by Roger Kimball
Aristotle gave virtue its theory; Trump gives it blunt instruction—common sense, hard work, and perseverance—an unscholarly ethics that nonetheless meets the moment.
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is full of good advice and wise observations. So is the upbeat summary of Donald Trump’s practical ethics, presented in his video “Eleven Life-Changing Lessons.”
Did you snicker when you saw the names “Aristotle” and “Donald Trump” juxtaposed? Of course you did. Aristotle is one of the greatest philosophers in history, and his Ethics, along with his Politics, may lay claim to being among the greatest repositories of practical wisdom in the Western tradition.
And Donald Trump? Well, he is a conspicuously successful businessman, a devoted father, and a celebrated media personality. He is also, in case you hadn’t noticed, President of the United States of America for the second time.
Trump’s life lessons, based on his commencement address at the University of Alabama last May, lack the systematic working out of definitions that Aristotle lavished upon the subject. (Trump’s first lesson: You’re never too young to do something great; lesson two: You have to love what you do. Aristotle’s directives are not so blunt.)
But deep down, there is a good deal of commonality between the two. Aristotle says that happiness consists in the active exercise of the faculties in accordance with virtue. Trump employs a different vocabulary. But when he urges us to “think big” (his second lesson) and “work hard” (number three), he is traipsing about the same territory.
At the center of Aristotle’s ethics is the concept of “phronesis,” practical wisdom. Trump employs the more familiar term “common sense,” the master concept of his second inaugural address, something I discussed in a recent talk. “We will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said in his address. “It’s all about common sense.”
Who gets to define what is common about common sense? Who gets to say wherein lies the sense of that consensus? I am going to bring in another philosopher now. At the beginning of his Discourse on Method (1637), René Descartes said that common sense (bon sens) was “the most widely distributed thing in the world.” Is it? Much as I admire Descartes, I have to note that he was imperfectly acquainted with the realities of 21st-century America. If he were with us today, I am sure he would amend his opinion.
After all, is it common sense to pretend that men can be women? Or to pretend that you do not know what a woman is? During her confirmation hearings, a sitting member of the Supreme Court professed to be baffled by that question.
Is it common sense to open the borders of your country and then to spend truckloads of taxpayer dollars to feed, house, and nurture the millions of illegal migrants who have poured in? Is it common sense to sacrifice competence on the altar of so-called diversity? To allow politicians to bankrupt the country by incontinent overspending? That’s the start of a list one could easily enlarge.
In the cultural realm, is it common sense to celebrate art that is indistinguishable from pornography or some other form of psychopathology? Is it common sense to rewrite history in an effort to soothe the wounded feelings of people who crave victimhood? Is it common sense to transform higher education from an institution dedicated to the preservation and transmission of the highest values of our civilization into a wrecking ball aimed at destroying that civilization?
Like most important concepts—think of love, justice, knowledge, or the good—common sense is not easy to define. But we know it when we see it. And more to the point, we instantly sense its absence when it is supplanted.
I am keenly aware that to talk about Donald Trump and philosophy in the same breath seems like a tasteless joke to the sages who claim to have their fingers on the ethical pulse of the times. Trump and Aristotle. Trump and Descartes. I must be kidding. The great sages at The Daily Beast, for example, greeted Trump’s short video with that gleeful, incontinent derision that is the specialité de la maison of the woke nomenklatura. “White House Releases Bonkers List of Trump’s 11 ‘Life-Changing Lessons,’” they chortled in the headline to one story.
They were particularly contemptuous of Trump’s fourth lesson: “Work hard.” How could Trump say that, demanded these arbiters elegantiarum, when he is so often off on the links banging golf balls?
Well, here’s a question: has any president in our lifetime worked harder than Donald Trump? The man is indefatigable. He is always working, even when he is choosing between a mashie and a niblick. He sleeps about four hours a day and is otherwise busy trying to make America great again. What do the snails at The Daily Beast do all day?
In some ways, Trump’s eleven lessons are of a piece with the practical wisdom of such popular writers as Norman Vincent Peale, he of the great bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking. Indeed, Trump’s ninth lesson, “Think of yourself as a winner,” is basically a restatement of Peale’s teaching. If you went to university, you naturally harbor nothing but contempt for such advice. You are far too sophisticated for such nostrums.
But when you stop sniggering, ask yourself this: Is it good advice? And how about Trump’s follow-up? “Too many of our young people have been taught to think of themselves as victims. In America, we reject the idea that anyone is born a victim. Heroes are the ones who take charge of their own destiny, despite the odds.”
I think there is more wisdom in those observations than a year’s supply of The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Atlantic, or the gender-sensitive ethics colloquia sponsored by Ivy and Ivy-adjacent colleges.
Trump’s final bit of advice is familiar. “Never, ever give up.” Had he listened to the ambient static of our culture, Trump would have given up long ago. Eighteen months ago, he was finished: under indictment in four states, fined half a billion dollars, and criminally convicted. Any ordinary man would have crumpled. But Trump persevered, and he triumphed.
So there is plenty of reason to agree with Trump that the last lesson, never give up, is the most important lesson. I agree that it is important. But for my money, the most acute life lesson is number ten: “Be an original; have the confidence to be a little different. God only created one of you; don’t try to be someone else.”
What do you think? Trump’s Eleven Life Lessons are not the Nicomachean Ethics. But they are plenty wise. They are a useful appendage to that great work. Added benefit: they are a lot shorter.
Photo: WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 08: U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable discussion with farmers in the Cabinet Room of the White House on December 08, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump is expected to announce a $12 billion farm aid package, which includes one-time payments to those affected by the administration’s trade policies. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier).
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/14/trumpomachean-ethics/
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