Aristotle
Understanding the world. Cultivating judgement.
From logic to animals, from poetry to politics, Aristotle pursues many fields of inquiry. He asks what explains things and what enables a human life to flourish. A philosophy attentive to distinctions, habits and concrete situations.
Which activities and habits make a life genuinely fulfilled?
Biography
Aristotle was born in Stagira in the northern Greek world before joining Plato’s Academy in Athens. He developed a body of work of exceptional breadth. Many surviving texts bear the marks of teaching and a complicated editorial history: they are not all books polished for publication in the modern sense.
02 /Philosophy
Eudaimonia, often translated as happiness or flourishing, is not simply a pleasant feeling. In Nicomachean Ethics, it concerns activity in accordance with excellence across a life. External conditions matter too: virtue does not magically turn every circumstance into a happy existence.
03 /Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
04 /Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
A first reading.
How a habit becomes a virtue
Read the opening books of Nicomachean Ethics by connecting a good life with everyday character formation, without reducing Aristotle to an ethics of compromise.
Nicomachean EthicsWhat is a political community?
Explore citizenship and the common good while confronting the text’s exclusions. Understanding Aristotle does not mean accepting the limits he places on the community.
PoliticsLearning how to ask “why”
A first journey through Metaphysics via the desire to understand, types of explanation and the distinction between potentiality and actuality. An invitation to slow down over its terms.
Metaphysics