Harry Potter and Philosophy: Aristotle and Harry Potter

Cassidy Woodall (H3)

In the magical universe of Harry Potter all of the students that attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry get sorted into one of the four houses. The houses were created by the four founders of Hogwarts. They were Helga Hufflepuff, Godric Gryffindor, Rewena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. Each founder chose a virtue that they wanted the students in the house to have. Hufflepuff chose loyal and hard-working. Gryffindor wanted his students to be courageous. Ravenclaw taught the intelligent kids. Slytherin chose to teach off of the ambitions kids that will do anything to get what they want. 

Aristotle called these virtues traits of character. Traits of character are qualities of a person’s soul, more commonly referred to as personality, which are revealed in their actions. Traits of a character are how we determine moral qualities. A good person can be labeled a good person if people can regularly observe said person performing good and virtuous actions. The three criteria to know whether a person's actions and good and virtuous or not are: they know what is morally good and what is required of them, they choose to do what is morally good because is it morally good, and their morally good acts are done out of a firm disposition to act in such ways. One good example of this is Harry in the Triwizard Tournament. Harry had a challenge that required each contender to dive to the bottom of a lake and retrieve a loved one that is chained to the bottom and slowly drowning. Harry succeeded in retrieving his person, but he noticed that there was another still chained to the bottom and didn’t have much time left. Harry, knowing it would only hurt his score in the end, chose to go down and save the girl at the bottom.  

Only the morally good actions are considered virtuous. Virtues are qualities that display wisdom in the conduct of life. Acquiring wisdom is what sets us apart from animals, this ability is what Aristotle calls “proper function.” Aristotle noted that we consider good people to be wise, but we only consider evil people to be intelligent at most. We do not ever refer to an evil person as wise because we believe that to be wise you must know right from wrong and know that you need to choose good over evil. Aristotle believed that it is only through wisdom that a person can achieve eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is the sense of harmony with self and others that arises naturally out of virtuous activity in the soul. Anyone that is not wise or virtuous cannot reach eudaimonia.  

The best way to describe this in Harry Potter are the characters Dumbledore and Voldemort. While Voldemort is intelligent enough to discover how to keep himself alive and gather an army of followers, he kills hundreds of people and does it for selfish reasons. Therefore, we don’t consider him wise like we do Dumbledore; who constantly helps Harry and even dies for him.  

Finally, Aristotle believed in the Doctrine of the Mean. This just means that a virtuous action is one that follows a “middle course”.  A “middle course” is the center between what would be a too emotional response and what would be a not emotional enough response. In either extreme case the act will be out of the person’s capabilities and circumstances because of his failing to deal with his emotions properly.  

Part 1: https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2018/10/harry-potter-and-philosophy_12.html

Response 1: https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-walking-dead-and-philosophy.html?showComment=1544242854876#c1534606445879441280

Response 2: https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-onion-and-philosophy-problem-of.html?showComment=1544243032809#c3775982753070036720