Along with Plato Aristotle is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of the Hellenistic epoch. Actually, Aristotle was one of Plato’s students. In the age of eighteen the young philosopher entered Plato’s Academy in Athens and spent there about 20 years studying and helping his teacher. After the Plato’s death Aristotle left Athens and educated those who wished all around the Greece and even outside the state. For three years the philosopher was the teacher of great warrior and leader Alexander the Great. After a while Aristotle came back to Greece, to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum. There he conducted most of his researches (Cahn 178). By that time he learnt a lot, reconsidered the Plato’s theories and developed his own. Unfortunately, few years later he was made to leave Athens and move to Calcis to his mother’s estate. The philosopher died in Euboea. The heritage left by Aristotle is significant. His philosophical works deals with issues of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and politics. Despite being more than 2000 year old these books still have statements and thoughts, which are widely used and investigated till nowadays. Besides, Aristotle was not only a philosopher: he wrote innovative for his time works on zoology, biology, psychology and astronomy. But of course, he is more famous and acknowledged as the author of fundamental philosophical and rhetoric books. Furthermore, it is Aristotle, who is considered to be the founder of logic because he formulated the most important principles of this science. He was so influential during the time of Middle Agges that “he was often referred to simply as ‘the Philosopher’” (Cahn 178).
Aristotle introduced lots of new concepts to philosophy. He investigated issues of love, happiness, friendship, sense of human’s life and many others. One of the notions invented by Aristotle was the concept called “telos”. This word is of Greek origin and means “final end”, “goal” or “purpose”. According to the philosopher everything has its final purpose or goal. Whatever you take you use for with a specific purpose. For example, the final goal of the acorn is to become an oak, the purpose of chair to being sit on. Things can be described in a different way but anyway the telos, the final purpose of them would be mentioned. The philosopher states actually that without knowing the goal of the thing a person cannot say that he or she understands this object.
The concept of telos was used by Aristotle not only in his philosophic works but also in pieces related to biology. The approach he implemented was called teleological. It is still used in this science. In his Physics, Aristotle writes that everything in the nature comes from the necessity. “It will be from necessity that the front teeth come up sharp and suitable for biting, and the back ones broad and useful for chewing food” (Cahn 200). So, parts of any living creature evolved from in their way to become perfectly suitable for their owners. This means that parts of animals’ body as well as animals themselves found their telos, their purpose. In biological sense telos defined the nature of the animal, it is the feature that makes one animal or living thing different from another. For example, a seed’s purpose is to become a plant. So, seed’s telos, its purpose in life is to develop and evolve into another form. Basically, telos of everything is to become perfect in its own unique way. And everything created by nature has its potential for perfectness. And everything changes to reach this point.
The human differs from other living things and animals. People are able to think rationally and therefore, telos of people should be based on the rationality. According to Aristotle, telos of every person is to be happy. Happiness is a human right and it is natural for people to be happy. By introducing the notion of happiness Aristotle also raises another issue: what is happiness? How it should look like? People feel happy in different ways but some of these ways are useless so such people do not gain their telos.
Every person should decide for him or herself, whether to follow or not the happy lifestyle, whether to gain or not to gain telos. And our daily life allows us to reconsider this decision in every single moment because there is always a choice – whether to follow moral rules or to break them. The philosopher knows that it is not easy to lead virtuous life but he is confident that this can happen under the right conditions. And Aristotle proves that the necessary precondition for a man to fulfill its telos is a morally constructed community because it educated how to be virtuous and legislatively limits the ways for unhappiness or useless way of living the life.
The telos or natural good for human beings is called eudaimonia or happiness and it includes the fulfillment of human nature but especially those parts of it, which distinguish people from the animal, so as to say following intellectual and moral virtues. The eudaimonia for all the people can be divided into the highest and lower one: the first one includes activities related to higher forms of virtues and the lower eudaimonia is felt by persons, who deal with practical forms of virtue.
Works Cited
Cahn, Steven M. Classics of Western Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006. Print
