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later, but for now let's get on with 7 Life lessons from Aristotle. Aristotle is a Promethean figure in the history
of the world, who lived between 384–322 BC. He is considered the father” of logic,
biology, political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric,
psychology, realism, and even meteorology. He was first a student of Plato. Then, when
Plato retired, he left the Academia which Plato founded, and he became the tutor of
Alexander The Great, and the two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. He established a library in the Lyceum, which
helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.

Unfortunately, only a third of his magnificent
work has survived. For example, the “treatises”, “Physics”,
“Metaphysics”, “Nicomachean Ethics”, “Politics”, “On the Soul”, and “Poetics”
- have influenced more than two millennia of scientists and theologians alike, both
fascinated by his ideas. Being the founder of so many disciplines and
having such a tumultuous life living in the company of great kings, Aristotle has many
life lessons to offer us, so with that in mind, in this video we bring you 7 life lessons
from Aristotle. Don’t run away from your problems.
Aristotle says: “To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true
that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some
ill.” It is easy to be optimistic when everything
in our lives goes well. But it is much harder when we are faced with
problems or even tragedies.

It is important to focus on the solution. If you can fix the problem, or if you cannot fix it, it is important to find peace with the situation and focus on what you have learned from the experience. Aristotle invented the concept of “catharsis” in his book “Poetics”, explaining that a negative experience can always teach us a moral lesson. But if there is a solution for the respective problem, if it is something you can change, then you should be brave and face reality and do everything you can to solve the problem. Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander The Great, and he taught him what it means to have courage to face your problems. Alexander was a great visionary and strategist. He conquered many battles even when his army was outnumbered. He didn’t shy away from anything, even if it was against a huge army of people accompanied by 200 elephants. Following the teachings of Aristotle and the bravery of Alexander the Great, we should

try to be a little more courageous in life,
to not run away from our problems. Before running away from people, from problems,
from circumstances, it is always better to look reality in the eye, and we can understand
that what we thought was terribly scary is not actually as scary as you think. Even if you do not have the power to change
things for the better by yourself, you can always ask for help. You will eventually find someone to help you
overcome the problem. For example, if you have seemingly insurmountable
debts with the bank, instead of hiding yourself in a corner ruminating over your problems,
you should better talk to your friends and the members of your family, and through them,
you may even find a solution with them to help pay your debts. Do not hide in your desperation, be proactive,
and share your problems with others in order to find the best solution. However, there are some situations when there
is nothing else you can do, other than to

think what kind of moral lesson you can learn
from the event. For example, if somebody close to you betrayed
you, a close friend stole a fortune from you, or a spouse cheated on you, your moral lesson
would be to get to know the other people better before you confide in them or marry them,
before you give them your full trust. Do not judge yourself too harshly for this
mistake, but rather develop a life principle to never trust someone before you really know
them. Try to Find the golden mean.
Aristotle tells us, “Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess,
and the other of deficiency.” One of the main ideas of Aristotle’s teachings
is the idea of finding balance. In the book Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
identified that what makes people good and successful is a set of 11 virtues: courage,
temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity.

pride, patience, truthfulness, wittiness,
friendliness, and modesty. Each virtue is the balance between 2 extremes. For example, courage is in the middle of cowardice
and rashness. A courageous person is neither too much of
a coward, nor too rash. Similarly, losing your temper is a vice - it
is much wiser to find a middle ground and use a moderate amount of anger when you try
to express your fury about something. You would not want to explode over anything
you dislike, living every day with high blood pressure, but you also don’t want to keep
quiet and let people take advantage of you. You need to find the happy medium. A balanced person, Aristotle argues, will
be a virtuous and happy person. They have found the Golden Mean. In our modern day society, where everything
is so easily available, a lot of us fail to apply this rule. We either over-consume or stay in our shells
out of fear and anxiety.

We either succumb to the extreme of excess,
which can take form in the accumulation of wealth, food, drugs, and alcohol, or descend
into deficiency, like inadequate attention to education, intellectual pursuits, or healthy
sport & lifestyle activities. We all know that lack of sleep or too much
drinking can harm our health, and yet we keep continuing to fall into this trap time after
time. What makes this living in excess or deficiency
so tempting for most of us is that we care more for our short-term gratification. On the other hand, respecting this golden
mean and maintaining equilibrium requires willpower and long-term thinking abilities,
and finding that balance is a very important aspect of our well-being. Balancing your desires will strengthen your
willpower, build your self-confidence, and will keep you focused on your long-term goals. Have dignity and grace.
To quote Aristotle: “The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace,
making the best of circumstances.” Dignity and grace are not accidents.

