Aristotle
- Aristotle’s Metaphysics
- Aristotle’s God
- Aristotle’s Logic
- Aristotle’s Epistemology
- Aristotle’s Ethics
Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Aristotle was a student of Plato’s, which means where he disagrees with Plato’s, he was forced to give reasons. He shared Plato’s concern of the improvement of the soul, he distinguishes between what appears to be good for some people and what is really good in itself, and he distinguishes between opinion and knowledge, appearance and reality, like Plato, he is concerned that the Good is our purpose. He agrees with Plato about there being unchanging Forms or essences that represent what is ideal. But he is also quite critical of Plato. Aristotle’s style is quite different from Plato’s since it is more scientific and analytic rather than literary.
Definition
We’ll begin with Aristotle’s metaphysics since it is the most central disagreement between Plato and Aristotle and it has consequences of anything of peripheral of the scheme. Aristotle starts by distinguishing two varieties of knowledge, practical and theoretical, the purpose of practical knowledge is action, it has instrumental value, while the purpose of theoretical knowledge is truth, it has intrinsic value, it is speculative. There are two kinds of practical knowledge, one is labeled experience, about knowing what is happening, and the other art or artifact, which is the practical knowledge of the craftsman, it’s about understanding what are the efficient ways to get things done. But metaphysics is not a kind of practical knowledge, but rather a kind of theoretical knowledge, it is a science, which refers to any theoretical study at the time. Although you can distinguish between particular sciences and the first wisdom. First wisdom is the science of sciences, or science of being, the first cause of all causes, that we call metaphysics. Metaphysics is refined a little bit in 18th century by a German philosopher, into ontology, the study of being in general, philosophical cosmology, the study of nature, philosophical psychology, the study of human mind, soul and philosophical theology, the study of God.
Forms
When we are dealing with Plato’s theory of Forms, particularly in Parmenides, we became very much aware of the problems which Plato’s version of theory of Forms, which is transcendent Forms, runs into. The overall problem is the problem of participation, that is, how do particulars participate in Forms. According to Plato, Form is separate from Matter, Aristotle found that is incredible. For example, mathematical object can not be separate from the material object because material objects have mathematical properties in them, so mathematical object, as a sample of Forms, can not be separated from material objects, then Form can not be separated from Matter. Another example is from some of his ethical writings, he says Plato’s Good is only an ideal to be contemplated, it has no effective power itself, but particulars have no Form in them, only Matter, what then inclines particular towards ordered-ness, beauty, the Good, if Form is transcendent and not in Matter. How can you explain natural changes in the physical universe, changes that produce order, beauty, goodness, when there is no Form in the material thing and the transcendent Form has no effective power. Plato might explain that world soul has the effective power, but Aristotle is not happy with it, it sounds unscientific to him. Another explanation is there must be Forms within the material objects, Forms are not transcendent, but immanent within the Matter. Any particular is a composite of Form and Matter. Aristotle’s view of particular becomes what is known as hylomorphism. What he means really is that if Form is inherent within particular, then the particular has some inherent capacity, potential, end or telos in its very essence. It is the Form that defines what it is, then the Form means that it has the inherent capacity to be that kind of things, a potential that can be actualized. When it comes to ethics, of course, we will ask what is the human telos, what is the human capacity, the essence of a human being.
Four Causes
About what is the cause for something, Aristotle has a theory of four causes. First, the efficient cause which has effect on the thing that is being produced, for example, a force that produces the result. Second, whenever we want to account for any sort of process, the kind of material that is involved also has causal significance, and it is called the material cause. Third, the formal cause, the essential nature of the kind of thing that is produced, a potential for something. Fourth, the final cause, the telos, or goal.
