Comparing Aristotle's View Of The 4th And 5th Century

The 4th and 5th century was filled with many powerful people such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. With them, we see the development of democracy and it also being practiced for the first time within a government. Aristotle was one of Plato’s students and his view on all subjects was teleological. He examined the purpose of things understanding the “real world” instead of the individual and complex human being. Through his experiences and observations, Aristotle gained much of his perception on this. Even though Aristotle was a student and also a friend of Plato, he did not agree with his theories on mortality. He said, “We must look for the intentions of nature in things which retain their nature, and not in things which are corrupted…” (Book 1, chp. 5, 1254a). Aristotle did not believe that bad behaviors were formed through inheritance. However, he did believe that people were made up of both good and bad characteristics and any action they carried out was not good or evil but …show more content…
Before reading Aristotle, I probably would have said that all of these things were inherently bad; meaning that the reason why an individual performed these actions was the result of some influence they have had in their life. However, after thinking about the topic a little more there were many examples that I came across where a considered “bad behavior” was the right thing to do or the only choice at the time. By this, an example could be a situation where self-defense was necessary. If someone was pointing a gun at you and you took action on this individual which resulted in death, would this be considered a bad behavior? Another example is a mother stealing food from a supermarket in order to feed her children. I would say that there are inherently bad behaviors, but after thinking of many examples of when bad behaviors would be acceptable, I do agree with