ABSTRACT
Aristotle was bom in Stagira, in what is now northern Greece, some four centuries before Epictetus. Greek philosophy was at its height. Aristotle’s works cover many subjects, and they include more than one book just on ethics. This chapter discusses only the Nicomachean Ethics. At the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says, “Every craft and every investigation, and likewise every action and decision, seems to aim at some good; hence the good has been well described as that at which everything aims”. Aristotle begins with the question of what is the good for a person. The chapter shows that a number of similarities between Aristotle’s approach to ethics and that of Epictetus. Aristotle discusses a number of virtues, including bravery, temperance, truthfulness, wittiness, generosity, and justice. Aristotle emphasizes that the moral virtues, as well as the intellectual virtues, all involve the exercise of the distinctive human capacity for reason.
