Outline of Complete Thyself

Last Updated: 2024-12-21

Part 1: Epitome

The traditional "four lives" of ancient Greek thinking: making money, having fun, giving back, and seeking truth.
Why Aristotle skips over the life of making money.
Having fun: satisfying the natural self’s unreflective and unlimited desires.
Giving back: contributing to the shared goals and activities of community life.
Seeking truth: adding to human knowledge and wisdom through inquiry and reflection.
Fundamentally, living is activity (energeia).
Types of aliveness and levels of flourishing in plants, animals, and human beings.
The "difference of man" and the difference it makes.
Core human capacities: concept, language, values, intentionality, sociality, etc.
Fulfillment is not a feeling of satisfaction but the activation and development of capacities.
Maturation as a process of developing ever greater unity, integration, and coherence.
The self as an achievement.
Taking life seriously.
The task of living a fully human life.

Character is the most complete development of the capacities for action and emotion.
Taking goodness seriously.
Learning to be good, educating your desires.
Building character as a process of internalization.
Character applies to both feeling and doing.
Virtues moderate both pleasure and pain.
Balance, the mean, what's appropriate, what's beautifully right.
Internal order and disorder; unity, integration, and coherence.
How the virtues foster order in our emotional lives, esp. with respect to pleasures and pains.
Excellence of character vs self-restraint and unrestraint.
Virtues as acquired traits and consistent practices.
Beyond virtue: virtuosity in living.
Aristotle's lists of virtues.
Justice as a unifying principle.
Virtue subsumes and supersedes pleasure and pain.
The limits of virtue.

Love as the most complete development of the capacity for forming relationships.
Taking relationships seriously.
The importance of sociality in human life.
The three forms of philia.
The activity of loving is better than being loved.
Marriage, family, friendship, brotherhood, community.
Philia as a practice.
Love subsumes and supersedes virtue.

How life has changed in the last 2400 years.
The four lives revisited.
The necessity and centrality of work in modern life.
What if anything does Aristotle have to say about work?
The status of women, then and now.
The impact of modernity (Renaissance, scientific revolution, industrial revolution, Enlightenment, etc.).
Individualism and instrumentalism in modern life.
The snares, attachments, and distortions of modern society.
The continuing relevance of Aristotle's philosophic insights.
Notes toward a society of fulfillment.
But Aristotle is not a utopian: the purpose of philosophy is not to change the world, but to change oneself.
Fulfillment through the stages of life.
Completing yourself as the best path to knowing yourself.

Bibliography

Index of Passages

Index of Names

Index of Subjects