Plato and Aristotle were both brilliant Greek philosophers who made excellent contributions to modern ideas. Interestingly both men studied the topic of virtue in their Philosophy and in the following I will describe this, I will start with Plato as he came first. Plato was studying the forms which were his greatest contribution, basically everything on earth has a form, for instance when you think of chair, there are many different kinds, tall chairs, recliners, rockers, etc. but they all have one thing in common, that thing which makes them all alike is their form. Eventually Plato went in search of the form of good, but like all other forms he concluded you could never find it, it’s perfect form, it does not exist with us, you could get as close as possible but acknowledge that you would never obtain perfection. Plato looked at virtue as the closest thing to the form of good and sought to answer the question “Is it better to be a virtuous person or a person who lives for pleasure?” in the end he proved that yes it is better to be a good person than a hedonist. This brings us to the brilliant philosopher Aristotle, he was looking for the answer to the question “what is mans ultimate goal?” basically he started with a series of questions like why do you work? Answer: To buy things, why do you want to buy things? Answer: To sustain your life. These questions go on and on until they reach happiness, it would be ridiculous to ask “why do you want to be happy”, that is because it is the ultimate goal of man. Aristotle did not mean happiness as in being cheerful because your team won or you got a free drink, he meant an ultimate contentment, deep joy, and peace, the Greek word for this is eudaimonia. His next question was “what is happiness?”, Aristotle observed many things, wealth, pleasure, honor, health, etc. he finally came to two things that are ultimate generators of happiness, wisdom and virtue. While Plato ponders the thinking and philosophizing Aristotle ponders the act, the practice which is going further because action comes after thought, this becomes more evident later.
Now we have seen how both philosophers came to virtue, so lets look at the similarities of their studies. They both see virtue as an action, Aristotle encouraged hands-on virtue, where you go out and look to physically help someone. Plato viewed virtue as being mental but you could also look at it as being reasonably physical, he believed in the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, although notice how some of these are mental actions like wisdom, but some can also be looked at as physical such as temperance or courage, so I would say that you could look at both of them as believing that virtue is an action however Plato believed it was a mental idea that brought forth the physical action. Another similarity would be that they both believed that virtue was from the heart, virtue cannot be forced or compelled it is completely voluntary, if someone puts a gun to your head and forces you to help him, it wouldn’t be considered as a “good deed” to help them. A third similarity might be that they both believed that virtue is a very good thing, it brings an undeniable benefit to ones life and to the lives of his fellow man, and neither Plato nor Aristotle ever stated a downside to being virtuous. They both also believed that you could never become perfectly virtuous, with Plato this was because its form dose not exist with us, with Aristotle it was simply because no one can be perfect.
There are also differences between their studies, the first being they came to it in very different ways, Plato was looking for the form of good while Aristotle was defining happiness. A second difference is where they were looking for virtue, as stated before, Plato believed that the true form of good (Perfect Virtue) belonged to the realm of true forms, away from the grasp of man, Aristotle believed that true virtue comes from the heart of a person, with Plato it was like reaching for virtue outside of yourself, with Aristotle it was more like drawing virtue out of your own heart. A third difference would be that Plato believed that if you have that mental idea of what the right thing to do is, you will automatically do it, he believed that knowledge is virtue, as Aristotle knew, it is often very hard to do the right thing, and many times we do the wrong thing even when we know what the right thing is, so this shows that Plato was not only wrong but gives an initial glance to the argument that Plato is all about thought and Aristotle action. The fourth difference is in the kinds of questions they are asking, for example after Plato answered is it better to be a good person than a hedonist? Aristotle asked the question “If it is better to be a virtuous person than a hedonist than how do you become virtuous?”, You can clearly see the vast difference between the kinds of questions these are. A final difference could be where they were in the Process, by asking that question Aristotle was clearly going further than Plato because now it was no longer focused on what virtue looks like or what it is, it was now the question how does one actually obtain it? This showed that Aristotle was ahead of Plato in this study because it has transitioned from the mental to the physical, out of this we can state the claim that Plato was about thought and Aristotle was about action an obvious conclusion based on this difference.
In conclusion Aristotle clearly held the dominant side of the argument, and while Plato was correct on certain things he could not get over the mental virtue aspect, you simply cannot be virtuous by just thinking nice thoughts and assuming that because you think it would be good to do something you will automatically do it. I think that is what really dragged his Argument down, and between those flaws and the brilliance of Aristotle’s study, Plato really did not stand much of a chance. The topic of virtue is very important in modern culture and it is always a good idea to look back and see how the wise men in history looked on it.
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