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Summary of Aristotle....

Aristotle studied under Plato at Plato's academy for 20 years, but later left to found his own school called the Lyceum where he both taught Platonic philosophy but also criticized it. Aristotle disagreed with Plato's dualism between the world of forms and the world of senses, believing there is only one world. He proposed that form and matter are inseparable in reality, with form being the essence or nature of something and matter being its individual characteristics. Aristotle analyzed all substances in terms of four causes - material, formal, efficient, and final. His metaphysics and ethics were teleological, believing everything has a purpose or final cause towards which it aims. Aristotle made major contributions to logic, metaph

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219 views3 pages

Summary of Aristotle....

Aristotle studied under Plato at Plato's academy for 20 years, but later left to found his own school called the Lyceum where he both taught Platonic philosophy but also criticized it. Aristotle disagreed with Plato's dualism between the world of forms and the world of senses, believing there is only one world. He proposed that form and matter are inseparable in reality, with form being the essence or nature of something and matter being its individual characteristics. Aristotle analyzed all substances in terms of four causes - material, formal, efficient, and final. His metaphysics and ethics were teleological, believing everything has a purpose or final cause towards which it aims. Aristotle made major contributions to logic, metaph

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Veejay
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Urbe, Francis Owen C.

Western Philosophy

Philosophy 1

Aristotle is born in Stagira, spent twenty years in Plato’s academy. After Plato died, Aristotle left

the school because of disagreements with its chiefs and he founded an academy of his own, the

Lyceum. In her school, Platonic philosophy was taught, bit it was also criticized. He contradicted

the world of forms and world of sense of his master Plato. Aristotle believed that there’s only

one world and we are a right smack in the middle of it. He asked: if forms are essences of thing,

how can they exist separated from things? If they are the cause of thing how can they exist in a

different world? And a most telling criticism has to do with the problem of change and motion,

which the early Greeks had tried to solve. In offering Aristotle’s solution, he employed some of

the same terminology as Plato. Aristotle said, that the distinction must be drawn between form

and matter, but these two features of reality can be distinguished only in thought, not in fact.

Aristotle called an object form its “Whatness”. When you say something is, you are naming its

form. The form is a thing’s “essence” or “nature”. It is related to the function. And the objects

matter is what is unique to the object and Aristotle called it the object’s “Thisness”. Matter is the

principle of individuation. An object with both matter and form is what he called a substance.

Aristotle pluralism opposed to Plato’s dualism. Aristotle solve the problem of motions and

changes by reinterpreting matter and form as potential and actuality and by turning these

concepts into a theory of changes. Aristotle famous example is an acorn. The acorn is the

potentiality of there being an oak tree. The oak tree is the actuality of the acorn. Aristotle analyze
all substance in term of four causes, its is the material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and

the final cause. Aristotle believed that the for such a system to work, some concrete perfection

must actually exist as the goal toward which all things are striving. This entity he called “the

prime mover”. The prime mover is the only thing in the universe with no potentiality because

being perfect, it cannot change.

Aristotle’s moral philosophy, as it appears in his manuscript now called Nicomachean Ethics,

reflects this teleological metaphysics. He noted that every act is performed for some purpose,

which he defined as the “good” of that act. According to Aristotle, there is general verbal

agreement that the end toward which all human acts are directed is happiness, therefore,

happiness is the human good since we seek happiness for its own sake, not for the sake of

something else. Aristotle believed that certain materials conditions must hold before happiness

can be achieved. Aristotle’s elitism: we need good friends, riches, and political power. We need

a good birth, good children, and good looks. We must be free from the need of performing

manual labor. In virtue, there are two kinds, it is the intellectual and moral virtue. Intellectual

virtues are acquired through the inheritance and education and the moral virtues through

imitation, practice, and habit. The habits that we developed result in “states of character”, that is,

in disposition to act certain ways, and these states of character are “virtuous”. For Aristotle if

they result in acts that are in accordance with a “golden mean’ of moderation. Returning to the

intellectual virtues of practical and philosophical wisdom, the former is the wisdom necessary to

make judgements consistent with one’s understanding of good life. Philosophical wisdom is

scientific, disinterested, and contemplative. It is associated with pure reason. For Aristotle, the

capacity for reason is that, which is must human therefore, philosophical wisdom is the highest
virtue. The human being can only be happy by leading a contemplative life, but not a monastic

one. We are not only philosophical animals but also social ones. We are engaged in the world

where decisions concerning practical matters are forced upon us constantly. Happiness requires

excellence in both spheres. Aristotle also make major contribution to metaphysics and ethics. He

also wrote important treatises on aesthetics. And he singlehandedly founded the science of logic

that is the science of valid inference. Aristotle’s metaphysics, his ethics, his logic, and hid

aesthetics remain permanent monuments to the greatness of human thought.

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