Aristotle’s Key Concepts: Nature, Power, Cause, and Happiness
Aristotle’s Key Concepts
Nature. Aristotle defined nature as “the substance of things that have the principle of motion within themselves.” It is the principle and cause of motion and rest in natural beings. It encompasses the totality of beings, the very existence of things, and their essence. Nature is specific and characteristic of a being, determined by its ability to change, transform, or remain at rest. This term combines the concepts of nature (what nature would be like without the possibility of change) and cause (which gives the potential for change). It is possible to differentiate the natural from the artificial (which is a human product).
Power and Act
There are two terms that explain movement: act and power. Act is the very existence of the object; the object already is. Power is what it is not yet, but can be. Thus, power is the ability to become something by nature, and act is the implementation of these specific potentials. Each being, at any given time, has characteristics and properties that constitute the act, and at the same moment, has possibilities that could develop and provide power. Change occurs to become actually what was in each being as a possibility. When what was a possibility is realized, it goes to the act and stops the movement.
Cause
Cause involves everything in the production of a process or change. It is all that is necessary to produce a phenomenon. To be considered scientific, knowledge must resort to the explanation of four causes together. These are:
- The material cause: matter, that of which something is made.
- The formal cause: manner, what constitutes its essence and nature, what it is.
- The efficient cause or agent: what makes something that is, producing the change.
- The final cause: that for which something exists, its purpose.
Substance
Substance is something that is necessary, that is, what remains unchanged despite any changes that may occur in its attributes, characteristics, or properties. Substance is the specific, unique individual being. The substance differs from the accident, which is all changes, that is, characteristics or attributes, which, although changing, the being or substance remains unchanged.
Social Being
According to Aristotle, man is a social, political, or civic being by nature, with a natural tendency to live with others. In community, the polis, one can develop their intellectual and moral capacities and meet their economic needs for subsistence. Being equipped with the word, of language (and not just voice like other animals), gives this status so characteristic and unlike animals and gods, who can live alone. This conception is linked to an organismic vision of society: “The state is prior by nature to family and every individual human being.”
“The whole, in fact, is prior to each of the parts.” Thus, as a single body has no life except in relation to the body, a single individual has it only in relation to the community.
Happiness
Happiness is an activity of the soul developed in accordance with virtue. Happiness is achieved through the implementation of tasks, or whatever it is, of virtue, which is the development of intellectual skills that lead to a contemplative and cautious life (characteristic of a sage). Although not the only way to get it, it is the only way to reach its maximum extent. However, Aristotle is realistic in mind that to reach happiness we need, as mere means and in moderation, external goods (at least economically), goods of the body (health), and goods of the soul.
Individual happiness depends on social happiness. The community is the way to it.