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Aristotle’s definition of education is the same as that of his teachers, that is, the ‘ the creation of a sound mind in a sound body ‘. Thus to him the aim of education was the welfare of the individuals so as to bring happiness in their lives.
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What does Aristotle say about education?

Aristotle’s Theory And Philosophy Of Education – Free Essay Example This essay aims to explain Aristotle’s theory of education before evaluating the contemporary significance of his philosophy of education today. Aristotle is understood to have lived from 384 BC to 322 BC in Ancient Greece which today would span a geographical area that includes Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and parts of Afghanistan (Malam, 2006).

1. He was a philosopher, scientist and teacher who is still viewed today as one of the most significant thinkers in the field of ethics and psychology (Cooper, 2006).
2. His intellectual musings however extended beyond this and he is known for his contributions to a wide variety of areas including physics, botany, ethics, logic, agriculture, medicine and politics (Gotthelf, 2012).

This discourse will argue that he is of immense value to teachers today in reinforcing and strengthening the values of moral education which we can imbed within our own teaching philosophy and providing a theoretical rationale for the value of inquiry based learning approaches and hands-on experiences (Carr & Harrison, 2015).

1. Rather than accepting Plato’s belief in contemplation and self-reflection, Aristotle argued that we gain understanding of the world around us through logical, methodical discovery (Curren, 2000).
2. For Aristotle the development of a moral character was to be the aim of education (Carr & Harrison, 2015).

As such the education of children and young people should extend beyond learning about academia and useful skills to a greater understanding of moral and social values and to a cultivation of a personal moral character (Carr & Harrison, 2015). He believed that education was crucial if man was to achieve fulfilment of the possibilities of one’s character (Lobkowicz, 1970).

• Aristotle believed that the supreme good to which we all aspire to is happiness but the happy man is neither a noble nor savage but instead he is an educated man (Lobkowicz, 1970).
• The happy man, the good man, is a virtuous man, but virtuous is acquired precisely through education” (Hummel, 1999; p.2).

Virtue for Aristotle involves behaving in the right manner and as a mean between extremes of excess and deficiency which are both vices (Leunissen, 2017; MacIntyre, 2013). For Aristotle intellectual virtue develops and grows because of teaching while moral virtue emerges from a result of habit (Leunissen, 2017).

The development of a habit is tied into a well-rounded education where students learn by engaging in an activity or task repeatedly whether that habit be a skill such as a musical instrument, completing an ethical act or making virtuous decisions education can assist in this process (Leunissen, 2017).

When it comes to moral education then Aristotle believed that practice to form the habits should come before theoretical study of morality (Hall, 2018). Therefore the teaching of virtue and morality comes second to the actual practice of it in the classroom and school environment (Hall, 2018).

1. Indeed moral education’s purpose is not to make people good but rather to demonstrate to them what is good, why it is good and how we might be able to generate goodness in our society (Natali, 2013).
2. Children will need to be taught not just to do right because it is imposed upon them, but they will need to aspire it for themselves, as they turn their virtuous behavior into habits” (Loosman, 2013; p.9).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau adopts similar viewpoint arguing that moral excellence is a virtue and that education should work towards nurturing morality in students (Natali, 2013). Intellectual virtues represent traits of character such as being able to judge the truth of the matter and understanding the nature of things while moral virtues are habits of living that involve the whole person and include justice, temperance, prudence and fortitude where they are characterised by desire and emotion (Aristotle, 1984).

Aristotle explores these ideas in The Nichomachean Ethics, a text which consists of ten books and from where he argues that ‘The man who is to be good must be well trained and habituated’ (Aristotle, 1984; p.11). Happiness for Aristotle can only become accessible through education with it being the touchstone of Aristotelian ethics with the virtues, wisdom and happiness acquired through this (Curren, 2000).

Virtue for Aristotle comes when we obtain happiness or goodness with goodness lying across two categories; goodness of intellect and goodness of character (Curren, 2000). Goodness of intellect can be enhanced through education and is the result of training and experience while goodness of character occurs because of habit which can be engineered by keeping good habits (Curren, 2000).

Aristotle held the view in this theory of education that it was the responsibility of the state to provide for education and therefore he is a strong advocate for public education (Carr & Harrison, 2015). Indeed the only extended discussion of his theory of education that survives is that held within Book VIII of the Politics where Aristotle argues that schooling should be provided by the state and ‘one and the same for all’ (Randall, 2010).

He was also interested in continuing education recognising that it was not limited to children and young people but that it needed to take a whole-life perspective with this being organised in stages of seven years at a time (Carr & Harrison, 2015). Pre-school education denotes the very first stage with the parents, and specifically the father responsible for their children’s education as noted in his text The Nichomachean Ethics (Leunissen, 2017).

1. Games should be used as the basic tool of education until a child is five, between five and seven they should merely be spectators in the lessons they will later go on to learn and at seven the child should attend school up to twenty one years of age (Kristjánsson, 2015; Natali, 2013).
2. Unfortunately much of Aristotle’s work has been lost so we do not have the details of how schooling was structured or any details about adult education (Leunissen, 2017).

However what we do know is that Aristotle believed in a system of continuing education and in supporting learning throughout the lifespan. Ultimately Aristotle’s theory of education sees a well-educated person as somebody who seeks out a balanced life, is capable of pursuing a range of interests including in music, public speaking, philosophy etc.

