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Education according to Aristotle
The Greats on Education

Education according to Aristotle

A common education creates a community and unifies a state.

Samantha Hedges, PhD's avatar
Samantha Hedges, PhD
Sep 29, 2022
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Education according to Aristotle
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This article is the first in an ongoing series exploring how great thinkers—those whose ideas have endured—understood education. The series is for paid subscribers. If you have colleagues, family, or friends interested in the topic, please share this and other articles in the series.


"The deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up." - Aristotle, Politics

Aristotle Biography and Works - Life of the Ancient Greek Philosopher

Aristotle wrote about education in Nicomachean Ethics and, more extensively, in Politics. For him, the education of young people was tied to the constitution of the state (or nation in modern-day U.S. terms) and was the obligation of the state. He valued the family as its own private unit separate from the state, and warned against unifying a country in all respects to the point where citizens were in lock-step rather than living in harmony. But he thought it important to unify the state, which he describes as a plurality, to some degree to create a community, one of the means being through a common education system. 

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