Aristotle comments on his predecessors about introducing first three causes and he sees the final cause as his distinctive contribution to the metaphysical scheme. He starts the book 2 of physics by saying that we must now consider why nature is to be ranked among causes that are final and purposeful. And we must consider what is meant by necessity when we are speaking of nature. Plato made Form the cause of order and try to explain disorder and evil in terms of the resistance of nature’s processes to Form. Aristotle isn’t satisfied with it. What is it that inclines the physical things towards ends that are good, orderly, beautiful. If the Forms are transcendent entities which has no power that they can exert, if materials are devoid of intrinsic Form, how is the material things tending their development towards ends that are good. We cannot explain ordered, purposeful changes without immanent Form.
He talks about a natural potency, which is being actualized in the process of change, and it is characteristic of all changes. So he says nature never makes anything without a purpose. God and nature creates nothing that has not its use. He sees purpose not only in humans, and also in natural processes, unconscious beings. If there is natural potential in anything, what an artist does is not to create, but to discover natural potentials in the physical elements in the world. This means nothing occurs in nature uncaused. Sometimes there are these incidental processes, he thinks chance is not an uncaused event, it is that there is complexity of extraneous causes that produces consequences, some of which are not the good at which the process originally aimed. You’ll see that for Aristotle, nature is always in the process of change and time is of the essence of nature, time is the measure of the process of change. While Plato thinks time is ephemeral, something which is a shadow with an eternal unchanging now.
Influences of Four Causes in History
Aristotle’s saying about the nature becomes tremendously important throughout the middle ages. There is a natural order to everything, and all natural processes has its appointed aims that in the course of nature, these ends comes to their fulfillment. Nature’s own resources seem to accomplish the governance of the world processes, that’s one of the things which towards the end of middle ages, some theologians and philosophers objected. William of Ockham claimed that this prevents God’s sovereignty over the processes of nature, which means God has to always be subservient to these essential unchanging Forms, similarly for Martin Luther and John Calvin. There is another extreme that emphasizes the direct sovereignty of God and his powerful action, rather than divinely created natural processes with their own potency.
We can think of Aristotle’s causes as first principles. Aristotle’s conception of science is that if you can formulate the principles, then you can deduce all sorts of things. That conception of science dominates until the beginnings of empirical methods in 14th century, and is picked up and modified by Descartes who talks about the mathematical reasoning as the model for science, the first principle becomes axioms, self-evident truth, from which all sorts of deductions are made as in geometry. Another view of causes is the explanatory factors. In explaining any kind of change, you look for four different kinds of things. When Thomas Aquinas talks about creation, he says creation has efficient cause: God, the formal cause: the wisdom of God, the final cause: to be like God but it has no material cause, it is ex nihalo, out of nothing. This framework governs medieval thought until the rise of the mechanistic science, the scientific revolution, the 15th, 16th century. The mechanistic science accepts material cause and efficient cause but it has no interest in formal or final causes. As empiricism developed, after Newton, people like David Hume says empirically, we have no knowledge of efficient causes and material causes. The outcome of Hume is skeptic about all knowledge of nature.
Categories
Categories of Being
Metaphysics is the science of being. The idea of being is used in a variety of ways, which Aristotle refers to as categories of being. Different ways in which we think about what is and different ways in which things are. One way in which things are is as substances. Other categories are: Affections of substances, process towards of a substance, things are relative of substances etc. Aristotle claims these are not just categories of thought, they are also categories of being.
Laws of Being
In addition, he has laws of being which also corresponds to laws of thought. One is law of non-contradiction, that a thing can not be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. Aristotle also offers a negative demonstration of law of non-contradiction. In order to say anything meaningful, you have to assume and follow law of non-contradiction. You have to assume it to argue for it and you have to assume it to deny it. And if deny is self-contradictory, there is only one alternative, it must be true. We simplifies law of non-contradiction as A is not non-A. Other laws are law of identity, A = A and law of excluded middle, A or non-A, which is a 2-value logic.
