Aristotle's Ethics
A few important points to understand about Aristotle&#x27;s ethics. One is that for him ethics and social and political philosophy are closely interlinked. That is, you can&#x27;t have a good society unless its citizens are ethical people, and going the other way, you can&#x27;t have ethical citizens unless the society is structured to produce them.<p>Secondly, Aristotle followed the general classical Greek view of meaning by ethics a set of principles for living a rewarding life. And this goes with my first point in that Aristotle thought the rewarding life (or at least an essential part of it) is one of productive participation in society.<p>Thirdly, Aristotle&#x27;s approach was basically a scientific one. That is, he observed what sorts of behaviors lead to rewarding lives, and what caused people to behave in such ways or fail to, and it was from this that he derived his principles of ethical behavior. And in a similar way he derived his political philosophy.<p>This in turn leads to a final point. Many in the modern era criticize aspects of his political philosophy, such as his approval of slavery and an inferior position for women. But if you argue that these produce a less happy society, then you are using Aristotle&#x27;s empirical method to improve his ideas, rather than starting all over and using a completely different method to derive your ethics.