Aristotle on Education

• Main Authors: Maria Lee, 李宜靜
• Other Authors: 俞懿嫻
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/4w72x8

碩士 === 東海大學 === 哲學系 === 88 === The art of education in Aristotle’s system is a part of Politics. It is a practical science, but not a theoretical or speculative science, because it exists only in order to produce the soul in the youth. Being subordinate to the art of Politics, education aims at producing a character which tends to promote the happiness of the state. It follows then, that the educator must take his order from the statesman to produce the souls of the citizens. He must produces goodness of character, only because the statesman requires goodness of character as means to the realization of happiness. According to Aristotle’s theory, happiness is the end or completion of all human activity. It is something worth having, not for the sake of something else, but for itself. Happiness of man must consist in an activity of the soul in according with the complete excellence. Excellence, then, being of two kinds, intellectual moral, intellectual excellence owes both its birth and its growth to teaching, while moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. Besides, there is a divine element in human nature named mind or intellect. Human intellect is capable of apprehending higher object then the good for man himself. So far as man can live the intellectual life, he rises a life which is in a higher and truer sense his own. In other words, the highest life for human is contemplative or theoretic life, and it is the second end of education to prepare the soul for that right enjoyment of leisure and contemplative life which becomes possible when practical needs have been satisfied.