• MacIntyre, 2013).
• This paper will now set out to evaluate the contemporary significance of Aristotle’s philosophy of education today.
• Firstly we will argue that he has an important significance in arguing for the need for the public provision of education that is available to everyone.
• As highlighted above Aristotle believed that education had an important role in the political community in helping to cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues, as the primary tool of statesmanship, in order to bring about happiness (Randall, 2010; p.544).

He argued strongly in Book VIII of the Politics that school should be publicly provided ‘one and the same for all’ (Randall, 2010; p.544). His arguments have important ramifications on the education system and on state parties because he believes that societies have a collective duty, which falls on governments, to help develop young people into ‘good and flourishing adults’ (Randall, 2010; p.544).

Legislation should be in place to regulate birth and early training to help ensure that children grow up healthily in body and mind (Randall, 2010). This suggests a quality education is required and that the Government has a responsibility to introduce legislation, policies and best practice guidelines to support the development of healthy adults through the education system.

We can see this in Ireland when free secondary school education was established in Ireland in the 1960s alongside free school buses in rural areas to help facilitate school access for rural children (O’Donoghue et al, 2017). However it remains that in many countries across the world children do not have access to a quality education owing to a range of barriers such as poverty (Iwunze, 2009).

In the Central African Republic for Instance 25% of 15 to 24 year olds have no education at all while 42% have an incomplete primary education (Education Policy and Data Centre, 2014). Indeed Aristotle’s argument for the equitable provision of education remains a compelling one today even though unfortunately he was not in favour of extending this equity to people with disabilities as he perceived it to be a waste of the State’s resources (Onora-Oguna, 2018; Curren, 2010).

However fortunately the development of special education and inclusive policies in Ireland have extended the rights of all children to receive education and this is supported in international legislation such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN, 2006).

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Aristotle argues that an important educational objective is the encouraging of habit formation which is virtuous (Elliott et al, 2016). However a challenge of this is that habits are not neutral and they require the educator and the government to provide a more concrete commitment to specific behaviours that most people can justify and implement (Curren, 2000).

1. As such a system of education needs to be provided to the public which provides for adequate moral, political and disciplinary education which prepares children for work and to live in the society in which they were raised (Curren, 2000).
2. A common schooling approach then which brings together children from a variety of diverse backgrounds together in classrooms and promotes equal respect and status is important to support this system (Elliott et al, 2016).

Additionally employing cooperative methods of instruction which encourage children to work together and deliberate are important in sharing the values implicit within a given culture (Curren, 2000; p.212). Aristotle is of value to our understanding of contemporary education and in providing a theoretical rationale for the approaches taken today.

• He argued that the education system should place a strong emphasis on a holistic, well-rounded and balanced development of all learners (Elliott et al, 2016).
• For him, he believed that a balanced curriculum should be provided to the child which included opportunities for play, physical training, music, debate, and the study of science and philosophy which were needed to assist the child in developing their body, mind and soul (Elliott et al, 2016).

Aistear, the National Early Years Curriculum Framework for instance recognises the critical role of play in providing a context to a child’s overall learning and development (NCCA, 2009; Kernan, 2007). Standard Six of the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood also recognises that each child has ample time to engage in freely available and accessible opportunities for exploration, creativity and meaning making through play (CECDE, 2006).

The importance of a balanced approach to education is also recognised within the Primary School Curriculum (Government of Ireland, 1999a). Within the Physical Education Curriculum for example it seeks to foster and support the balanced and harmonious development and general well-being of children through the curriculum’s key themes (Government of Ireland, 1999b).

Another important implication for teachers within the education system is that Aristotle believed that educators should employ a pedagogy which is infused with a clear philosophy of life and a concern for what is ethical and virtuous and model this for children and young people in their classrooms (Kakkori & Huttunen, 2007).

• The teacher’s pedagogical ethics should as by exhibiting friendliness which is related to sincerity such that a teacher has a high self-esteem but no interest in boasting (Kakkori & Huttunen, 2007).
• Such a teacher should be self-confident and provide honest recognition to others.
• The teacher is also a leader for Aristotle and to best serve her students she should lead with dignity so they are not stubborn and are willing to listen to students and accept criticism from them (Kakkori & Huttunen, 2007).

A good teacher should also exhibit gentleness or temper so that they are even-tempered in order to have a positive effect on pupils (Kakkori & Huttunen, 2007). Courage is also needed from teachers so that they can challenge superiors if needed and stand by their convictions while having the power to rely upon their own judgement and the strength to resist including with respect to classroom management (O’Donoghue et al, 2017).

For Aristotle too the teacher must be The Just, in that she should be lawful and fair in relation to her pupils and colleagues (O’Donoghue et al, 2017). Aristotle’s work is extended by Kakkori & Huttunen (2007) who argues that teachers need to adopt a democratic attitude in the spirit of John Dewey’s conceptualisation of education.

If a teacher consistently engages in an authoritarian way then pupils will not learn to adopt a democratic attitude themselves while a teacher is not able to teach democracy without themselves adopting a democratic attitude (Kakkori & Huttunen, 2007).

• Many of these virtues are explored and expanded upon by the Teaching Council of Ireland’s Code of Professional Conduct for Teachers (The Teaching Council, 2012).
• It recognises the ethical values of care, trust, integrity and respect as underpinning the teachers conduct in relation to teaching and learning (The Teaching Council, 2012).