Category of Substance
Aristotle distinguishes three senses of substances. In one sense it is particulars, or parts of particulars. And it does not imply materiality, for example soul is a substance. The secondary sense is Forms, and a tertiary sense in which Matter is spoken of substance. Plato would never say that being is primarily particulars, he would say particulars are not beings but are becomings. It is revolutionary for Aristotle in saying the primary reality are particulars. Aristotle insists that you never find Forms by themselves, as independent entities, you find particulars by themselves but not Forms. You only find Forms in composition with Matter as particulars. That is, particulars are hylomorphic.
Essence and accident are different ways in which things are. The essential property of human being is rationality, the accidental properties are not essential to human being like blue eyes.
Aristotle’s God
Unmoved Mover
In the light of Aristotle’s metaphysics, we can see what he has to say about God, ethics, politics, education, art, etc. It is these metaphysical and correlated epistemological foundations which are philosophical undercurrent of every disciplines. There are three kinds of substances, one is sensible, which is accessible to the senses, of which one sub-division is eternal and another is perishable. And the third one is immovable. That is sensible and perishable, like physical bodies, sensible and eternal, an everlasting particular and the third, immovable, like Forms. He also talks about four kinds of change that can occur, the quality, quantity, the place and in respect of this-ness. All things of change have matter. Of eternal things those which are not generable but are movable in space has matter for motion. He is thinking of a geo-centric universe, on the surface, all things are changing, around the earth, the planets orbit, physical particulars moving, notice that locomotion of the planets as they orbit is an endless locomotion. It is the orbiting planet that produces changes in the earth’s atmosphere which produces the changes of the surface of the earth. Everlasting locomotion must have an unchanging cause. So out beyond the perimeter of the universe he thinks of another being which is the Unmoved Mover which moves the fixed stars that moves the orbiting planet. The Unmoved Mover is not an efficient cause but a final cause. Says Aristotle in another place that philosophy begins with wonder, the whole cosmos is moved by wonder, trying to be like the Unmoved Mover.
Pure Actuality
Aristotle dwells on the assertion that God is Unmoved Mover, and draws from that further that the Unmoved Mover is pure actuality. For Aristotle, every change is actualizing some potential, but to say God is pure actuality is to say there is no un-actualized potential in God, no change possible in God, it is the unchanging ultimate source of change.
Final Cause
God is not an efficient cause, does not exercise power, doesn’t push things around or force things to exist. Cosmos and its overall structure is everlasting, so all what you need in God is one by virtue of whom the motion continues unceasingly. Motion is something that needs to be produced and maintained by some being, but not as an efficient cause. To act as an efficient cause, you have to do something, for example some exerting force, and in exerting force, you are going through a process of change, and if there is to be no change, there can be no cause.
Thinking its own Thinking
If this divine being is pure actuality, unmoved mover and final cause, it doesn’t have to do anything, then how you characterize its actuality, its description is to think its own thinking. To be an unmoved mover means there is no input from outside. The Good for any being is the actualization of its potential, so being pure actuality also means being perfectly Good, no privation of Goodness.
Relation to Theology
This is an early attempt on natural theology, a theology based on inferences on what we know about the nature. It is far short of the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, or the incarnated God Jesus Christ, it is not a personal God, and it is quite commons for God in natural theology.
Henry Veatch makes the point in talking about Aristotle’s God that Aristotle is telling us that man is not the measure of all things, God is. Aristotle is saying that the most important end as we do things is not ourselves, because we are not the most important things in the universe.
Aristotle’s Logic
Aristotle’s writings on logic and epistemology was brought together in Organan, within Organan there are Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations. Categories is dealing with the function of Terms in our thinking. On Interpretation is dealing with propositions, Prior Analytics talks about the logic of syllogisms. Posterior Analytics talks about scientific reasoning, which is how we get our first premises. Topics talks about dialectic. Sophistical Refutation is about logical fallacies.
