Aristotle 1
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Aristotle 1 - Introduction, Plato and Aristotle, Reading Aristotle, Savory Info
Aristotle 2 - Aristotle's System, Ethics, Politics
Topics
What's Impressive About Aristotle
Notable Quotes
Life
Plato and Aristotle
Reading Aristotle
Savory Info
Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.E.)
Of all the writers of antiquity, Aristotle presents us with the most detailed, articulate system. He had a distinctive method of classification that laid out the areas of knowing and he followed up with extensive writing in almost every area. As a result, Aristotle has been extremely influential. This influence has been both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in recognizing the depth and usefulness of his thought; for example, during the Middle Ages, Aristotle came to hold the title, "The Philosopher." But Aristotle's influence also has been a curse whenever Aristotelian views came to be perceived as a special obstruction in the way of the advance of knowledge. For example, the great Galileo in the seventeenth century cast the Aristotelians as obstructionists in the way of scientific progress. And the lesser known Alfred Korzybski, the founder of general semantics in the twentieth century, advocated a "non-Aristotelian system" for the structure of language. In the last analysis, any fault here may well lie more with the rigidity of his Aristotelian followers than with Aristotle's own thought itself.
What's Impressive About Aristotle
Aristotle formulated the three great questions of inquiry: (a) Determining that something is (exists), (b) Determining what it is, and (c) Determining why it is. As groundwork for answering what questions, he presented an analysis of definition; as groundwork for answering why questions, he presented an analysis of causes.
In the Organon, he produced the first organized treatise in Logic―including an analysis of the categorical syllogism, a type of argument that has been a standard subject in logic for more than 2300 years.
Without shortchanging any attention to method, comprehensiveness, or detail, he offered a more worldly, more practical alternative to Plato's system.
Aristotle brings a biological perspective to philosophy―one based upon (a) careful sensory observations of living things and upon (b) organized development as a principle of explanation.
Unlike the extremes of a Heraclitean flux, a Parmenidean denial of motion, or even the Platonic Forms, Aristotle bases reality on individual substances or entities, and their attributes, much like the commonsense world that most people recognize.
Aristotle is a master of critical commonsense. Thus, although he provides much more detailed analysis and has a much grander systemic structure, much of the world he describes is close to what ordinary people recognize.
He introduced a fundamental distinction between the order of knowledge and order of being as a solution to some the most basic and perplexing problems of philosophy.
Aristotle produced abstract philosophical theory; and he advocated it almost to the point of intellectual snobbery; yet he also could be very practically-minded. So, for example, he could advocate the contemplative life as the highest good and worthiest life for a human being but also could offer a wealth of practical wisdom for everyday living.
He usually seeks the middle ground on issues, a Golden Mean. So moral virtue exists as a mean between extremes, the vices of excess and defect. Persons make their wisest judgments in middle age. And a sound society requires a large middle class.
Because of his tendency to synthesize the contributions of previous thinkers and explain their positions, Aristotle is a good source to recover the views of thinkers preceding him—especially in cases where their writings have been lost.
Notable Quotes
All men by nature desire to know. (Metaphysics, 980a22)
All instruction given or received by way of argument proceeds from pre-existent knowledge. (Posterior Analytics, 71a1)
Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reasoned fact. (Posterior Analytics, 78a22)
It is the mark of an educated man to require, in each kind of inquiry, just so much exactness as the subject admits of: it is equally absurd to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand scientific proof from an orator. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b24-28)
Human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue . . . But we must add ‘in a complete life.’ For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a16-19)
It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained from his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b24-25)
Man is by nature a political animal. (Politics, 1253a2)
It is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered, in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes [the wealthy and the poor]. (Politics, 1295b35-38)
Life
Aristotle was born at Stagira (northern Greece) in 384 B.C.E. His father was a physician at the Macedonian court.
About 367, he went to Athens to study at Plato's Academy where he remained for 20 years, until Plato's death. Not much is known about the specific relationship between Aristotle and Plato at the Academy. So the relationship is a matter of speculation. What is known however is that Aristotle's own philosophy introduced some fundamental differences with Plato's views.
After Plato's death in 347, his nephew Speucippus took over the running of the Academy and focused the studies there principally upon mathematics, which was not to Aristotle's liking. He spent the next five years in sholarly and biological research away from Athens, at Assos and Mitylene. At both places, he went to be associated with former Academy students, Hermeias and Theophrastus. He married Pythias, the niece of Hermeias, with whom he had a daughter. Later, after Pythias' death, his significant other was Herpyllis (also from Stagira) with whom he had a son Nicomachus.
From 342 ‑ 340, he was at the Macedonian court, tutoring Alexander, heir to the throne and later to be known as Alexander the Great. There is no indication that he had any particular philosophical influence upon Alexander―although, during his conquests, Alexander is said to have had biological specimens sent back to Aristotle. Alexander may also have contributed a significant sum of money for Aristotle to establish a library.
In 335, he returned to Athens to establish his own school, the Lyceum.
In 323, after Alexander's death and a strong surge of anti‑Macedonian sentiment in Athens, Aristotle left the city, saying that he did not want Athens "to sin twice against philosophy." He died in 322.
Plato and Aristotle
Idealism vs. Realism
Whereas Plato is idealistic and visionary, Aristotle is worldly and practically‑minded. So Plato seeks a transcendent reality beyond where most people are and exhorts them to get beyond the world of ordinary experience, while Aristotle tries to make sense of the world where most people are. Accordingly, whereas Plato tends to emphasize the ways we fall short in understanding reality and doing our best, Aristotle emphasizes making the best of the world as it is.