This too is seen in the draft Code of Conduct for early years teachers as introduced by Schonfeld (2018) thus providing a theoretical rationale for their importance in underpinning education provision. Aristotle also provided the early seeds for active learning, hands on learning and inquiry based education all of which are seen as crucial methodological approaches to quality teaching in the primary school context today.

Aristotle stood apart from Plato in that he believed that knowledge and truth could be discovered externally while Plato, a rationalist, believed we could discover this through self-reflection (Hammond et al, 2001). Aristotle then developed a scientific method of gathering data from the world around him (Hammond et al, 2001).

As such the inquiry methods we use in our classrooms today derive much of their theoretical base to Aristotle while in contrast pedagogical approaches which call for discourse and reflection to be used to uncover truths rely more upon the works of Socrates and Plato (O’Donoghue et al, 2017).

This makes Aristotle highly relevant and significant for contemporary education because he helps provide us with a theoretical justification for the adoption of inquiry learning opportunities into our classroom teaching. Inquiry based learning posits that letting students investigate solutions to open problems themselves helps true learning to be achieved which can include utilising research projects, group work opportunities and field work to provide children with learning opportunities (Chambliss, 2017).

Aristotle remains highly relevant in providing the theoretical underpinnings for contemporary practices in the early learning centre (ELC) setting. We can see examples of Aristotle in the Montessori Classroom for instance where Aristotle argued that people acquire particular principles which help facilitate their discovery of knowledge and truth through inductive learning (Buckenmeyer, 2009).

The introduction of the diverse materials by Maria Montessori is to support inductive learning on the part of the child so that they can use all their senses to investigate the world around them (Chambliss, 2017). Those theorists most closely linked to inductive learning are John Dewey, Maria Montessori and Jerome Bruner where knowledge and skills are learned through investigative or creative activities (Shavinina, 2009).

Moreover both Aristotle and Montessori shared the belief that Eudaimonia, or the highest good for human beings is actualised by intrinsically motivated work (O’Donoghue et al, 2017; Eiford, 2007). Montessori’s philosophy posits that education should be more than about material gains in the future but instead focusing on encouraging children to derive pleasure in completing work (Buckenmeyer, 2009; Eiford, 2007).
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What are the main educational ideas of Aristotle?

Abstract – The teaching experience of former systems of education is now enticing the attention not only of some specialists but also from practicing teachers of different levels, and their findings can be used by educators involved in the practical work at schools and universities.

In this chapter, the significance of the Aristotle’s approach to education is discussed. Four aspects of his approach are specifically investigated: (1) the integrity of knowledge, (2) wonder as the beginning of knowledge, (3) oral communication as a specific way of creating knowledge, and (4) knowledge as a necessary element of way of life.

While nowadays, the individuality is the primary value, and the accessibility of information is becoming almost absolute, these points of the Aristotle’s way of teaching are becoming crucial.
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What is the definition of education by Plato?

Abstract – Plato regards education as a means to achieve justice, both individual justice and social justice. According to Plato, individual justice can be obtained when each individual develops his or her ability to the fullest. In this sense, justice means excellence.

• For the Greeks and Plato, excellence is virtue.
• According to Socrates, virtue is knowledge.
• Thus, knowledge is required to be just.
• From this Plato concludes that virtue can be obtained through three stages of development of knowledge: knowledge of one’s own job, self-knowledge, and knowledge of the Idea of the Good.

According to Plato, social justice can be achieved when all social classes in a society, workers, warriors, and rulers are in a harmonious relationship. Plato believes that all people can easily exist in harmony when society gives them equal educational opportunity from an early age to compete fairly with each other.

Without equal educational opportunity, an unjust society appears since the political system is run by unqualified people; timocracy, oligarchy, defective democracy, or tyranny will result. Modern education in Japan and other East Asian countries has greatly contributed to developing their societies in economic terms.

Nevertheless, education in those countries has its own problems. In particular the college entrance examination in Japan, Korea, and other East Asian countries caused serious social injustices and problems: unequal educational opportunity, lack of character education, financial burden on parents, and so on.

Thus, to achieve justice, modern society needs the Platonic theory education, for Plato’s philosophy of education will provide a comprehensive vision to solve those problems in education. There is also some controversy about the relationship between education and economics. It is a popular view common in East and West that businesses should indirectly control or even take over education to economically compete with other nations.

However, Plato disagrees with this notion since business is concerned mainly with profit whereas a true education is concerned with the common good based upon the rational principle of individual and social justice.
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What is Aristotle’s famous quote?

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. Hope is a waking dream. A friend to all is a friend to none.
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What are Aristotle’s 3 principles?

An error occurred. – Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser. Hi my name’s Nate Bauer. I’m on the board for PMG. Let’s talk about three principles of persuasion and how they affect your sales communication,

1. Aristotle states there are three principles of persuasion one must adhere to in order to persuade another of an idea.
2. Those principles are ethos, pathos and logos.
3. Ethos is the individual’s brand.
4. Do you trust this person? Do they have authority in the subject on which they are speaking? And do you like the person and are more or less willing to listen to them? Pathos is the emotional connection.

This is all about how it matters to you personally. Does what they’re saying have any relevancy to your life at all? Do you actually really care about what they have to say? Then lastly is logos, the logic behind the argument. Does what they’re saying makes sense? Does it follow facts and data? Does it come to a reasonable conclusion? So, there you have it.

