Aristotelian Ethics - Influence On Later Thinkers

Influence On Later Thinkers

Aristotle's writings were taught in the Academy in Athens until 529 CE when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I closed down non-Christian schools of philosophy.

Aristotle's work however continued to be taught as a part of secular education. Aristotle's teachings spread through the Mediterranean and the Middle East, where some early Islamic regimes allowed rational philosophical descriptions of the natural world. Alfarabi was a major influence in all medieval philosophy and wrote many works which included attempts to reconcile the ethical and political writings of Plato and Aristotle. Later Avicenna, and later still Averroes, were Islamic philosophers who commented on Aristotle as well as writing their own philosophy in Arabic. Averroes, a European Muslim, was particularly influential in turn upon European Christian philosophers, theologians and political thinkers. Jewish philosophers such Maimonidies helped to develop these thoughts and also to transmit them around the Mediterranean.

In the twelfth century, Latin translations of Aristotle's works were made, enabling the Dominican priest Albert the Great and his pupil Thomas Aquinas to combine Aristotle's philosophy with Christian theology. Later medieval church scholasticism in Western Europe insisted on Thomist views and suppressed non-Aristotelian metaphysics. Aquinas wrote detailed commentaries of Aristotle, including his Nicomachean Ethics, and his most well-known work, the Summa Theologiae contained fifteen volumes which were concerned with ethics. It argued that a rational foundation for ethics was compatible with Christianity, enabling it to borrow many ideas from the Nicomachean Ethics. Eudaimonia or human flourishing was held to be a temporary goal for this life, but perfect happiness as the ultimate goal could only be attained in the next life by the virtuous. New theological virtues were added to the system: faith, hope and charity. Supernatural assistance was also allowed, helping people to be virtuous. Many important parts of Aristotle's ethics were retained however. Thomism, the name given to the beliefs of Thomas Aquinas, is particularly influential.

In the early 16th century, Niccolò Machiavelli, while heavily influenced by writers who had been in turn influenced by Plato and Aristotle, such as Polybius and Plutarch, argued for a realism in political and ethical thinking which was not compatible with the Socratic approach of taking bearings from non-existent ideal cities and ideal types of human behaviour. This criticism spread to the physical sciences. The empiricism of early modern science challenged Aristotle's physics and metaphysics so successfully that doubt was cast on the rest of his philosophy too. The Nicomachean Ethics nevertheless continues to be treated as a relevant work for philosophers today. Although Aristotle's ethics was integrated with an Aristotelian metaphysical understanding of reality which is no longer commonly accepted in science, it is not universally accepted that this makes his ethics wrong.

Recent and contemporary moral philosophers influenced by Aristotle include Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, Martha Nussbaum, John McDowell and Rosalind Hursthouse, and those who fully continue the tradition of Aristotelianism include Alasdair MacIntyre. Bent Flyvbjerg has developed phronetic social science based on Aristotle's ethics.