The Structure of Aristotelian Naturalism

Abstract Aristotelian Naturalism (AN) is first and foremost a theory built to answer Socrates’s question “How should we live?” Most basically, it says that what is good for us humans to do and be is a matter of natural norms, and those natural norms specify the habits and activities that are part of the life cycle for flourishing humans. This chapter spells out the structural commitments at the core of AN: (i) perfectionism, (ii) eudaimonism, (iii) goodness-first, (iv) virtue-centrism, (v) naturalism, and (vi) empirical sensitivity. If a view has this structure, it meets the minimal conditions for counting as a version of AN. Within this structure there is ample room for revision of substantive ethical claims made by Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophers.