GREEK PHILOSOPHY
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) [Stagira, Athens]
- Life of Aristotle
Aristotle was born in the Greek colony of Stagira, in Macedon,
theson of Nicomachus, the physican of King Amyntas of Macedon.
In his 18th year Aristotle became a pupil of Plato at Athens
and remained for nearly twenty years a member of the Academy.
After the death of Plato a rival was named head of Plato's Academy,
and Aristotle left Athens and resided for some time at Atarneus,
in the Troad, and at Mitylene, on the island of Lesbos, with friends
of the Academy. About 342 B.C. he became and for several years was
the tutor to the young Alexander, son of King Philip of Macedon.
Upon Alexander's accession to power Aristotle received support,
financially and otherwise, from the young ruler. In 335 B.C. he returned
to Athens, where he spent the following 12 years as head of a
school which he set up in the Lyceum. The school also came to
be known as the Peripatetic, and members Peripatetics, probably
because of the peripatos, or covered walk, in which Aritotle
lectured. As a result of the outburst of anti-Macedonian feeling
at Athens in 323 after the death of Alexander, Aristotle went
voluntarily into exile "lest," he said, "Athens
sin twice against philosophy," to Chalcis, in Euboea, where
he died a year later.
- Works of Aristotle
The extant works of Aristotle cover almost all the sciences known
in his time. They are characterized by subtlety of analysis,
sober and dispassionate judgment, and a wide mastery of empirical
facts. Collectively, they constitute one of the most amazing
achievements ever credited to a single mind. They may conveniently
be arranged into seven groups:
- The Organon, or logical treatises.
- Categories, or the various ways in which a thing can
be said "to be".
- De Interpretatione, or the doctrine of propositions.
- Prior Analytics, or the discussion of syllogism.
- Posterior Analytics.
- Topics, or rules for logical arguing.
- Sophistici Elenchi, or Fallacious Refutations
and how to expose them.
- The writings on physical sciences.
- Physics.
- De Caleo, or On the Heavens.
- De Generatione et Corruptione, or
On Coming-to-be and Passing-away.
- Meteorologica, or on the phenomena of the region of
sky below the Sun, Moon, and stars.
- The biological works.
- Historia Animalium, or the History of Animals.
- De Partibus Animalium, or on the Parts of Animals.
- De Motu and De Incessu Animalium, or
on the Motion in Animals and their mode of progression.
- De Generatione Animalium, or
On the Generation of Animals.
- The treatises on psychology.
- De Anima, or On the Soul.
- Parva Naturalia, a collection of short Treatises on
Nature, dealing with sensation and the sensible, memory, and the
power of recall, sleep, dreams, divination in sleep, length and
shortness of life, youth and age, life and death.
- Metaphysics, or First Philosophy.
- The treatises on ethics and politics.
- Nicomachean Ethics.
- Eudemian Ethics.
- Politics.
- Constitution of Athens.
- The treatises on literary arts.
- Rhetoric.
- Poetics.
A large number of other works in these several fields are usually
included in the Aristotelian corpus, though they are now generally
believed not to have been written by Aristotle. It is probable
also that portions of the works listed above are the work, not
of Aristotle, but of his contemporaries or successors in the Lyceum.
- Philosophy of Aristotle.
- Aristotle's Logic.
- Aristotle divides the sciences into the theoretical, the
practical, and the productive. The aim of the first is disinterested
knowledge, of the second is the guidance of conduct, of the third
is the guidance of the arts. The science, which is now called
logic but he called "analytic," is a discipline preliminary
to all the other sciences, since its purpose is to set forth the
conditions that must be observed by all thinking which has truth
as its aim.
- Science, in the strict sense of the word, is demonstrated
knowledge of the cause of things. Such knowledge is obtained
by syllogistic deduction from premises in themselves certain.
Thus the procedures of science differ from dialectic, which employs
probable premises, and from eristic, which aims not at truth but
at victory in disputation. The center, therefore, of Aristotle's
logic is the syllogism, or that form of reasoning whereby, given
two propositions called premises, a third proposition follows
necessarily from them. Every syllogism contains three propositions:
two propositions are premises and the third is the conclusion.
Every proposition must contain two terms, a subject and a predicate,
something spoken about and what is said about it. The truth or
falsity of the proposition lies in the relation between the subject
and the predicate. There are various modes of the syllogism but
they are all derived from the basic mode called Barbara, a name
invented to designate the following form of syllogistic implication:
if all M is P, and all S is M, then all S is P. The letter P
stands for Predicate of the conclusion and is called the major
term, the letter S stands for the Subject of the conclusion
and is called the minor term; and the lettr M stands for
the middle term. The middle term is the concept in whose
content the contents of the other terms become identical; it is
the reason or cause of connection between the major and minor
terms, and is therefore of primary importance in the sciences,
which seek the causes of things. The basis of syllogistic inference
is, therefore, the presence of this term common to both premises
(the middle term) which is so related as either subject or predicate
to each of the other two terms (major and minor terms) that a
conclusion may be drawn regarding the relation of these two terms
to one another. Aristotle was the first to formulate the theory
of the syllogism, and his minute analysis of its various forms
was definitive, so far as the subject-predicate relation is concerned;
so that to this part of deductive logic little has been added
since his day. It may be truly said that he is father of logic.
- Aristotle recognized two of the three laws of thought.
He says of the law of contradiction that "the firmest of all
principles is that it is impossible for the same thing to belong
and not belong to the same thing at the same time in the same
respect." And he says of the law of the excluded middle:
"It is not possible that there should be anything between
the two parts of a contradiction, but it is necessary either to
affirm or deny one thing of any other thing." He nowhere
states the law of identity, although it is presupposed.
- Alongside of deductive reasoning Aristotle recognized the
necessity of induction, or the process whereby premises,
particularly first premises, are established. This involves passing
from the particulars of sense experience (the things more knowable
to us) to the universal and necessary principles involved in sense
experience (the things more knowable in themselves). Aristotle
did not think that a valid induction needed a complete enumeration,
but only a sufficient enumeration, of instances. For him, the
mind had the capacity of abstracting from the particulars the
universal character of the class under investigation. A botanist
does not have to examine every plant in the world to produce a
true scientific definition of each type. Aristotle attached most
importance, in search for premises, to the consideration of prevailing
beliefs (endoxa) and examination of the difficulties (aporiai)
that have been encountered in the solution of the problem.
- The ultimate basis of Aristotle's epistemology is intuition,
or indubitable intellectual apprehension. Intuition has two main
roles:
(1) The particulars of sense are intuited directly. From the
sensed particulars we form definitions, make inductions, and provide
the premises for deduction.
(2) The most general of principles, including logical principles
themselves, are also directly intuited.
Plato thought that this certain, infallible, indemonstrable knowledge
of what is was innate. Aristotle denied that this knowledge was
innate but asserted that it must be acquired and that through
sensation. All animals are naturally endowed with the faculty
of sensation by which they distinguish or discriminate one thing
from another. In the lower animals sense impressions are evanescent
and these animals seem to have no knowledge beyond the present
sensation. In the higher animals sense impressions leave a trace
that continues for a time. Among such animals some are not but
others are able to order and arrange these persisting impressions
into what we call memory. Man has the capacity to form from these
many repeated memories of the same thing a universal concept,
the common factor within all of them, the one besides the many.
This process of abstraction in the act of perception grasps the
universal. From the sense impressions the universal is abstracted
and the truth of the universal is grasped. Aristotle calls this
intuition and the process induction.
- Among these most general principles of explanation are axioms,
postulates and hypotheses. Axioms are the indemonstrable
primary premises of demonstration, concepts commonly held to be
true. Postulates relate to the substances whose attributes
are to be examined by the particular science. Unlike axioms they
are demonstrable, but used in the given inquiry without demonstration.
Hypotheses are like postulates in that they are capable
of proof, but accepted for the purpose of the examination without
proof. They differ from postulates in ranging more widely, and
including more than the primary premises of the demonstration.
- Aritotle thought that definition made it possible for our
ideas to parallel the world. He believed in real definitions;
that is, definitions were true, or not true, of the thing defined.
And a true definition would express the essence of the
thing defined. To do so, it was necessary to relate the term
being defined to the largest class of which it is a member, that
is, its genus, and at the same time tell how the sub-class
of the thing (the species) differs from other members of
the genus class. When "man" is defined as "rational
animal," this is a definition by genus and differentia,
the genus being "animal" and the differentia being
"rationality."
