Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

A Greek philosopher who lived in the fourth century BCE, Aristotle was long referred to as “the Philosopher” and the master of those who know. He was a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great, and he is widely credited with having been one of the most comprehensive, influential, and profound thinkers ever to have lived. His books were numerous and their topics wide-ranging. Including but not limited to writings on natural science, psychology, logic, ethics, metaphysics, rhetoric, and the art of poetry, Aristotle's corpus also included works treating the investigations at the heart of this encyclopedia.

Three general characteristics of his work help to distinguish Aristotle from other ancient philosophers: (1) he was greatly concerned with empirical evidence, so when studying politics, for example, he compiled data on many actual constitutions; (2) he attended to the opinions of other thinkers, so he offered explicit criticisms of Plato, for example, and of the atomists and Pythagoreans; and (3) he stressed the importance of focusing on the end or purpose (telos) of things, so in discussing causality, Aristotle stressed the final cause or purpose, whereas both his predecessors and his followers show more concern with material or formal causes.

Widely studied by scholars of the history of thought, Aristotle is also turned to as a thinker with contemporary relevance, especially when it comes to his treatment of ethics and politics. His teleology helps him to argue that the city-state is natural, for example, and has the purpose of helping human beings reach their natural end or fulfillment. This natural end requires that we live well as human beings, and this in turn entails exercising the virtues he examines in his Nicomachean Ethics. Different political arrangements should thus be judged in light of their ability to foster this ethical end. As he makes this case, Aristotle even seems alert to modern temptations such as relativism, hedonism, and communism (which he knew in its Platonic variety). Along with his empiricism, which helped limit any tendency toward utopianism, his teleological approach led him to take a stand against these still vigorous intellectual currents, and this in turn has helped him to continue to find enthusiasts even in recent centuries.

As regards business, ethics, and society, note first that Aristotle gave the word “ethics” its prominence. Related to the Greek words for habit (ethos) and for a sustained disposition or characteristic (e–thos) of a person, Aristotelian ethics develop the view that the human good is happiness, that a person's happiness proceeds from activity in accord with virtue, and that the virtues are identified especially by examining the specific endowments of human beings as such. Aristotle thus rejects the view that happiness is the mere gratification of desire, while he also opposes the view that duty or obligation is fully defensible without regard to its contribution to the happiness of the dutiful person. In more technical language, his approach to ethics is neither hedonist nor deontological; rather, it helps give shape to what is now known as “virtue ethics,” where the focus is on possessing and exercising virtues, not on an external criterion of right action.

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