The Pappas Post sat down with Professor Pavlos Kontos, a leading scholar from the University of Patras and co-editor of Aristotle Complete Works (Hackett: 2025) to explore Aristotle’s philosophy and its relevance in today’s world.
Did Aristotle’s philosophy remain consistent throughout his entire life? If not, what changed?
Let me start by complicating things—this is what philosophers tend to do, after all. The phrase “Aristotle’s philosophy” is actually more ambiguous than it might seem. First, it may refer to the body of Aristotle’s authentic works—this is what the recent edition of Aristotle Complete Works, edited by Professor C.D.C. Reeve and myself, makes available to English-speaking readers. But we don’t know the exact date Aristotle wrote these texts. Even in the case of well-known works like his Metaphysics and Politics, the order of chapters or sections often reflects the decisions made by ancient editors. In addition, some texts were not meant for publication at all, and others were a work in progress. Thus, one should adopt a unitary view of Aristotle’s philosophy rather than a developmental view that would explain apparent inconsistencies in Aristotle’s works as true changes in his thought. Yes, Aristotle does sometimes say different things about the same topic, but usually that’s because he’s working in a different context, using a different method, or addressing a different audience
Did Aristotle’s philosophy diverge from his mentor Plato’s?
That’s a very perceptive question. One advantage of the unitary view I mentioned earlier is that it helps us avoid a misleading way of reading Aristotle—namely, treating his philosophy primarily in terms of how close or how distant he is from Plato at any given moment. That picture is too simple. On the one hand, Plato was certainly a major influence on Aristotle, but he was never the only one. On the other hand, Aristotle never completely—or radically—broke away from Plato’s way of thinking. The two philosophers continue to share a common conceptual space: questions about truth and goodness, the role of forms, and the nature of politics, etc., remain central for both of them.
But I also raised the ambiguity of the expression “Aristotle’s philosophy” deliberately, to make a broader point. We don’t often stop to realize that “Aristotle’s philosophy” can also refer to more than two thousand years of interpretation and scholarship built around Aristotle’s works. In that sense, there isn’t just one Aristotle. There is, for instance, a “Byzantine Aristotle,” an “Arab Aristotle,” a “medieval Aristotle,” a “nineteenth-century German Aristotle,” and what we might call our own “contemporary Aristotle.” These are all quite different figures, because each era receives, interprets, and reworks Aristotelian ideas in its own way.
Here, the change is real and substantial—and it’s something to welcome. It shows the fertility of philosophy itself. Every age, whether consciously or not, asks Aristotle different questions, because every age is grappling with new problems or revisiting old ones from a new perspective. In that sense, revisiting the same ancient texts and philosophy’s capacity to generate new thought are two sides of the same coin.
What is Aristotle’s final advice for human happiness?
Your question actually makes me want to highlight just how relevant Aristotle’s practical philosophy—his ethics and politics—still is today. Honestly, there’s hardly any ethical or political theory out there that doesn’t, in some way, engage with Aristotle’s core ideas.
Now, when we talk about “happiness,” we’re using the English word that translates the Greek term eudaimonia. But here’s the catch: these two words don’t mean exactly the same thing. In English, “happiness” usually points to something subjective—it’s about personal feelings or one’s own sense of what makes life meaningful. For Aristotle, though, eudaimonia isn’t about a feeling or a mood. It’s an “activity” of the soul; it’s about the objective quality of the kinds of activities you engage in.
From Aristotle’s perspective, human happiness can show up in two main ways. One is through theoretical activities, like being engaged in sciences—what he calls “theoretical life.” The other is through practical activities, such as participating in civic life—what he calls “political life.”
How do these two forms of life relate to each other?
That’s a question people have debated endlessly. What really matters, I think, is the hierarchy of values you adopt: which activity do you see as the highest, the most meaningful, pleasant, and fulfilling in your life? In my Introduction to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I tried to make this idea a bit more tangible by looking at two Rembrandt paintings: the Nightwatch and The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp. They offer, so I believe, a fascinating way to think about these two forms of happiness in practice.
So given all the radical changes in human civilization, Aristotle’s notion of happiness is still relevant today?
