Collection: Aristotle

Aristotle, 384 to 322 BCE, studied under Plato for twenty years, then tutored the boy who became Alexander the Great, then founded his own school in Athens. The works that survive read like lecture notes rather than finished books, which is part of why they are so direct.

The Nicomachean Ethics asks the plainest question available: what actually makes a good life, and a good man. His answer is not a feeling. It is habit. You do not become fair by admiring fairness, you become fair by acting fairly until it is simply what you do. Courage, honesty, generosity and self-command are all trained the same way, like a trade, through repetition and good judgment about the particular case in front of you.

He also takes friendship seriously, and money, and pleasure, and anger, without pretending any of them away. You walk out with something to do, not something to feel.