They are the result of a clear intention. After Alexander the Great died, people started
to develop negative sentiment for him. Aristotle was accused of impiety and forced to run away
from Athens, leaving for Chalcis in Euboea island, retiring from political and social
life. Although saddened by this, Aristotle left
with dignity and grace, but not without saying, I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice
against philosophy, meaning that he will continue his work in philosophy no matter
what Athenians do. Dignity and grace come with having a noble
purpose in life. In the case of Aristotle, whose name in ancient Greek means “the best
purpose,” this noble purpose in life was philosophy. When you know your noble purpose, you can
more easily ignore the many others criticizing you at the bottom of your tree, your tree
representing your journey towards a noble goal. Your decisions made with dignity and grace
have a bigger importance in determining your

destiny, than the events and circumstances
in your life. You should use your reason to understand that
the things people do are more a reflection of them than of you. If you have a noble goal in life, for example,
creating a business which can help thousands or even millions of people, rising up from
poverty, funding a school in Africa, or spreading your knowledge through the books you write,
then you’re that much less likely to mind - for example - that your best friend said
some bad things about you. Because you know who you are and your ultimate
noble goal in life, you're less upset about your partner leaving you, because you know
you are worthy of love. As you are on a great journey to have a positive
impact on this world, don’t humiliate yourself when such things happen to you, simply react
with dignity and grace. Be open to others’ points of view.
Aristotle teaches us: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a
thought without accepting it.”

During his debates and lectures in the Lyceum,
during his long walks with students, Aristotle was listening to others' ideas, and later he
was organizing them, coming up with innovative ways of approaching different problems. In this way, he could enrich the knowledge
of his time, and he became a beacon of wisdom transcending millennia. Aristotle always emphasized the importance
of good listening, saying that there are three components of it: virtue, character, and education. Virtue to give the other the right to speak
and come with arguments, character to control yourself and your frustration when you are
proven wrong, and education to know what are the best questions to ask in order to decipher
what the other is really trying to say. In general, you need to be able to stay in
the conversation even if you see the other people’s opinions as wrong. You might still learn something from them,
even if it is just one percent. And that is why Aristotle was saying the mark
of an educated person is to be able to entertain

a thought without accepting it. Seeing a problem from different angles, even if they are not entirely correct perspectives, helps you understand the problem better. For example, consider a talk with a climate change denier. He might say false things like there is a controversy in science regarding climate change, that the reports given by the mass media are false. Instead of walking away from such a conversation, you might prove yourself to be an educated person and stay in the conversation, trying to learn something, to see the issue from a different angle. You might reject 99 percent of what he is saying, but you can try, as an exercise, to find the 1 percent which is true. You know there is no controversy as 97 percent of scientists are confident that climate change is real. But how about the 3 percent? How can you prove they are wrong? If you are an educated person, you would start studying about the problem right away and you would find that, although it is true that climate is cyclical, with long periods of

ice ages and long periods of warmth. You can also plot the history of temperatures, and you will see the great change happening over the last 200 years, which hasn't been the case throughout the entire history of Earth’s evolution so far. Those scientists are therefore wrong, and it can be proven by a simple plot on a graph. By listening to a climate change denier, you learn something: that climate is cyclical. And at the same time, this didn’t affect your opinion on climate change at all. Not agreeing with somebody, but still being part of the conversation, might teach you new things, thus additionally proving that you are an educated person. Have the right friends. In the words of Aristotle: “A friend to all is a friend to none.” There is an old saying that people with too many friends have no real friends at all, and Aristotle’s teaching reflects this saying. For Aristotle, friendship is an important part of life, and he identified three types:

friendships based on utility that is based
on mutual help, like helping somebody getting a job, and the other person helping you to
get a great deal on buying a car. Then, there is friendship that is based on pleasure, like
going hiking together or to parties, and then finally, there is true friendship that
is based on virtue. The first two are superficial and they do
not last long. The third one is based on common values and
principles and lasts a long time or even a lifetime. Having too many friends means that you only
focus on the first two types. You like to have fun and achieve professional and financial
success in life, and that is why you focus on these two types of friends who help you
in this. If you focus your life on wisdom and virtue,
you would not have so much time for the first two types of friends. You would have more
time for making strong connections with a few select people. Meaningful friendships
require time and effort.