This description of definition gives us three of the five predicables:
species, genus, and differentia. The other two predicables are
"property" and "accident". While the definition
states the essence of a thing, a "property", while not
stating the essence, yet belongs only to that thing. For example,
to be capable of learning grammar is a property of man, and yet
this capacity is not part of the essence of "man".
An "accident", on the other hand, is a predicate with
only a contingent relation to its subject. It just happens to
characterize the subject. The brown of the table is an accident
in that the table might have been some other color.
- It should be noted that the linguistic distinctions of Aristotle's
subject-predicate logic are paralleled by an ontology made up
of individual substances characterized by properties of various
sorts. When Aristotle lists his Categories, a list of
the basic ways a thing may be said "to be", substance
is listed first as the basic category; and the remainder of the
list is composed of the attributes of the substance, or
the ways in which a substance exists: in a certain Quantity, of
a certain Quality, with a certain Relation, in a certain Place,
at a certain Time, in a certain Position, in a certain State,
in a certain mode of Activity, or of being acted upon (called
"Passivity" or "Suffering" ). The following
sentence will illustrate the ten categories. "There is a
man (Substance), alone (Quantity), looking like a doctor (Quality),
and wiser than Hippocrates (Relation); he is in the street (Place),
now (Time), walking (Position), barefooted (State), toward a surgery,
either to treat (Activity) a patient or to be treated (Passivity)
as a patient." The categories, therefore, are the primary
attributes of things, except for the first category, grouped with
the others for convenience, is the thing to which they are attributed.
For Aristotle existence is basically the existence of substances;
and the meaning of existence for the other categories is different
- more dependent, derivative.
- Aristotle's Physics.
- There are four kinds of causes which it is the aim
of scientific inquiry to discover:
(1) the material cause (that of which a thing is made),
(2) the efficient cause (that by which it comes into being),
(3) the formal cause (its essence or nature, that is, what
it is), and
(4) the final cause (its end, or that for which it exists).
In natural objects, as distinct from the products of art, the
last three causes coincide; for the end of a natural object is
the realization of its essence, and likewise it is this identical
essence embodied in another individual that is the efficient cause
in its production. Thus for Aristotle every object in the sense
world is a union of two ultimate principles: the material constituent,
or matter (hyle), and the form, or essence,
which makes of these constitutents the determinate kind of being
it is. Nor is this union an external or arbitrary one; for the
matter is in every case to be regarded as possessing the capacity
for the form, as being potentially the formed matter.
Likewise the form has being only in the succession of its material
embodiments. Thus Aristotle opposes what he considers to be the
Platonic doctrine that only the forms or universals are real and
exist independent of the objects that imperfectly imitate them.
On the other hand, against the earlier nature-philosophies that
found their explanatory principles in matter, to the neglect of
form, Aristotle affirmed that matter must be conceived as potentiality
that becomes actualized only through the activity of forms.
- With these principles of matter and form interpreted as potentiality
and actuality, Aristotle claims to have solved the difficulties
that earlier philosophers had found in the fact of change. The
changes in nature are to be interpreted, not as the passage from
non-being to being, which would make them unintelligible, but
as the process by which what is merely potential being passes
over, through form, into actual being. The philosophy of nature,
which results from these basic concepts, views nature as a dynamic
realm in which change is real, spontaneous, continuous, purposeful.
Matter, though indeed capable of form, possesses a residual
inertia, which on occasion produces accident effects; so that
alongside the teleological causation of the forms Aristotle recognizes
what he calls "necessity" in nature; but the products
of the latter, since they are aberrations from form, cannot be
made the object of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the system
of nature as developed by Aristotle is a graded series of existences,
in which the simpler beings, though in themselves formed matter,
function also as matter for higher forms. At the base of the
series is prime matter, which as wholly unformed is mere
potentiality, not actual being. At the top of this series is
pure form.
- Aristotle selected "substance" as his basic category
because "substance" is his basic ontological unit and
substance in its primary sense, "that which is", defines
the order of nature, involving form, matter, and an internal principle
of movement. Substance in this primary sense, termed ousia
prote or "first substance" is formed matter. Together,
form and matter makes an individual substance; and it is
the accidents of matter which make the substance into this particular
chair.
