Aristotle Quote

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I thought htis would interest people:

"But a good man does not rebuke himself either at the time, like the uncontrolled, nor yet his former self his later, like the penitent, nor his later self his former, like the liar -- (and generally, if it is necessary to distinguish as the sophists do, he is related to himself as 'John Styles' is related to 'good John Styles'; for it is clear that the same amount of 'John Styles' is good as of 'good John Styles') -- because when men blame themselves they are murdering their own personalities, whereas everybody seems to himself good."

~Eudemian Ethics

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Aristotle did talk about pride as the crown of the virtues. Unfortunately, his ethics were more of a description of the good man (by his rational standards) rather than being a guide as to how to become the good man by man's life as the standard. In other words, his ethics was more descriptive rather than be prescriptive -- as compared to the Objectivist ethics, which goes into more prescriptive details as to how to achieve rationality with pride as an explicit virtue.

And sometimes he seemed to foreshadow what Christianity was going to bring to man -- with its self-flagellation either for doing an actual wrong or for imagined wrongs by an improper standard. But he also thought that a good man would follow the good insofar as he knew it, so he seemed to be unaware of evasion or not being in full focus when making a decision.

He says some wonderful things in his ethics, and makes some wonderful observations. However, it is not true that everyone thinks of himself as good -- at least not since Christianity -- but maybe he was only observing good men and not those who are evasive or having an improper standard.

I think Aristotle wrote his ethics in homage to those he thought were good by his standards. And in this passage he touches on the idea of integrity -- that you are who you are -- and that one's life experience should be integrated across time, so that one's former self and one's current self are not at war with each other. And actually, he sounds like he would be against that usage of self anyhow, since each individual is one person.