Aristotle teaches us to invest less time in having fun and in climbing the ladder of financial success, and instead, we should invest more time in true knowledge and true friendships. We should find those people who share our values and principles in life. You can start by making a list with everything you really value. It can include anything, from having a safe and healthy family, to a clean environment, peace, democracy, and believing in equal rights for everybody. Therefore, you would not be able to make a deep connection with somebody who throws garbage on the grass, who does not recycle things, or who often expresses racist or sexist points of view. It will take time to find the right friends, but it is worth it as these kinds of friendships based on virtue can last a lifetime. Put truth before everything else. According to Aristotle, “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.” Aristotle had a close friendship with Plato, and Plato brought out the greatness in Aristotle.

However, Aristotle didn’t let this friendship
blind him, and following Plato’s steps, he put more importance on truth than on anything
else. Although Aristotle had an enormous respect
and admiration for Plato, his philosophy departed from him in three important aspects: regarding
the Theory of Forms, regarding ethics, and regarding politics. Regarding the theory of forms, for example,
in the case of the concept of “beautiful”, Plato would be interested in defining “beauty”,
while Aristotle would be more interested in analyzing the beautiful things that exist
in this world. With regards to ethics, Plato believed that
knowing what is the right thing to do will lead you to do the right thing, while Aristotle
believed this is not enough. To become virtuous takes a great amount of effort; it is not
automatic through knowledge. And with regards to politics, Plato believed
that philosophers should be the rulers of society, while Aristotle defined human beings
as “political animals” and “polity”.

is the best way to organize a society, meaning
that society should be ruled by the interest of the majority. Overall, if Plato was concentrated in theoretical
studies, Aristotle put more emphasis on experiment, on the real world, and in analyzing this
world. He used an empirical approach, based more on experiments and logical reasoning. Aristotle’s method for logical reasoning
is an inspiration even today. We all need to learn the right ways of using
logical reasoning, no matter the field we are working in, and we should not compromise our
capacity of reasoning for anything, not even for making a friend happy by agreeing with
their false logic. For example, if you are the co-founder of
a small company and the main founder, who is also your friend, tells you about their
strategy to buy another small company, and you both know that company has serious financial
problems and debts, you should inform your friend that you disagree with their decisions.
You should enumerate all the reasons for that.

enumerate all the negative consequences that
can happen, and even resign if your friend still does not listen to you. Truth is much more important than agreeing
with somebody else, no matter how close you are to each other. Maximize your potential through constant learning.
In our final quote from Aristotle for this video, he says: “Happiness is not god-sent,
but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training.” Aristotle emphasized the importance of education
and of acquiring knowledge, stating that every thing or being on this planet has its unique
characteristics, its unique role in this world. The highest good of everything is achieved
when it can fulfill its role: for example, the purpose of a knife is to cut, the purpose
of the sun is to shine, and so on. In the case of humans, the purpose is not
evident, but Aristotle came up with the concept of eudaimonia, which means living well, and
Aristotle believed this is the purpose of

human beings. Eudaimonia is not the same as happiness, but
this is often how the term is translated in English. Eudaimonia does not mean a pleasant physical
state or a pleasant state of mind, it means fulfilling your true potential, becoming the
best version of yourself, maximizing your talents, and your capacity to reason. In order to do so, it is important to know
yourself and what your talents are, to plan your life accordingly, to make the most of
them. It is also important to understand that only
when you work on something you feel joyful about, are you capable of giving your best,
to go that extra mile in order to provide top-quality work. For example, if you’re pretty intelligent
and you enjoy learning chemistry and biology, you might decide to become a medical doctor
in order to reach eudaimonia, however you still need to spend years studying and training
to get there. Anything worth accomplishing requires intense
effort and learning new skills.

Once you decide on your career path, you need to learn day by day in order to maximize your potential and achieve worthy and noble goals. Also, learning should not be done only for your professional life, but also to satisfy your curiosity in different domains. Each of us can try to learn new things every day, be it at work or from newspapers, from YouTube, from reading books, from online courses, from documentaries on TV, and so on. There is plenty to learn, and we can prioritize learning according to our interests and curiosity. We all need to make the best of our talents and use our capacity to learn and think as much as possible in order to reach the greatest good, eudaimonia, or true happiness in life. As we mentioned at the beginning, this video is brought to you by Morning Brew. Morning Brew is a free daily Monday to Sunday email newsletter that compiles the most important business, finance, and tech news and transforms them into enjoyable bites that you can just

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7 Life Lessons From Aristotle (Aristotelianism)

Philosophies for Life is all about giving ancient wisdom for modern living.
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7 Life Lessons From Aristotle (Aristotelianism)

7 Life Lessons From Aristotle (Aristotelianism)

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