The 3 Key Ideas from Aristotle That Will Help You Flourish

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Aristotelian ethics here lately…partly due to me teaching it a few weeks ago but even more so due to me thinking about personal development issues. The concept “flourish” has become the predominant concept that’s began to infuse most of my thinking about GTD, personal development, and life, in general. The word actually is on the tail end of one of my recent posts, and I’ve had to stall some of the other posts that I have on the burner to get out what I mean by flourish and why I think it’s a great framework to understand what we are all after, anyways. To get that off the ground, though, I’ll have to briefly explain Aristotle.

Aristotelian Ethics…in Ten Minutes

To get the basics of Aristotelian Ethics, you have to understand three basic things: What Eudaimonia is, What Virtue is, and That We Become Better Persons Through Practice.

1. Eudaimonia

Eudaimonia is Greek and translates literally to “having good demons.” Many authors translate it as happiness, but I don’t think that’s the best translation and way to understand it. “Well-being” and “flourishing” are closer to what he means, and I think of the two, “flourishing” captures the full range of the way he uses the word. And someone who is flourishing is living The Good Life.

According to Aristotle, all humans seek to flourish. It’s the proper and desired end of all of our actions. Flourishing, however, is a functional definition. And to understand something’s function, you have to understand its nature.

There are four different aspects to human nature, and Aristotle is often quoted as saying “Man is a political creature.” There’s actually more to it than most attributions give him, for “political” is often misunderstood. A better attribution is the following: Human beings are social, rational animals.

Two of the aspects of our natures come from being thetype of thing we are…that is, we are animals. The other two come from the type of animals we are. So, a breakdown is in order:

1. We are animals.


Animals have two components:

1. They are physical.

As physical beings, we require nourishment, exercise, rest, and all the other things that it takes to keep our bodies functioning properly.

2. They are emotional.
   What separates animals from plants, according to Aristotle, is that animals have wants, desires, urges, and reactions. We perceive something in the world that we want and we have the power of volition to get it; likewise, we have the power to avoid the things we don’t want. For humans, these wants can get pretty complex, but at rock bottom we all have (emotional) needs and wants that spring from rather basic sources.
2. We are social.


We must live and function in particular societies. “No man is an island,” and we are the type of being that does well only in social settings. Our social nature stacks on top of our emotional nature, such that we have wants and needs that we would not have were we not social creatures. For example, if we were the type of creature that flourished as hermits, the need for trust and friendly cooperation would not be nearly so pressing.


3. We are rational.


We are creative, expressive, knowledge-seeking, and able to obey reason. We might not always obey reason and we may sometimes not want to exercise our minds, but a large part of our existence relates to us being rational animals.

You can’t truly flourish if you’re not flourishing in one of these aspects. This is played out in our everyday lives when you see people who are so emotionally stunted that they can’t function well in society…or who are so obese that they can’t enjoy life…or who are so socially inept that they can’t fit into the type of society that would develop their intelligence. The list goes on and on.

The different aspects of our natures are tiered in the way that they are presented above, so that the physical is below the social which is below the rational. This may sound familiar to some of you familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy because it’s in effect the same thing. Only it took Maslow 2500 years to verify what Aristotle had said all along.

With an understanding of flourishing in hand, discussing virtue becomes easy.

On Virtue

• What is a virtue?

A virtue is a trait of character that enables a person to flourish.

• The Doctrine of the Mean

This is a key phrase to understand Aristotle. Consider the virtue of bravery, for example. An excess of bravery leads people to do really stupid things; the example I normally use is the frat-brat who’ll jump of the fraternity house just to prove how brave he is. It’s not brave; it’s rash. On the other hand, people who have a deficiency of bravery are cowards; they won’t put their ass on the line for anything. The virtue of bravery lies somewhere in between the deficiency of bravery (cowardliness) and the excess of bravery (rashness).
So it is with all of the different virtues: the virtuous trait is that which is between the deficiency of that trait and the excess of that trait.


• What are the specific virtues?

The Virtues
Vice (Deficiency)	Virtue (Mean)	Vice (Excess)
Cowardliness	Bravery	Rashness
Insensibility	Temperance	Intemperance
Stinginess	Generosity	Extravagance
Self-deprecation	Truthfulness (Modesty)	Boastfulness
Boorishness	Wittiness	Buffoonery
Quarrelsomeness	Friendliness	Flattery
Melancholiness	Spiritedness	Boisterousness
Not Responsive to Shame	Conscientiousness	Overly Responsive to Shame
Envious	Indignant	Spiteful
Unkindliness	Benevolence	Over-kindliness
Slothful	Industriousness	Over-industriousness


I’ll not discuss all of the virtues, but some are worth a quick discussion:

• Temperance


This one has to do with calming one’s bodily passions and desires. Always acting on your physical passions and desires will not lead to flourishing. However, always denying your physical passions and desires is also denying component of your nature and will also not lead to flourishing.