- The simplest formed matter is the so-called primary elements:
earth, water, air and fire. From these as matter (potentiality)
arise by the intervention of successively more complex forms the
composite inorganic bodies, organic tissues, and the world of
organisms, characterized by varying degrees of complexity in structure
and function.
- Aristotle distinguishes four kinds of change:
(1) qualitative or alteration,
(2) quantitative or growth and diminution,
(3) substantial or birth and death, and
(4) locomotion or change of place.
The last is primary, since it is presupposed in all the others.
Aristotle is not suggesting a mechanical explanation of change,
for not even locomotion can be explained by impact alone. The
motion of the primary elements is due to the fact that each has
a natural place to which it moves when not opposed; earth
down toward the center, then water, air, and fire up to successive
spheres about the center. The ceaseless motion of these primary
elements results from their ceaseless transformation into one
another through the interaction of the forms of hot and cold,
wet and dry. Thus qualitative differences of form underlie even
the most elemental changes in the world of nature.
- The earth consists of the four elements, Earth, Water, Air,
and Fire. This is the region of change, and the natural movement
of these elements is up or down, which produces a certain intermixture
of them. But the region of the eternal and divine begins with
the moon. Here the movement is always circular; therefore, the
substance of the heavens must be different from those of earth.
Aristotle said it was Ether or Quintessence, the fifth
element. The natural motion of Ether is in circles of unvarying
speed.
- Aristotle's Metaphysics.
The necessity to assume the existence of a supreme form
appears from physics. Since every movement or change implies
a mover, and since the chain of causes cannot be infinite,
if the world is to be intelligible, there must be an unmoved
first mover. Furthermore, since motion is eternal (for time
is eternal, and time is but the measure of motion), the first
mover must be eternal. This eternal unmoved first mover,
whose existence is demanded by physical theory, is described in
the Metaphysics as the philosophical equivalent of the
god or gods of popular religion. Being one, he is the
source of the unity of world process. In himself he is
pure actuality, the only form without matter (potentiality),
the only being without extension. His activity consists in pure
thought, that is, thought which has thought for its object
(self-thinking thought); he knows only his own being, but not
the world; and he influences the world, not by mechanical impluse,
but by virtue of the perfection of his being, which makes him
not only the supreme object of all knowledge, but also the ultimate
object of all desire.
- Aristotle's Biology.
It is in his biology that the distinctive concepts of Aristotle
show to the best advantage. The conception of process
as the actualization of a potentiality is well adapted to the
comprehension of biological phenomena, where the immanent teleology
of structure and function is almost a part of the observed facts.
It is here also that the persistence of the form, or species,
through a succession of individuals is most evident.
- Aristotle's Psychology.
Aristotle's psychology is hardly separable from his biology, since
for Aristotle (as for Greek thought generally) the soul (psyche)
is the principle of life; it is "the primary actualization
of a natural organic body." But souls differ from one another
in the variety and complexity of the functions they exercise,
and this difference in turn corresponds to differences in organic
structures involved. Fundamental to all physical activities are
the functions of nutrition, growth and reproduction,
which are possessed by all living beings, plants as well as animals.
Next come sensation, desire, and locomotion, exhibited in animals
in varying degrees. Above all are deliberative choice and theoretical
inquiry, the exercise of which makes the rational soul,
peculiar to man among the animals. Aristotle devotes special
attention to the various activities of the rational soul. Sense
perception is the faculty of receiving the sensible form of
outward objects without their matter. Besides the five senses
Aristotle posits a "common sense", which enables the
rational soul to unite the data of the separate senses into a
single object, which accounts for the soul's awareness of these
very activities of perception and of its other states. Reason
is the faculty of apprehending the universals and first principles
involved in all knowledge, and while helpless without sense perception
it is not limited to the concrete and sensuous, but can grasp
the universal and the ideal. The reason thus described as apprehending
the intelligible world is in one difficult passage characterized
as passive reason, requiring for its actualization a higher
informing reason as the source of all intelligibility in things
and of realized intelligence in man.
- Aristotle's Ethics.
In the Ethics these basic principles are applied to the solution
of the question of human good. The good for man is an actualization,
or active exercise, of those faculties of the rational,
as distinct from the vegetative and sensitive souls.
