What a difference from Plato and Socrates. It was a little shocking to go from a conversation style where I imagine them sitting on a couch talking with each other to Aristotle giving a lecture. This one really stretched my brain and I found myself thinking that these issues were ones that I resolved when I chose to follow Jesus and make covenants.
He must have been presenting to a bunch of older men because he said that young men are not fit to be students of philosophy. They have no experience to draw from and they live “at the beck and call of passion.” He did not see a difference between young in years and young in temper and disposition. He believe that a student needed to be experienced, well trained in habit, and to form their desires and act in accordance with reason in order to profit from this teaching.
How many times do we give information to children before they can actually benefit from it? This is why giving children a solid Core phase and a fun LOL phase is important so that they can be mature and disciplined for a scholar phase. Rushing anyone, adults too, through these phases can really hinder their progress and cause them to have to go back and revisit later. The giving of too much information too soon does not just happen to children, it can happen to anyone. When I was baptized the people in my ward began to teach me as if I had heard these things all my life. This was a great stumbling block that took me many years to climb over. I had been instinctively doing my best to avoid this mistake with my children. I now have validation that telling my children that they are just too young for some conversations is justified. I will carry that “suitcase” until the Spirit tells me they are ready. This is not what Ethics is about, but this is what I learned.
His lecture was about telos, the Chief Good, or the Ultimate Goal. For me, this is actually pleasing God and entering into His eternal rest “a good and faithful servant.” For the Greeks it was, according to Aristotle, obviously happiness. What the Greeks didn't agree on what what happiness in fact was.
Aristotle separated life along three distinct lines: sensual enjoyment, society, and contemplation. The lowest people believe it is pleasure. The refined and active think it to be honor. These are the society people, celebrities, the powerful, the attention seeking and their circles. Those who are the highest, in Aristotle's opinion, are the contemplative. They believe it to be living virtuously. This is virtue in the traditional sense of living up to the purpose of our creation.
Well duh! I know that I have a mission in this life and a divine nature, and I will only be happy if I live up to this. He brings up the point that we can't measure the happiness of a man until after a lifetime of living virtuously. I call this enduring to the end. He thought happiness could be effected even after death because of the behavior of our posterity. This is the doctrine that teaches us that without our dead we can't be saved and they can't with out us. He also taught that a truly happy man is one who spent his life doing good, using his money, time, and talents to help other people. Idle or wicked people can never be happy. This is, almost word for word, presented in my Core book. It says that we are saved, “after all we can do.”
One thing he did get completely wrong was that little children can not be happy because they have not fulfilled their purpose for long enough, if at all. He also talked about how the truly wise man only tries for precision in whatever he does as far as that is possible in this life. He believed in precision by degrees, but not happiness by degrees. First of all until at least 8 little children are fulfilling their purpose by just being here. After that we all fulfill our purpose as far as we are able in this life by progressing and growing in knowledge, grace for grace. He also did not either consider or know about the idea of seasons of life. We have different purposes at different times in our life. The most important thing he didn't know about was the atonement of Christ as taught by the Old Testament prophets. Through this we can share in the happiness of Christ who will/did fulfill His purpose and was truly happy. When we repent of our sins, in other words not living up to our potential, he fixes it for us and we start over perfect again and that is happiness, even by Aristotle's definition.
I can't judge him, though because I am reading and contemplating this in the light of the restored gospel. Whereas, Aristotle, at best, only had the light of Christ and the occasional influence of the Holy Ghost to guide him. Without the gift of the Holy Ghost and the teachings of the prophet I don't think that I could have come to the conclusions that he did. Aristotle was a little wordy, and it was all too obvious to me.
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