Aristotle introduces the kind of classification of species into larger genera and so forth in Categories. “Differentia” refers to the essential properties which differentiates from each other. What differentiates the human species is rationality and sociality. The terminologies becomes important when he asks how we know the truth first premises, because unless you know the truth about the species, the differentia about the species or genera.
Substance, quality, qualification, relationship, where, when, being in a position, having, doing, being affected are Aristotle’s Categories of thought. One should not switch categories when they are talking about something. Aristotle is concerned that in a chain of argument, you keep your terms meaning the same, rather than switching them equivocated terms. This is part of his logical apparatus to introduces these categories.
Aristotle’s Epistemology
How can we know unchanging truth for certain? The unchanging truth is the Forms, so the question becomes how can we know the Forms. We can’t know the Forms simply by sense or observation because sense perceptions of particulars are relative to the angle of vision and many other considerations. Plato’s proposal is innate knowledge. Forms are transcendent and if you knew them in another realm, in a previous existence, the memory of them is hidden in the subconscious then it is innate, but Aristotle doesn’t think the Forms are transcendent and doesn’t think you had previous existence when you knew them.
What we need is to develop from first principles of a science, a chain of deductive inferences. The logical structure of the theoretical knowledge is that of a deductive system. If you know certain universal principles you can make inferences about particulars. However, while the deductions about particulars are demonstrable, the first principles are not deduced from other principles, but any chain of deductive inferences has to go back to first principles which are not demonstrable. An example is Euclidean geometry, a system which begins with certain axioms, self-evident truth. Even in modern times that has been a conception of science way through the 1950s. In modern science they took a hypothetical deductive approach, which begins with an empirical generalization. In opening section of Posterior Analytics, Aristotle points out the problems we have in getting into these indemonstrable first principles. Without them we either have an infinite regress, or circular argument. What he is after is something that is indisputable.
What he proposes is a conception known as induction, it’s not the inductive reasoning we are acquainted with in modern times. Aristotle is after the essences, the Forms that are imminent within particulars. The process he proposes begins with sensations. What our physical senses apprehend is the Forms of a particular thing, not their material. In addition to the five senses, he talks about the sixth sense which is called senses comminis, an unified sense that integrates various senses. The multiplicities of sensations are retained in the mind, and the process of accumulating sensations leads us to take all the sensations of a particular class or species and think of them as one kind of experience. Within that unified experience, we can readily see what seems to apply to that class as a general rule until we apprehend the general rule intuitively. Aristotle’s process of induction is a process of accumulative experience, classified, organized and leading to an intuitive recognition of the Forms. We learn to abstract the Form from the species of the particulars, the Form is considered an abstract idea, not an empirical generalization. Induction exhibits the universal implicit in a particular.
Summaries on Theory of Knowledge
- Empiricism
Knowledge is nothing but accumulating sense observations and making generalizations and whatever can be derived from that. - Rationalism
Certain knowledge is innate. - Rational Empiricism (Moderate Empiricism)
Mind contributes to knowledge, it contributes laws of thought and categories of thought that correspond to laws of being and categories of being. The thinking processes correlate with nature of reality. - Skepticism
Quest for Certainty
What’s going on in developing theory of knowledge is questions about the quest for certainty, whether that quest for intuitive as a beginning for logical certainty is going to be satisfied fully, is it an ill-conceived quest? That leads to criticism of the approach known as Foundationalism, where you get indubitable certain principles and try to deduce from that, the geometrical model. The main alternative is Coherentism, or justified belief. In the 20th century knowledge comes to be defined not as certainty, but justified belief.
Aristotle’s Ethics
The Human Soul
Like his predecessors, Aristotle ascribe soul to all living things, life is a distinct force or entity than matter and has certain functions that matter doesn’t have. It is possible to talk about a hierarchy of soul, the vegetative soul, the locomotive soul, the sensitive(appetitive) soul and the rational soul. What distinguishes of human species is we alone have rational soul. Aristotle is thinking of the growth of a living being actualizing the potential of the soul. Of these the rational soul have capacity for immortality, because it is in abstract thought detached from physical things that we are able to experience independently.