1. Ethos, pathos and logos.
2. You need all three fulfilled in order to persuade someone of an idea.
3. Now, philosophy is great but how can you translate these three different philosophies into actual sales tactics? Well it depends on the context of course, but let’s say you’re building a website and you want to focus on ethos – how do you promote a brand? Well you’ve seen this done in a number of different ways.

Whether you’ve seen this and things like “meet our team” pages where you can learn more about individual staff members. And you’ve seen in things like testimonials. Here’s what people are saying about our company. And you’ve seen it in things like partners – here are the all the different businesses we’ve worked with in the past.

• They trust us, you should trust us as well.
• All of these things build credibility and ethos.
• For pathos, the emotional connection.
• You’ve seen this mostly done in written content describing the benefits of a product.
• Benefits including things like, “here’s what your life looks like after you utilize this product.

Here’s what you can do with all your save time and here’s what you can buy with all of your saved money”. And then for logos, the logic behind the argument. You’ve seen this done in things like diagrams describing how a product actually functions. And we’ve also seen it in comparison charts, “here’s why product A is better than product B and the different features between them.

So, there have it, ethos, pathos, logos. Different tactics of achieving all three. Now before I leave you, a little bit of homework for you. Next time you go to the store and decide not to buy something. Consider which one of these the three things was not fulfilled in you. Was it ethnos? Perhaps you didn’t trust the person selling it to you.

Was it pathos? Turns out you didn’t actually have any need for the product in the first place. Or was it logos? You didn’t actually think the product could do what they said it could do? Because once all three things are fulfilled, the only thing you have left to negotiate is price.
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What is education according to Augustine?

Augustine clearly viewed education as a passion and a process of opening up the mind to ideas and critical thinking (‘skeptical philosophy’). In that sense, all people, regardless of class should be given the opportunity to be educated.
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What is education according to John?

Defining education, John Dewey said, ‘Education is the continuous reconstruction of experiences ‘. His major concept on education has been quoted in his books: ‘Democracy and Education’ (1916), ‘Logic’ (1938), and ‘Experience and Education’ (1938).
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What Socrates say about education?

Student-Inspired Learning: The Socratic Approach – OWIS Singapore Socrates has long been considered the father of modern education. He believed that as self-learners we must first admit to our ignorance and realise that there is a world of knowledge ready to be accessed, but only once we can accept that we don’t already know everything.

We must also accept that what we do ‘know’ might not be as correct as we think. The Socratic Method encourages students to ask questions, think critically and come to their own conclusions. I believe that modern educational frameworks such as those offered by the IB have been inspired, knowingly or unknowingly, by the Socratic approach.

The educator’s role is to inspire and give students opportunities for the exploration of their skills and knowledge, rather than to lecture. Learning should be led by the learner and students should be able to express what they have learned as an individual and in their own unique way.
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What is Aristotle’s most famous theory?

No.1: Nicomachean Ethics – Based on notes from his lectures in the Lyceum, Aristotle posits happiness ( eudaimonia ) or ‘living well’ as the primary goal in human life. Named for his son, Nicomachus, the Ethics considers how man should best live and those virtues which produce happiness.
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Did Aristotle really say educating the mind?

Education and Ethics: ‘ Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. ‘ ― Aristotle.
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What was Aristotle main philosophy?

Aristotle | Biography, Works, Quotes, Philosophy, Ethics, & Facts Aristotle was one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived and the first genuine scientist in history. He made pioneering contributions to all fields of philosophy and science, he invented the field of, and he identified the various scientific disciplines and explored their relationships to each other.

1. Aristotle was also a teacher and founded his own school in Athens, known as the,
2. Read more below: After his father died about 367 BCE, Aristotle journeyed to Athens, where he joined the Academy of Plato.
3. He left the Academy upon Plato’s death about 348, traveling to the northwestern coast of present-day,

He lived there and on the island of until 343 or 342, when of Macedonia summoned him to the Macedonian capital,, to act as tutor to Philip’s young teenage son, Alexander, which he did for two or three years. Aristotle presumably lived somewhere in Macedonia until his (second) arrival in Athens in 335.

1. In 323 hostility toward Macedonians in Athens prompted Aristotle to flee to the island of Euboea, where he died the following year.
2. Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises and other works covering all areas of and,
3. Of those, none survives in finished form.
4. The approximately 30 works through which his thought was conveyed to later centuries consist of lecture notes (by Aristotle or his students) and draft manuscripts edited by ancient scholars, notably, the last head of the, who arranged, edited, and published Aristotle’s extant works in Rome about 60 BCE.

The naturally abbreviated style of these writings makes them difficult to read, even for philosophers. Read more below: Aristotle’s thought was original, profound, wide-ranging, and systematic. It eventually became the intellectual framework of Western, the system of philosophical assumptions and problems characteristic of philosophy in western Europe during the,

1. In the 13th century undertook to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and science with Christian dogma, and through him the theology and intellectual worldview of the Roman Catholic Church became Aristotelian.
2. Since the mid-20th century, Aristotle’s ethics has inspired the field of virtue theory, an approach to ethics that emphasizes human well-being and the development of character.

Aristotle’s thought also constitutes an important current in other fields of contemporary philosophy, especially metaphysics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of science. Aristotle, Greek Aristoteles, (born 384 bce, Stagira,, Greece—died 322,, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest figures of Western history.

He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian and, Even after the intellectual revolutions of the, the, and the, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western, Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts, including,,,,,,,,,,, poetics, political theory,, and,

He was the founder of, devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century.

• But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher.
• His writings in and political theory as well as in and the philosophy of science continue to be studied, and his work remains a powerful current in contemporary philosophical debate.
• This article deals with Aristotle’s life and thought.
• For the later development of Aristotelian philosophy, see,

For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full of, see, Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern, His father, Nicomachus, was the physician of (reigned c.393–c.370 bce ), king of Macedonia and grandfather of (reigned 336–323 bce ).

After his father’s death in 367, Aristotle migrated to, where he joined the Academy of (c.428–c.348 bce ). He remained there for 20 years as Plato’s pupil and colleague. Many of Plato’s later date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy.

Some of Aristotle’s writings also belong to this period, though mostly they survive only in fragments. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in form, and his early ideas show a strong influence. His dialogue, for example, reflects the Platonic view of the as imprisoned in the body and as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind.

According to Aristotle, the dead are more blessed and happier than the living, and to die is to return to one’s real home. Another youthful work, the Protrepticus (“Exhortation”), has been reconstructed by modern scholars from quotations in various works from late antiquity. Everyone must do philosophy, Aristotle claims, because even arguing against the practice of philosophy is itself a form of philosophizing.

The best form of philosophy is the contemplation of the universe of nature; it is for this purpose that God made human beings and gave them a godlike intellect. All else—strength, beauty, power, and honour—is worthless. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

It is possible that two of Aristotle’s surviving works on logic and disputation, the and the, belong to this early period. The former demonstrates how to construct arguments for a position one has already decided to adopt; the latter shows how to detect weaknesses in the arguments of others. Although neither work amounts to a systematic on formal logic, Aristotle can justly say, at the end of the Sophistical Refutations, that he has invented the of logic—nothing at all existed when he started.

During Aristotle’s residence at the Academy, King of Macedonia (reigned 359–336 bce ) waged war on a number of Greek s. The Athenians defended their independence only half-heartedly, and, after a series of humiliating, they allowed Philip to become, by 338, master of the Greek world.

It cannot have been an easy time to be a Macedonian resident in Athens. Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines.

Aristotle’s Philosophy of Education: Key Concepts

Already, however, Aristotle was beginning to distance himself from Plato’s theory of Forms, or Ideas ( eidos ; see ). (The word Form, when used to refer to Forms as Plato them, is often capitalized in the scholarly literature; when used to refer to forms as Aristotle conceived them, it is conventionally lowercased.) Plato had held that, in addition to particular things, there exists a suprasensible realm of Forms, which are immutable and everlasting.

This realm, he maintained, makes particular things intelligible by accounting for their common natures: a thing is a horse, for example, by of the fact that it shares in, or imitates, the Form of “Horse.” In a lost work, On Ideas, Aristotle maintains that the arguments of Plato’s central dialogues establish only that there are, in addition to particulars, certain common objects of the sciences.

In his surviving works as well, Aristotle often takes issue with the theory of Forms, sometimes politely and sometimes contemptuously. In his he argues that the theory fails to solve the problems it was meant to address. It does not intelligibility on particulars, because immutable and everlasting Forms cannot explain how particulars come into existence and undergo change.

1. All the theory does, according to Aristotle, is introduce new entities equal in number to the entities to be explained—as if one could solve a problem by doubling it.
2. See below,) When Plato died about 348, his nephew became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens.
3. He migrated to, a city on the northwestern coast of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey), where, a graduate of the Academy, was ruler.

Aristotle became a close friend of Hermias and eventually married his ward Pythias. Aristotle helped Hermias to negotiate an alliance with Macedonia, which angered the Persian king, who had Hermias treacherously arrested and put to death about 341. Aristotle saluted Hermias’s in ” Ode to Virtue,” his only surviving poem.

1. While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and,
2. This work was summarized in a book later known, misleadingly, as, to which Aristotle added two short, On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals,

Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably eyesight, since some of the features of insects that he accurately reports were not again observed until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

1. The scope of Aristotle’s scientific research is astonishing.
2. Much of it is concerned with the classification of animals into genus and species; more than 500 species figure in his treatises, many of them described in detail.
3. The items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition.

In some cases his unlikely stories about rare species of fish were proved accurate many centuries later. In other places he states clearly and fairly a biological problem that took millennia to solve, such as the nature of embryonic development. Despite an admixture of the fabulous, Aristotle’s biological works must be regarded as a stupendous achievement.

His inquiries were conducted in a genuinely scientific spirit, and he was always ready to confess where evidence was insufficient. Whenever there is a conflict between theory and observation, one must trust observation, he insisted, and theories are to be trusted only if their results conform with the observed phenomena.

In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as tutor to Philip’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great. Little is known of the content of Aristotle’s instruction; although the Rhetoric to Alexander was included in the Aristotelian corpus for centuries, it is now commonly regarded as a forgery.
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What are Aristotle’s 5 elements?

Aristotle, born in 384BC, was a Greek philosopher. Other philosophers such as: Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus thought that fire, air, water, and earth were the main elements. Aristotle believed the opposites in nature: hot, cold, moist, and dry are the main elements since they create fire, air, water and earth.
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What are Aristotle’s 7 virtues?