But human excellence thus defined shows itself in two forms,
in the habitual subordination of the sensitive and appetitive
tendencies to rational rule and principle, and in the exercise
of reason in the search for and contemplation of truth. The former
type of excellence is expressed in the moral virtues, the
latter in the dianoetic or intellectual virtues. A memorable
feature of Aristotle's treatment of the moral virtues is his theory
that each of them may be regarded as a mean between excess and
defect; courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and
rashness, liberality a mean between stinginess and prodigality.
In the Politics Aristotle sets forth the importance of
the political community as the source and sustainer of the typically
human life. But for Aristotle the highest good for man
is found not in the political life, nor in any other form of practical
activity, but in theoretical inquiry and contemplation
of truth. This alone brings complete and continuous happiness,
because it is the activity of the highest part of man's complex
nature, and of that part which is least dependent upon externals,
that is, intuitive reason, nous. In the contemplation
of the first principles of knowledge and being, man participates
in that activity of pure thought which constitutes the eternal
perfection of the divine nature.
- Aristotle's Politics.
Man is a political animal: and virtue must be exercised as a citizen.
Aristotle regarded the family as the basic unit of the state,
and the state as a creation of nature, since in isolation man
is not self-sufficient. He distinguished three forms of acceptable
government: monarchy, aristocracy, and polity.
The third, somewhat akin to constitutional democracy,
he preferred, criticizing communism, and stressing the importance
of the family and of a prosperous middle class. Three unacceptable
forms of government are tranny, oligarchy,
and popular democracy; these are deformations of the acceptable
forms.
- Aristotle's Aesthetics.
In the general sense, art is a branch of knowledge different
from both theoretical science and practical wisdom. It is concerned
with the application of theoretical principle to beautiful or
useful objects.
- In the Poetics Aristotle advanced the idea that a
work of art is an imitation of the possible or probable,
not of something actual only, thus expanding Plato's doctrine
of imitation. Poetry differs from history in that history deals
with the particular, and poetry - in this respect like philosophy
- deals with the universal. Aristotle's expansion of the criterion
for beauty in fact stressed unity in variety, an organic
unity with no unessential features. His canons of tragedy - designed
to provide a catharsis of the emotions of terror and pity, the
action occurring within a single day, etc. - are of great historical
importance.
- In the Rhetoric Aristotle searches for the rules of
persuasion through analysis of examples of effective oratory.
Rhetoric is not a science but an art. It is not
an art of persuasion but rather the art of being able to discern
in each case the available means of persuasion. It is the counterpart
of dialectic since both deal with probabilities and commonly held
opinions. But the end of persuasion entails that the popular
syllogism (enthymeme) will be central to analysis and practice
of this art. (An enthymeme is an "incomplete syllogism,"
an inference in which one of the premises, or the conclusion,
is implicit.) The Rhetoric contains a distinction between
types of law. Aristotle distinguishes between written law
and universal law, permanent and changeless. He also calls
this natural law. His advice is that one should appeal
to the universal law if the written law goes against one's case;
if not, one's appeal should be to the written law.
- Older Peripatetics
- Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.) [Lesbos, Athens] succeeded Aristotle
as head of the Peripatetic School in 322 and continued in that
office until his death. He made Botany his field and wrote a
work that remained the botanical authority for centuries. He
also composed works on the history of philosophy and on the history
and nature of religion. Only parts of these works have come down to us.
- Aristoxenus [Tarentum] denied the immortality of the soul
because of certain Pythagorean theories which he held about the
soul being the harmony of the body. He thus championed the view
suggested by Simmias in Plato's Phaedo. But he followed
in the footsteps of Aristotle by his empirical work on the nature
and history of music.
- Demetrius [Phaleron], a pupil of Theophrastus and a prolific
writer, was active in politics, governing the city of Athens from
317 to 307 B.C. He urged Ptolemy Soter to found the library and School
of Alexandria. Demetrius went there in about 297 B.C. and, when this
project was accomplished by Ptolemy Philadephus, the successor
of Ptolemy Soter, shortly after 285 B.C., Demetrius furnished the link
between the Peripatetic School in Athens and the scientific and
research work of the Greeks at Alexandria.