The Good
It is on the basis of the nature of the soul that the Good is defined, it’s that way because Aristotle has a teleological metaphysics, every living thing has a final cause, the essential natural end is the natural Good, that the process would normally actualize. So the Supreme Good the human beings reflects is the native capacities of the rational soul. By virtue of the teleology, the Supreme Good must be intrinsically good but not instrumentally good. It must be an inclusive Good, that is, it does not exclude the lesser Good. And it must be applicable to the human species, which means something humans can participate in. But what is the Good? It is the Greek term eudaimonia, which is translated to well-being or happiness. Aristotle defines the Good as the actualization of the human potential, a complete life lived in accordance with reason/virtue. Plato was interested in the Good of the soul that can function perfectly well without body, so the highest Good that Plato could conceive for a well balanced soul was contemplation of the Good. Plato’s ethical ideal has influenced a contemplative way of life. Aristotle thinks contemplation is indeed our highest capacity, but the highest Good is a complete life, because a human being is not a soul in-prisoned in a body, a human being is a rational animal. He sees the Good life as actualizing your life as a distinctively rational animal.
Virtue
Aristotle’s philosophy is a teleological one, which means there is a natural ends which represents the proper functioning of whatever we are talking about. Consequently to talk about ethics, Aristotle talks about the human soul and its proper functions. The Good is proper functioning, and a complete life is in accordance with reason or virtue, because virtue is simply proper functioning. Virtue has to do with the whole life, both the outward behavior and the inner disposition, motivation and attitude. Virtue of a person is inner directed rather than in response to the outward stimulus. How do we acquire proper functions, actualize the capacity of functioning as humans then? Aristotle emphasizes on habit formation. He talked about what we call today moral development. What he talks about is basically the needs for deliberation about the ends and choice in accordance with that deliberation. At the same time he sees that there are some people who are going to have trouble with that, because that kind of habit formation takes self-discipline, the virtue of temperance, but it takes temperance to get temperance, thus they suffer from akrasia, which means weakness of the will. In this case, for example children, they have to be ruled by other people’s reason.
What sort of process is deliberation? The role of deliberation is to seek a mean between extremes. A given personality trait might be in excess or in deficiency, what you want is a rational mean, the balance of the two. For example the animal soul has sensitive functions or feelings, and the goal is to achieve moral virtues. There might be in excess or deficiency of feelings, what we need is to feel at the right times with reference to the right object, towards the right people with right motive in the right way.
Aristotle thinks pleasure is not happiness, it is more of a feeling. They are intermittent, and beyond control. Pleasure cannot be the highest Good because it has varying moral worth. In his moral psychology, he claims that pleasure is not the end to be pursed, it’s more of a byproduct of actualizing certain other ends.
Moral Development
Politics
Aristotle looks at government in terms of human telos. He defines human not only as rational being but also social being. Human good is only achieved in society, by virtue of proper functioning of society, not just individual. In light of this he develops the conception of an ideal state, one that is properly functioning in the nature of the state. A just society is one which is rationally ordered for the common good. Plato repudiated the existing forms of government as unjust, he therefore setup the ideal state under the rule of philosophy kings. For Plato, the ideal exists only in the transcendent heaven of the Forms. For Aristotle, particulars imperfectly actualize the Forms, so there might be various imperfect actualization of the state, therefore he is open to alternative political constitutions.
Art
There is a similarity with Plato when you see that Aristotle talks about art as a kind of imitation. For Plato, art should imitate the transcendent Forms, so art that imitate particulars are twice removed from reality. For Aristotle, art is not imitation of Form, but imitation of life, or representation of life, their characters, emotions, actions. Because you can only see the universal within the kind of particular. Art helps you to bring into focus of accumulative experience so you see a character well represented. In that sense, he finds poetry more scientific than history.