Aristotle’s Philosophy: Logic, Science, Metaphysics, and Politics
Item 3. Aristotle: Logic, Science, Metaphysics and Politics
1. Biography and Historical Importance
- Plato’s pupil, studied at the Academy for 18 years (366-348 BC). His thinking evolved from the idealism of his early works to materialism.
- Teacher of Alexander the Great in Macedonia.
- Founded the Lyceum in Athens (Peripatetic).
- Influence in Medieval Philosophy:
- Muslim: Avicenna and Averroes
- Christian: Thomas Aquinas
- First systematic formulation of logic: the syllogism.
- Empirical development of the sciences (biology and physics).
2. Relationship with Platonic Philosophy
Metaphysical Platonic
- a) Theory of ideas-forms as the essence of reality.
- b) Knowledge is about the causes, is universal and objective.
- c) Deductive reasoning from evident principles known intuitively.
- d) Nature is oriented toward a goal of perfection.
Differences of Aristotelian Philosophy
- a) Theory of abstraction (philosophy).
- b) Science is based on analysis (method of induction and deduction).
- c) Immanence versus transcendence: Plato criticizes the gap between ideas and the sensible world. Body and soul are the only reality we can only distinguish conceptually (metaphysics).
- d) Classification of sciences:
- Theoretical (knowing what is necessary): metaphysics, physics, and mathematics.
- Practical (how to live): ethics, economics, and politics.
- Production (know-how): rhetoric, poetry, and medicine.
Metaphysics: Knowing First Principles
Language analysis (categories): the first is really individual things and concrete, composed of substance (noun) and accidents (adjective), unity of all in being; analogy: being is said in many ways, specifically about substance and accidents by reference to the substance (different interpretations).
The substance is composed of matter (substrate material and sensitive, power or ability to be of different shapes) and shape (intelligible aspect or idea). The two are inseparable (hylomorphic). The form is universal, and the matter is the principle of individuation. Some things are distinguished from others by having different matter though they may have the same form and belong to the same species.
Epistemology: Theory of Abstraction
The process of knowledge begins in sensation, from which thought is constructed, going from the particular to the general, and memory through a process of induction. Sensory perception captures no matter how sensitive, from which it abstracts the intelligible form.
- The rational soul has the function to know and is composed of:
- Intellect: active faculty performing induction (abstract ideas from the shapes of objects).
- Passive understanding: tantamount to personal memory, gets ideas developed and is pure power. The former is collective and immortal (same language), the second is individual and the dead (Alexander of Aphrodisias and Muslim philosophers).
- The form of scientific reasoning is logic, which is based on the syllogism, formal study of language: the logical view is to assign a predicate to a subject.
- Premises of science: axioms, assumptions, definitions, first principles: identity, non-contradiction, the excluded.
- Truth is the adequacy of understanding (ideas and concepts) to things or really sensitive (adaequatio intellectus rei).
Physics
Nature: things moving by themselves (they have their own principle of motion). Motion analysis: the potential is to update, the objects are in power, can change in a certain way, by matter (power to change things is in altering remaining), the form is present and modified or disappears in change, adopting a new way. Exchange rates: accidental (quantitative, qualitative, local), or substantial. The raw material is timeless, formless, and indeterminate.
- Four causes: final, formal, efficient, material. The main explanation of physical phenomena is provided by the final cause.
- Demonstration of the existence of God: The first cause or unmoved mover is God, while the final cause is the principle that explains the orderly movement of the eternal physical universe.
- Geocentric theory: The supralunar world is made of ether (ether explains that the heavens do not explode), the stars revolve in concentric spheres around the Earth. The infralunar world has four elements: heavy bodies seek the heart (final cause explanation).
Ethics and Politics
Eudaemonism: Happiness is the end of human life. To achieve it, one must develop their own personality to its potential. Human activity is typical of intellectual contemplation of ideas; friendship provides the greatest joys.
Arete (a habit or practice that helps us get what we want), classes: intellectual (prudence, reason, science), ethical or character (the mean between two extremes).
- Politics is inseparable from ethics: Justice is a virtue ethics with political endeavor, can be distributive, according to merit, and corrective equal trade.
- Humans are social animals. The good life is the end of the state and the individual, both policy and ethics. Moral education is the link between the individual and society.
- Forms of government: Best tend to the common good and the virtue of citizens (monarchy, aristocracy, and republic). In the governor, look bad for their own advantage (dictatorship, demagogy, oligarchy).