumstances in your life.

You should use your reason to understand that the things people do are more a reflection of them than of you.

If you have a noble goal in life, for example, creating a business which can help thousands or even millions of people rise up from poverty,

funding a school in Africa, or spreading your knowledge through the books you write,

then you are that much less likely to mind, for example, that your best friend has said some bad things about you.

Because you know who you are and your ultimate noble goal in life, you are less upset about your partner leaving you because you know you are worthy of love.

As you are on a great journey to have a positive impact on this world, don't humiliate yourself when such things happen to you, simply react with dignity and grace.

4. Be open to others' points of view

Aristotle teaches us, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

During his debates and lectures in the Lyceum, during his long walks with students,

Aristotle was listening to others' ideas and then later organizing them, coming up with innovative ways of approaching different problems.

In this way, he could enrich the knowledge of his time and he became a beacon of wisdom transcending millennia.

Aristotle always emphasized the importance of good listening, saying that there are three components to it, virtue, character, and education.

Virtue to give the other the right to speak and come with arguments,

character to control yourself and your frustration when you are proven wrong,

and education to know which are the best questions to ask in order to decipher what the other is really trying to say.

In general, you need to be able to stay in the conversation even if you see the other people's opinions are wrong.

You might still learn something from them even if it is just one percent.

And that is why Aristotle was saying the mark of an educated person is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Seeing a problem from diffrent angles even if they entirely correct perspectives, helps you understand the problem better.

For example, consider a talk with a climate change denier.

He might say false things like there is a controversy in science regarding climate change, that the reports given by the mass media are false.

Instead of walking away from such a conversation, you might prove yourself to be an educated person and stay in the conversation trying to learn something, to see the issue from a different angle.

You might reject ninety nine percent of what they are saying, but you can try as an exercise to find the one percent which is true.

You know there is no controversy as ninety seven percent of scientists are confident that climate change is real.

But what about that three percent? How can you prove that they are wrong?

If you are an educated person, you would start by studying the problem right away,

and you would find that although is true that climate change is cyclical, with long periods of ice ages and long periods of warmth,

you can also plot the history of temperatures and you will see that great change has been happening over the last 200 years,

which hasn't been the case throughout the entire history of Earth's evolution so far.

Those scientists are therefore wrong, and it can be proven with a simple plot on a graph.

By listening to a climate change denier, you learn something,

that climate is cyclical, and at the same time this didn't affect your opinion on climate change at all.

Not agreeing with somebody but still being part of the conversation might teach you new things, thus additionally proving that you are an educated person.

5. Have the right friends.

In the words of Aristotle, a friend to all is a friend to none.

There is an old saying that people with too many friends have no real friends at all, and Aristotle's teaching reflects this saying.

For Aristotle, friendship is an important part of life, and he identified three types.

Friendships based on utility, that is, based on mutual help, like helping somebody get a job, and the other person helping you to get a great deal on buying a car.

Then there is friendship that is based on pleasure, like going hiking together or to parties.

Then finally, there is true friendship that is based on virtue.

The first two are superficial and they don't last long.

The third one is based on common values and principles and lasts a long time or even a lifetime.

Having too many friends means that you only focus on the first two types.

You like to have fun and achieve professional and financial success in life, and that is why you focus on these two types of friends who help you in this.

If you focus your life on wisdom and virtue, you wouldn't have so much time for the first two types of friends.

You would have more time for making strong connections with a few, select people.

Meaningful friendships require time and effort.

Aristotle teaches us to invest less time in having fun and in climbing the ladder of financial success,

and instead we should invest more time in true knowledge and true friendships.

We should find those people who share our values and principles in life.

You can start by making a list with everything you really value.

It can include anything from having a safe and healthy family to a clean environment, peace, democracy, and believing in equal rights for everybody.

Therefore, you wouldn't be able to make a deep connection with somebody

who throws garbage on the grass, who doesn't recycle things, or who often expresses racist or sexist points of view.

It will take time to find the right friends, but it's worth it, as these kinds of friendships based on virtue can last a lifetime.

6. Put truth before everything else

According to Aristotle, Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Aristotle had a close friendship with Plato and Plato brought out the greatness in Aristotle.

However, Aristotle didn't let this friendship blind him and following Plato's steps, he put more importance on truth than on anything else.

Although Aristotle had an enormous respect and admiration for Plato,

his philosophy departed from him in three important aspects,

regarding the theory of forms, regarding ethics, and regarding politics.

Regarding the theory of forms, for example, in the case of the concept of beautiful,

Plato would be interested in defining beauty, while Aristotle would be more interested in analyzing the beautiful things that exist in this world.

With regards to ethics, Plato believed that knowing what is the right thing to do will lead you to do the right thing, while Aristotle believed this is not enough.

To become virtuous takes a great amount of effort, it is not automatic through knowledge.

And with regards to politics, Plato believed that philosophers should be the rulers of society,

while Aristotle defined human beings as political animals and polity is the best way to organize a society,

meaning that society should be ruled by the interest of the majority.

Overall, if Plato was concentrated in theoretical studies, Aristotle put more emphasison experiment.

On the real world and in analyzing this world, he used an empirical approach, based more on experiments and logical reasoning.

Aristotle's method for logical reasoning is an inspiration even today.

We all need to learn the right ways of using logical reasoning, no matter the field we are working in,

and we shouldn't compromise our capacity of reasoning for anything, not even for making a friend happy by agreeing with their false logic.

For example, if you are the co-founder of a small company and the main founder,

who is also your friend, tells you about their strategy to buy another small company,

and you both know that company has serious financial problems and debts, you should inform your friend that you disagree with their decisions.

You should enumerate all the reasons for that, enumerate all the negative consequences that can happen,

and even resign if your friend still doesn't listen to you.

Truth is much more important than agreeing with somebody else, no matter how close you are to each other.

7. Maximize your potential through constant learning

In our final quote from Aristotle for this video, he says,

Happiness is not God-sent, but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training.

Aristotle emphasized the importance of education and of acquiring knowledge,

stating that everything or being on this planet has its unique characteristics, its unique role in this world.

The highest good of everything is achieved when it can fulfill its role.

For example, the purpose of a knife is to cut, the purpose of the sun is to shine, and so on.

In the case of humans, the purpose is not evident, but Aristotle came up with the concept of eudaimonia,

which means living well, and Aristotle believed this is the purpose of human beings.

Eudaimonia is not the same as happiness, but this is often how the term is translated in English.

Eudaimonia doesn't mean a pleasant physical state or a pleasant state of mind, it means fulfilling your true potential.

Becoming the best version of yourself, maximizing your talents, and your capacity to reason.

In order to do so, it is important to know yourself and what your talents are, to plan your life accordingly, and to make the most of them.

It is also important to understand that only when you work on something you feel joyful about are you capable of giving your best,

to go that extra mile in order to provide top quality work.

For example, if you are pretty intelligent and you enjoy learning chemistry and biology,

you might decide to become a medical doctor in order to reach eudaimonia, however, you still need to spend years studying and training to get there.

Anything worth accomplishing requires intense effort and learning new skills.

Once you decide on your career path, you need to learn day by day in order to maximize your potential and achieve worthy and noble goals.

Also, learning shouldn't be done purely for your professional life, but also to satisfy your curiosity in different domains.

Each of us can try to learn new things every day, be it at work or from newspapers, from YouTube, from reading books or from online courses, from documentaries on TV, and so on.

There is so much to learn and we can prioritize learning according to our interests and curiosity.

We all need to make the best of our talents and use our capacity to learn and think as much as possible in order to reach the greatest good, eudaimonia or true happiness in life.