I’m convinced it is—and not just out of some reverence for Aristotle. What he does is make us recognize five fundamental truths, even if we have to reinterpret them for our modern world: (1) Happiness and pleasure are central to human life. (2) Happiness is an activity of the soul, not something tied to our bodies or to external things like money, beauty, social status, or fame. (3) It is a kind of achievement that elevates us beyond mere animal existence and the satisfaction of basic bodily desires. (4) It requires looking at our lives as a whole, not chasing short-term goals or quick fixes. (5) Finally, happiness and success aren’t the same; happiness is tied to goodness, while success is just about reaching your goals—regardless of whether those goals are morally good or not.
Aristotle argued that stasis (civil conflict) comes from a sense of injustice and a desire for honor. Could his theory explain the deep political divides across the globe today?
Stasis, which we can translate as “civil conflict” or “faction,” was seen by ancient Greek thinkers as a profound political evil. Sure, a faction could sometimes bring about a positive constitutional change, but the transition from one form of government to another almost always—or even inevitably—comes with lawlessness. And that transitional period is the time of the worst cruelty.
Now, your question is really about how we can take lessons from internal politics and apply them to international politics. Here, Aristotle’s Politics offers a warning we tend to overlook: “Ruling as a master over one’s neighbors involves one of the greatest injustices.” This isn’t only about the injustice of dominating others—it’s also about the inconsistency or even hypocrisy of claiming to pursue justice at home while caring nothing about justice abroad. In other words, injustice in international politics—breaking treaties, ignoring international law—almost inevitably seeps back into domestic life. Does this resonate today? I’d argue it absolutely should.
We cannot ignore the darker parts of Aristotle’s philosophy, mainly defending slavery and maintaining the inferiority of women. Why were these justified?
There are, indeed, some “dark parts” of Aristotle’s philosophy. They are “dark” from our modern perspective—though back in his day, these views reflected the everyday consensus. That doesn’t justify them, of course. At times, Aristotle tries to offer what he thinks is a scientific justification, but today, it can come across as almost comic.
A couple of points on this: (a) It’s a bit presumptuous—or even hypocritical—to attack Aristotle for positions that took Western civilization centuries to move past. Think of slavery in the U.S., which led to a civil war, and the ongoing struggle to uproot racism even today. (b) The good news is that these “dark” parts can be removed without harming the main core of Aristotle’s thought.
One final point: Aristotle was simply a human being devoted to the pursuit of scientific truth. He was neither a god on earth nor some eternal authority—because, in reality, no such thing exists.
For Aristotle, the soul and the body, though separate, can’t exist apart. He did, though, make an exception for the intellect which “exists from outside.” In an era of AI-based intellect, what do you think that Aristotle would have to say about this technology?
For Aristotle, nous—which we usually translate as “understanding” or “intellect”—comes in two forms. One is active or productive, the other passive. The active kind is the most divine part of human beings. It’s the part that can exist separately from the body and, according to Aristotle, survive death. These ideas are heavily debated among scholars, but the key point is that understanding is divine and therefore inherently good.
This connects directly to your question about AI. Today, we tend to separate “understanding”—things like problem-solving, argumentation, analytical thinking, storing and using knowledge—from the realm of goodness and moral values, from questions about what’s truly good for individuals or society. Aristotle warns us that this separation, thought not arbritrary, is misleading.
Knowledge and goodness are really two sides of the same coin. This is a warning for everyone—from AI pioneers to politicians—who, either out of self-deception or to deceive others, claim that questions of goodness can wait until AI is more advanced. According to Aristotle, that’s not just misleading—it’s flat-out wrong. It’s as illogical as saying that goodness, or our pursuit of happiness, is a secondary concern that we can ignore during our lifetime.
Pavlos Kontos is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras. He is the author of Introduction to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason (Routledge, 2021), Evil in Aristotle (ed.; Cambridge University Press, 2018), andAristotle’s Moral Realism Reconsidered (Routledge, 2013), as well as numerous other books and scholarly articles in Modern Greek, English, and French. His work has received support from several institutions, including the Humboldt Foundation, the Onassis Foundation in the USA, the National Humanities Center at North Carolina, the Stanford Humanities Center, and Programmes co-financed by Greece and the European Union. He is actively engaged in delivering free online courses in collaboration with the Mathesis Program, while advancing public philosophy initiatives more broadly.
He is, together with C. D. C. Reeve, the co-editor of Aristotle Complete Works (Hackett, 2025).