Criticisms – Regarding what are the most important virtues, Aristotle proposed the following nine: wisdom; prudence; justice; fortitude; courage; liberality; magnificence; magnanimity; temperance. In contrast, philosopher Walter Kaufmann proposed as the four cardinal virtues: ambition/humility; love; courage; and honesty.

• Since reflection on which virtues strike a person as the most important is a historically and culturally contingent judgement, these lists can not be merely descriptive.
• As another example, regarding virtues once supposedly applicable to women, many would have once considered a virtuous woman to be quiet, servile, and industrious.

This conception of female virtue no longer holds true in many modern societies. Proponents of virtue theory sometimes respond to this objection by arguing that a central feature of a virtue is its universal applicability, In other words, any character trait defined as a virtue must reasonably be universally regarded as a virtue for all sentient beings.

• According to this view, it is inconsistent to claim for example servility as a female virtue, while at the same time not proposing it as a male one.
• Other proponents of virtue theory, notably Alasdair MacIntyre, respond to this objection by arguing that any account of the virtues must indeed be generated out of the community in which those virtues are to be practiced: the very word ethics implies ” ethos “.

That is to say that the virtues are, and necessarily must be, grounded in a particular time and place. What counts as a virtue in 4th-century Athens would be a ludicrous guide to proper behaviour in 21st-century Toronto and vice versa. To take this view does not necessarily commit one to the argument that accounts of the virtues must therefore be static: moral activity—that is, attempts to contemplate and practice the virtues—can provide the cultural resources that allow people to change, albeit slowly, the ethos of their own societies.

MacIntyre appears to take this position in his seminal work on virtue ethics, After Virtue, One might cite (though MacIntyre does not) the rapid emergence of abolitionist thought in the slave -holding societies of the 18th-century Atlantic world as an example of this sort of change: over a relatively short period of time, perhaps 1760 to 1800, in Britain, France, and British America, slave-holding, previously thought to be morally neutral or even virtuous, rapidly became seen as vicious among wide swathes of society.

While the emergence of abolitionist thought derived from many sources, the work of David Brion Davis, among others, has established that one source was the rapid, internal evolution of moral theory among certain sectors of these societies, notably the Quakers,

Another objection to virtue theory is that the school does not focus on what sorts of actions are morally permitted and which ones are not, but rather on what sort of qualities someone ought to foster in order to become a good person. In other words, while some virtue theorists may not condemn, for example, murder as an inherently immoral or impermissible sort of action, they may argue that someone who commits a murder is severely lacking in several important virtues, such as compassion and fairness,

Still, antagonists of the theory often object that this particular feature of the theory makes virtue ethics useless as a universal norm of acceptable conduct suitable as a base for legislation, Some virtue theorists concede this point, but respond by opposing the very notion of legitimate legislative authority instead, effectively advocating some form of anarchism as the political ideal.

Others argue that laws should be made by virtuous legislators. Still, others argue that it is possible to base a judicial system on the moral notion of virtues rather than rules. Some virtue theorists might respond to this overall objection with the notion of a “bad act” also being an act characteristic of vice,

That is to say that those acts that do not aim at virtue, or stray from virtue, would constitute our conception of “bad behavior”. Although not all virtue ethicists agree to this notion, this is one way the virtue ethicist can re-introduce the concept of the “morally impermissible”.
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What are Aristotle’s 4 virtues?

Four cardinal virtues form the lynchpin of Aristotle’s complex and profound ethical system: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. What does it mean to be a good person? Answers to this question will vary from place to place, time to time, and culture to culture. But most likely the answers will remain roughly the same: a good person is kind, brave, honest, wise, responsible. Answers like these implicitly buy into a specific moral philosophy: virtue ethics,

Virtue ethics, though it leaves a place for rules, laws, consequences, and outcomes, focuses mainly on the inner qualities of the individual. One of the most famous proponents of virtue ethics in the history of philosophy was the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle, teacher of Alexander the Great, His ethical theories entered the stream of Western thought especially through scholastics like Thomas Aquinas, and still influence some moral and political philosophers today, such as Alasdair MacIntyre.

Though Aristotle lists many different virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics, some receive special attention. Foremost among the moral virtues stand four key virtues, the cardinal virtues, the cornerstone of Aristotle’s moral framework: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage.
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What are the main ideas of education?

Left to right, from top: Lecture at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Czech Technical University, in Prague, Czech Republic ; School children sitting in the shade of an orchard in Bamozai, near Gardez, Paktia Province, Afghanistan; Student participants in the FIRST Robotics Competition, Washington, D.C.; Early childhood education through USAID in Ziway, Ethiopia Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits,

1. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty,
2. Various researchers emphasize the role of critical thinking in order to distinguish education from indoctrination,
3. Some theorists require that education results in an improvement of the student while others prefer a value-neutral definition of the term.

In a slightly different sense, education may also refer, not to the process, but to the product of this process: the mental states and dispositions possessed by educated people. Education originated as the transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next.

