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Attend to What Matters: Willpower
My earliest pre-philosophical application of the idea was ‘willpower’. As a younger person, caught up in the lust for admiration that is characteristic of some younger people, I was very motivated to be physically fit, strong, and attractive. To this end, I understood the need for diet and exercise. But these are difficult things to do, requiring a degree of discipline and a willingness to subject yourself to suffering.
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Aristotle’s Happy Middle
Look around you, and have a think, and draw up a list of qualities that some people have that you admire or appreciate. What comes to mind? It’s not for Aristotle (or me) to list the virtues, nor identify their purposes, because you can do this for yourself based on your own observations and reflections. What Aristotle points out is that virtues are very important, but you can have too much of a good thing. […]
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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