• Wittiness


Many people don’t think this should be on the list, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. People naturally want to be around people who are funny and who lighten the mood. We tend to avoid grumps, and buffoons, though initially fun, grow old after a while. So, having the virtue of wittiness enables us to flourish in the social aspect of our lives. The analysis of friendliness is much the same.


• Spiritedness


The insight here is that you should be passionate about things in the right circumstances. There are situations where anger is the appropriate, virtuous response, and if you’re never able to become angry, you’re deficient in spirit, and if you’re always angry, you’ve got an excess of anger. This trait is the emotional analogue of temperance.


• Indignant


Aristotle discusses indignity as a virtue in the sense that he thinks we should be upset if people do well undeservedly. For example, if someone wins because she cheated, the proper, virtuous response is to be upset or angry. On the other hand, some people are so envious that they are angry when anyone does well, and some people are so spiteful that they delight in other people’s misfortunes. The proper, virtuous trait is to be delighted when other people do well because they deserve it.


• Benevolence


How can one have benevolence in excess? Isn’t it always a good thing? Nope. If we get an excess of benevolence, we can’t see that sometimes to do the right thing you can’t help someone. Do you know a drama queen that always calls to talk to you when they’re going through their crises? The proper response is to, at a certain point, recognize that you can’t help them (in reality they don’t want it) and walk away. However, never helping anyone is a defect and should be avoided as well. (Some confuse this with generosity. That one has to do with how you handle your resources.)

• How are all of the virtues related?


What links all of the virtues is phronesis, a Greek word best translated as “practical wisdom.” It’s not quite intelligence, although it is a rational trait…it’s more like knowing what the mean is in the particular circumstance you’re in. How does one know what to do in a particular circumstance?…

We become more virtuous through education and habit.

If we’re lucky, we’re brought up in an environment where the adults around us teach us how to be virtuous. There are two ways that they can do this.

The first way is just by training us to have habits that enable us to flourish. For example, they may instill in us the tendency to exercise or to play sports. They may also instill in us the habit of sharing, being friendly, brave, and all the other virtues. In other words, they make it part of our innate character; they are training us how to be.

The second way normally follows the first. After we reach a certain age of maturity, they can start to teach us why it’s good to have the habits that they’ve been inculcating. Children don’t understand flourishing, but adolescents and adults can. They’re honing our practical wisdom at this stage, since they are teaching us in what circumstances we ought to do certain actions. They are in effect teaching us why we ought to be the type of person we are.

Of course, the best way for them to teach us to be virtuous is to exhibit virtue in their characters. If we ever wonder what we should do in a certain situation, then finding the answer is as easy as finding a virtuous person and asking her what she would do. And how do we know who a virtuous person is? We just look for someone who’s flourishing.

At a certain point, though, we become responsible for our own characters. It is at that point that we begin to actively, intentionally hone our characters. We continue to improve our physical body, our emotional state, our ability to live with others, and our minds. We continue to reinforce good habits, acquire more knowledge, help those around us, and find peace with ourselves.

We have the knowledge, we have the habits, and we have the understanding that the good life is up to us. The end state: we flourish.

[Sidebar: the metaphor that I often use to explain Aristotle’s ideas is that of planting a tree. A tree planted in bad conditions will not flourish, just as a child brought up in a bad environment will not flourish. Just planting the tree in the right conditions, however, will not necessarily lead to the tree’s flourishing; to help it flourish, you’ll need to prune it and tend to it properly (just as we train children). At a certain point, though, you won’t need to prune the tree. It will have the structure and setting such that it can flourish on its own. Just provide it the nutrients it needs and the tree will continue to grow and flourish. The metaphor translates quite well for human development.

If you understand and remember the points just mentioned above, you can talk meaningfully about Aristotelian ethics. The real reason I’ve discussed Aristotelian ethics, though, is that it will likely infuse a lot of my writing about GTD, personal development, productivity, and creativity. It’s an excellent framework to think about how to flourish in all of the important areas of your life.

If this post turned a light on, maybe these will, too:

1. We Are What We Repeatedly Do
2. History, Luck, and Intention
3. Beyond Thinking and Doing, Towards Wisdom
4. A Parable on Natural Beauty
5. Plastic Soup, Deformed Turtles, and Getting Over Ourselves

Tagged as: Aristotle, Flourishing, GTD, Life, Philosophy