“What you practice, you become.”

[Anonymous]

I found the following quote on, of all places, the back of  “Get the Edge – Daily Magic,” an Anthony Robbins CD:

“We are what we repeatedly do.” – Aristotle

[The full quote is: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”]

While I’m relatively sure Anthony Robbins is not, perhaps Aristotle was a Taoist?

[Anonymous]

unfortunately, As i understand it, the intellectual history concerning the dispersement of various ideas and philosophies prior to Aristotle (and some Plato) is largely lost to western civ. Though there are some striking similarities between Roman ideas and come confucian and bhuddist writings, there is no conclusive eidence to suggest that either civilization ever interacted with the others. This is also the case with some Hindu and Greek similarities, though the evidence is not there to support a claim of that nature. It would take a study, I think, of the expansive Taoist canon (which is a bit of a misnomer, since a formal canon doesn’t actually exist in the Taoist tradition, and anything approximating a conclusive collection would number in the multiple thousands of manuscripts) and a study of Aristotle’s intellectual peers and his works as well, to trace those ideas that are cross referenced out. The result, even then, would be inconclusive and based merely on speculation.

However, based on the discerning nature of Aristotle’s arguments, and the adaptability of his argumentation to multiple perspectives within an argument in an attempt to pare out what is true from each perspective (this is generally Aristotle’s Modus Operandi), I would state inconclusively that it certainly seems like he could have had strong Taoist influences early in his life, which then reflected through the thought patterns he exhibited to the rest of the world through his writings.

[Author]

Posts