Today, educational goals increasingly encompass new ideas such as the liberation of learners, skills needed for modern society, empathy, and complex vocational skills, Types of education are commonly divided into formal, non-formal, and informal education, Formal education takes place in education and training institutions, is usually structured by curricular aims and objectives, and learning is typically guided by a teacher,

In most regions, formal education is compulsory up to a certain age and commonly divided into educational stages such as kindergarten, primary school and secondary school, Nonformal education occurs as addition or alternative to formal education. It may be structured according to educational arrangements, but in a more flexible manner, and usually takes place in community-based, workplace-based or civil society-based settings.

Lastly, informal education occurs in daily life, in the family, any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational, whether unintentional or intentional, In practice there is a continuum from the highly formalized to the highly informalized, and informal learning can occur in all three settings.

For instance, homeschooling can be classified as nonformal or informal, depending upon the structure. Regardless of setting, educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion, and directed research, The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy,

1. Education is supported by a variety of different philosophies, theories and empirical research agendas,
2. There are movements for education reforms, such as for improving quality and efficiency of education towards relevance in students’ lives and efficient problem solving in modern or future society at large, or for evidence-based education methodologies,

A right to education has been recognized by some governments and the United Nations, Global initiatives aim at achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 4, which promotes quality education for all.
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What are the five ideas of Aristotle?

Five Great Ideas From Aristotle It was Socrates who said that the purpose of philosophy is to help each of us become “an excellent human”. That seems like a respectable and reasonable big-picture goal for every person on the planet. But what about the specifics? How do we become excellent humans? How can we use philosophy in our everyday lives to help us succeed in this most important goal as homo sapiens? The surprising thing about philosophy is that it is incredibly user-friendly if you take it in small doses.

For thousands of years, thoughtful individuals have contemplated the meaning of life. Many of the greatest philosophers spoke eloquently about the challenges we all face today in words that are easily understood and truly inspiring. Don’t believe it? Let’s start with a few thoughts from Aristotle. The student of Plato, who was the student of Socrates, Aristotle lived in the third century B.C.

But don’t hold that against him! Aristotle was full of interesting ideas, and he had quite a sense of humor as well. He’s a guy you could imagine sitting in your kitchen, engaging in a memorable conversation over a shared bottle of wine. Think of him as a really wise friend, and use his ideas to help you TODAY to become a more excellent human.

Aristotle believed that everything had a purpose. He stated that our purpose as humans is to think in order to live a good life. That’s it. As long as we continue to contemplate the universe and our role in it, we are fulfilling our purpose. So, to help you contemplate the universe today, here are five inspiring thoughts from our friend, Aristotle: Thought #1: “We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” What is it that you repeatedly do? Greet people on the street, let another car into a busy street in front of you, leave nice tips for frazzled waitpersons, read to your children, phone your elderly aunt? What do your habits say about you? Is that the message you want to send? How can you change your habits or adopt new ones to reflect your desire to become more excellent? What excellent acts can you do repeatedly so that they become a habit? What can you do TODAY to intentionally start a habit that will lead to excellence? Pick something simple and just get started.

• Thought #2: “Education is the best provision for old age.”What are you learning these days? How are you spending your free time? Take a look at how you are including learning in your daily life.
• Do you read? If so, are you learning from it? Do you watch television? Yes, it can be educational, but seriously analyze your viewing habits and see if you can’t incorporate more learning and less vegetating.

Don’t pick something boring. Choose ways to learn that excite and inspire you. A cooking class through your local community college? A new sport? A stack of library books on a country you’re hoping to visit someday? Pursue your interests with a passion, and you will always continue learning.

• Promise yourself you’ll always have interesting things to talk about when you are old—and this doesn’t mean ailments and treatments! Learn now how to ignite your own curiosity and pursue learning as a lifelong adventure.
• Thought #3: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” We all do it—-we hear an idea, and we immediately attach ourselves to an opinion about it without really giving it the time it takes to form a reasoned conclusion.

The problem with smart people is that we tend to use our intelligence to argue in defense of our chosen opinions. We’d be a whole lot wiser if we did less arguing and more thinking! The next time someone makes a suggestion you don’t like or states an opinion you disagree with, try this: Wait three minutes before denouncing it.

Now, this doesn’t that you should just sit there, fuming or smug or disinterested. Instead, “entertain” the thought. Ask questions. Show interest. Be open, engaged and nonconfrontational. When your three minutes are up, you can feel free to express your original opinion. More often than not, your original opinion will have changed a bit because you have spent some time holding a thought without attacking it.

The trick here is to separate the thought from the thinker. Are you sure you don’t dislike the thought because you dislike the thinker? We all have people in our lives who push our buttons. Take the high road. Entertain the thought. Your eventual rebuttal will be more easily accepted after you’ve shown that you have carefully considered the concept.

• Try this at work, try it with your friends, try it with your family.
• This is a surefire path to excellence.
• Thought #4: “What lies in our power to do, also lies in our power not to do.” Ah, yes.
• Those bad habits? You can change them.
• If you had the initiative at some point to do something, you can choose to stop doing it.

This goes for overeating, smoking, drinking too much, and all the usual bad habits. It also hold true for things we don’t even think of as habits anymore—watching too much television, driving instead of walking, reading nothing but celebrity magazines, gossiping, spending too much time shopping, etc.

1. If you haven’t always done it, you don’t have to continue doing it.
2. You do have the power to make changes.
3. Thought #5: “Well begun is half done.” We all understand that setting a goal, doing the research, and making a plan will increase the likelihood that our chosen task will be successfully completed.

Whether it’s a home improvement project, a vacation schedule, or a tricky new recipe, proper preparation will save us a lot of time and effort. Start using Aristotle’s ideas today to help you become an excellent human. Make your best acts your best habits.
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What is the main purpose of Aristotle?

Aristotle on Happiness – Chances are, you have heard of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Are you aware that it was Aristotle who introduced the ‘science of happiness’? (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018). Founder of Lyceum, the first scientific institute in Athens, Aristotle delivered a series of lectures termed Nicomachean Ethics to present his theory of happiness (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).

1. Aristotle asked, ” what is the ultimate purpose of human existence? “.
2. He thought that a worthwhile goal should be to pursue ” that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else ” (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).
3. However, Aristotle disagreed with the Cyrenaic view that the only intrinsic good is pleasure (Waterman, 1993).

In developing his theory of ‘happiness’, Aristotle drew upon his knowledge about nature. He contended that what separates man from animal is rational capacity – arguing that a human’s unique function is to reason. He went on to say that pleasure alone cannot result in happiness because animals are driven by the pursuit of pleasure and according to Aristotle man has greater capacities than animals (Pursuit of Happiness, 2018).

Instead, he put forward the term ‘ eudaimonia ‘. To explain simply, eudaimonia is defined as ‘ activity expressing virtue ‘ or what Aristotle conceived as happiness. Aristotle’s theory of happiness was as follows: ‘the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue’ (Aristotle, 2004).

A key component of Aristotle’s theory of happiness is the factor of virtue. He contended that in aiming for happiness, the most important factor is to have ‘complete virtue’ or – in other words – good moral character (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). Aristotle identified friendship as being one of the most important virtues in achieving the goal of eudaimonia (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).

In fact, he valued friendship very highly, and described a ‘virtuous’ friendship as the most enjoyable, combining both pleasure and virtue. Aristotle went on to put forward his belief that happiness involves, through the course of an entire life, choosing the ‘greater good’ not necessarily that which brings immediate, short term pleasure (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).

Thus, according to Aristotle, happiness can only be achieved at the life-end: it is a goal, not a temporary state of being (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008). Aristotle believed that happiness is not short-lived: ‘for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy’ (Aristotle, 2004).

1. Happiness (eudaimonia), to Aristotle, meant attaining the ‘daimon’ or perfect self (Waterman, 1990).
2. Reaching the ‘ultimate perfection of our natures’, as Aristotle meant by happiness, includes rational reflection (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).
3. He argued that education was the embodiment of character refinement (Pursuit of Happiness, 2008).

Striving for the daimon (perfect self) gives life meaning and direction (Waterman, 1990). Having a meaningful, purposeful life is valuable. Efforts that the individual puts in to strive for the daimon are termed ‘ personally expressive ‘ (Waterman, 1990).

Personal expressiveness involves intense involvement in an activity, a sense of fulfillment when engaged in an activity, and having a sense of acting in accordance with one’s purpose (Waterman, 1990). It refers to putting in effort, feeling challenged and competent, having clear goals and concentrating (Waterman, 1993).

According to Aristotle, eudaimonia and hedonic enjoyment are separate and distinguishable (Waterman, 1993). However, in a study of university students, personal expressiveness (which is, after all a component of eudaimonia) was found to be positively correlated with hedonic enjoyment (Waterman, 1993).

Telfer (1980), on the other hand, claimed that eudaimonia is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for achieving hedonic enjoyment (Waterman, 1993). How are eudaimonia and hedonic enjoyment different? Well, personal expressiveness (from striving for eudaimonia) is associated with successfully achieving self-realization, while hedonic enjoyment does not (Waterman, 1993).

Thus, Aristotle identified the best possible life goal and the achievement of the highest level of meeting one’s needs, self-realization many, many years before Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs! Results from Waterman’s 1993 study provide empirical support for the association between ‘personal expressiveness’ and what was described by Csikszentimikalyi (1975) as “flow” (Waterman, 1993).

Flow, conceptualized as a cognitive-affective state, is an experience whereby the challenge a task presents to a person is aligned with the skills that individual has to deal with such challenges. Understanding that flow is a distinctive cognitive-affective state combines hedonic enjoyment and personal expressiveness (Waterman, 1993).

Aristotle’s work Nicomachean Ethics contributed a great deal to the understanding of what happiness is. To summarise from Pursuit of Happiness (2018), according to Aristotle, the purpose and ultimate goal in life is to achieve eudaimonia (‘happiness’).

He believed that eudaimonia was not simply virtue, nor pleasure, but rather it was the exercise of virtue. According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is a lifelong goal and depends on rational reflection. To achieve a balance between excess and deficiency (‘temperance’) one displays virtues – for example, generosity, justice, friendship, and citizenship.

Eudaimonia requires intellectual contemplation, in order to meet our rational capacities. To answer Aristotle’s question of ” what is the ultimate purpose of human existence ” is not a simple task, but perhaps the best answer is that the ultimate goal for human beings is to strive for ‘eudaimonia’ (happiness).
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What is the main focuses of Aristotle philosophy?

Philosophy – Aristotle’s work on philosophy influenced ideas from late antiquity all the way through the Renaissance. One of the main focuses of Aristotle’s philosophy was his systematic concept of logic. Aristotle’s objective was to come up with a universal process of reasoning that would allow man to learn every conceivable thing about reality.
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