This is Philosophy Bites with me, Nigel Warburton and me, David Edmunds.

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Here's a minor question. How should you live your life? In other words, how should you

behave? What should you value? Not easy to answer, but Aristotle had a few ideas about

this. As the classicist and Aristotelian scholar, Edith Hall explains.

Edith Hall, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Hi, it's great to be here, Nigel.

The topic we're going to talk about today is Aristotle's way. Well, we know who Aristotle

is, but what's his way? Aristotle was a philosopher who included, amongst the thinking he was interested

in, ethics, which is the question, how should we live? So it's a way of life, it's a way

of dealing with moral questions, making decisions, and trying to find the way to be the happiest

human we can. So the way is a kind of method of living? Yes, he did actually use metaphors

for roads and traveling, and he was a parapetetic. That means he was a guy who liked to do his philosophy

while walking and dialogue with his students. But it's more that he saw life as a journey. In fact,

he sometimes used the metaphor of an odyssey, where you have set goals that you have set yourself,

things you want to achieve, and then practical methods of dealing with decision-making and

handling your emotions and your relationships in practice. This is practical moral philosophy,

not abstract or sort of cerebral metaphysics about life and death and the gods. This is about how

I live, I as an individual make my decisions. And what am I in Aristotle's view? What kind of a thing?

You are, I am, we are both animals. He famously said that man is a political animal, and that's

commonly misunderstood as that we're all quite devious or Machiavellian or something. It didn't

mean that at all. He meant we're just a zoon, which was the word for any old animal. The difference

...