The Nicomachean Ethics & Christianity

The Nicomachean Ethics is among the most important books ever written, and it's currently Aristotle's most read work. The book is actually a collection of lecture notes taken by his student that was then preserved for millennia. The following paragraphs are a brief summery of the points I found most relevant to myself and Christianity.

Aristotle says our ethics should be oriented around life's greatest good. We have to discover the meaning of life before we can know what we should be doing in life. He says there are three broad types of people who each have their own separate ideas about the meaning of life.

The first type is ordinary people who pursue pleasure in various forms: food, sex, comfort, and other such things. This is the most common type, and it's also the most debased. Aristotle describes this type of person as "slavish" because they would rather remain slaves than risk their own comfort.

The second type are "statesmen" who pursue respect. This type believes that to be respected and honored is the greatest good in life, and they seek status and prestige. Aristotle obviously respects this type, but he says their idea is flawed because it depends on how other people feel about them. It's insecure.

The third and best type are philosophers who pursue a "life of contemplation." For Aristotle, the best life is a life of leisure spent contemplating the most divine philosophical subjects like metaphysics and theology. 

Aristotle's definition of the good life is based on the idea that every good person is consciously or unconsciously working towards the third kind of life. When a statesmen enacts a law, or a soldier goes to war, they're attempting to create peace and prosperity which is then best used to pursue the pleasures associated with contemplative thought, especially the kind of thought that overlaps with what the gods think about.

Aristotle's ideas are based on his definition of humanity as the beings who participate in both desire and thought driven action. Man is part beast and part god. We have the ability to act based on mortal desires as well as the ability to contemplate eternal truths. Beasts act only via thoughtless desire, and gods don't act because they have nothing to acquire and thus spend their time contemplating eternal truths. The more time we spend participating in the activity of divine contemplation the more godlike we become. 

However, Aristotle knows that humans can't spend all their time in contemplation because we're still trapped in the middle state and have to interact with the messy bestial world. Humans still have to act, and the best action is whatever cultivates and reflects our goodness. Goodness is something we develop over time from habits, and so the good man is a product of his practice of virtue in a world of problems and change. The world is complex, and morality is all about finding the middle of a virtue, for example: cowardice is bad, bravery is good, and recklessness is also bad. We should strive for the middle and avoid veering off into vice on the extremes. 

The development of virtue involves habits, and habits are taught by parents and laws. Society instills the idea of right and wrong into youths who then cultivate goodness by setting good goals. The Greek city state is crucial for Aristotle, and it's the job of wise statesmen and soldiers to preserve it so that it can help citizens become righteous. 

Despite Aristotle living 350 years before Christ, there are numerous parallels between his ethical philosophy and Christianity. His idea of vice sounds similar to the Christian idea of sin as missing the mark, and Aristotle compares virtue to hitting the center of a target. His emphasis on the importance of a moral city state that instills good ideas and habits also anticipates the Church as a moral city state (polis). I found Aristotle's repeated focus on "statesmen" as relating to elders or bishops leading the people of God. We should seek to become worthy of the respect that comes from sacrificing ourselves as wise leaders in God's city state.

Finally, Aristotle's idea about what constitutes the good life sounds similar to the Christian ideal. Christians should work in the world to do good and cultivate goodness, but the ultimate good is the contemplation and worship of the divine. Aristotle reminds us that we should devote more time to contemplating God. The purpose of life is not work or accumulation or pleasure, those are just necessary components of our half-beast half-god identity, our true purpose is to draw nearer to the divine.