ABSTRACT
This chapter articulates the view of children and childhood in Aristotle's treatments of human development, which are found in his ethics and political theory. Central parts of what Aristotle has to say about the topic depend on his theories concerning other important Aristotelian themes: teleology, virtue, psychological tripartition, vital heat, and mimesis. The chapter explains these themes in turn as they become relevant for understanding Aristotle's view of children and childhood. Aristotle allows for the entire gamut of emotional experience, from basic pangs of hunger or thirst to the experience of having been treated as less than one is worth and wanting to retaliate for this apparent slight. The theory of pneuma underlies all the three parts of souls recognized in Aristotle's psychological tripartition has a special affinity with thymos through its role in anger and self-affirmation. Aristotle has told that there are three things that make us good: nature, habit, and reason.