Whereas Plato prefers to work with mathematical models, with their perfection and regularity, Aristotle often prefers to work with biological models as being closer to the real world.
Whereas people and states are judged by the ideal for Plato (according to which they are always falling short), Aristotle is more likely to accept imperfection as the way of human life in the world. Rather than envisioning an ideal state that has never existed and probably will never exist, as Plato does in the Republic, Aristotle sees his task as a practical matter of determining what form of government suits particular sets of circumstances and of specifying how existing governments may better achieve the goals of justice and service to the common interest. Even if Plato accomplishes the same task by using an ideal state as a suggestive model for improving existing governments, he does so in a more roundabout, abstract way.
Monism vs. Pluralism
Methodologically and ontologically, Plato is a monist, while Aristotle is a pluralist. So Plato sees all knowledge leading through the Forms to an ultimate unity, the Form of the Good, whereas Aristotle accepts separate intellectual disciplines, each having its own special methods and standards. And whereas Plato sees all reality as unified ultimately through the Form of the Good, Aristotle sees a pluralistic universe of numerous substances.
Knowledge
Whereas Plato regards natural science to provide only probable accounts, and stated knowledge―no matter how rational―to fall short of ultimate truth, Aristotle holds that natural science sometimes gives certainties and that stated knowledge is worthwhile so long as it holds universally or for the most part.
1. In reading Aristotle, we have to separate out (1) what is most knowable to us in terms of our familiar sensory experience, (2) what is most knowable to our rational nature taking the universe as a whole into account, and (3) what really is. All three are legitimate ways of knowing, although we need to keep them separate to avoid confusion.
2. For Aristotle, what is first in the order of being may not be first in the order of knowing.
a. My favorite example: I come to know the chair is there through my sensory perceptions; but once we grant that the chair is there, we see that the chair's being there is the real basis for my having those sensory perceptions.
The Family
. . . of these Guardians, no one man and one woman are to set up house together privately: wives are to be held in common by all; so too are the children, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent. Plato, Republic, Bk. V
In one of his more tentative proposals for the ideal state, Plato lays out a plan for abolition of the family within the classes of the auxiliaries and rulers. By eliminating private family life for these two classes, Plato thinks that greater unity and service to the common good will result. When persons feel very possessive toward their spouses and children, as happens in private family life, they tend to pursue private interests rather than the good of the state as a whole. For example, they show greater preference and concern for family members than for others.
Plato's proposal for wives being held in common by all does not lead to promiscuity or fleeting romances in the ideal state. Sexual relations are rigidly controlled, for the purpose of providing the best possible offspring for the state. Cohabitation would only be allowed at sanctioned, periodic festivals, where couples are matched according to their potential for producing the best possible children. Some young men who have especially distinguished themselves in war or other duties might receive more opportunities to enter into these temporary marriages. For the most part though, the overwhelming majority of auxiliaries and rulers would refrain from sex during most of the year.
At birth, children are immediately taken from their parents so they never know precisely who are their own children. Some of these children are raised in a public nursery, some are distributed to families within the class of productive workers, and some (the defective ones) are allowed to die. Parents are expected to regard all those born during a three month period as their own children; and when this group grows up, all their children will be the parents' grandchildren. Similarly, children will regard as brothers and sisters all those born during periods when any of their possible parents were having children. Thus each child will have numerous adults to be treated as father and mother, and numerous others to be treated as brother or sister; likewise, each parent will have numerous children to be treated as one's own children or grandchildren.
As a result of the program, according to Plato, the disunity and lack of concern for the common good engendered by the narrow allegiances and concerns of private family life would disappear.
Plato's proposal received a thoroughly unfavorable review from Aristotle, who rejected it as being quite impractical.
According to Aristotle, real regard and affection cannot be extended to large numbers of people, as Plato hopes. A person with a thousand "sons" and "daughters" is much more likely to "neglect all alike" than to treat each of them with care and affection. At the root of regard and affection in family life is the possessiveness associated with someone's being "my" father, "my" mother, "my" brother, or "my" sister. This possessiveness associated with what is "mine" becomes meaningless when, as in Plato's ideal state, it is transferred to such large numbers of people. Thus, instead of strengthening bonds among people, Plato's program would weaken them.
This weakening is even likely to produce more crimes, because the normal restraints by which we refrain from criminal acts against close relations would no longer be recognized
Aristotle also questions the wisdom of Plato's stress upon unity in the state. As mentioned earlier, Aristotle thinks the pursuit of private interests, taken to an extreme, leads to perverted forms of government. However, he would also caution against the other extreme of producing absolute unity, by making everyone just like everyone else. He sees Plato's program of holding wives and children in common as a movement in the direction of absolute unity. Aristotle thinks there is value in diversity. Just as the family is more self-sufficient than the individual because it possesses greater diversity, so also the state is more self-sufficient than the family.
Finally, Aristotle notes some further practical difficulties, namely, that it would be very hard to keep secret transfers of children to the class of productive workers and that hereditary resemblances would allow some persons to identify close relatives.
(Plato’s position appears in Book V of the Republic, 449c-466d. Aristotle's critique can be found in the Politics, Bk. II, Chs. 2-4.)
Reading Aristotle
Aristotle has never won awards or praise for his literary style. His writings tend to be both tedious and difficult. Aristotle says what he means; but he does so with numerous detailed distinctions, numerous starts and restarts, as well as massive erudition. His writings are not polished works; and scholars generally regard them as detailed lecture notes or perhaps continually revised rough drafts. (He wrote some polished and eloquent dialogues, probably of a Platonic nature, early during his career; but these dialogues have been lost.)
Novice readers often get tripped up or confused through their not knowing the rudimentary structure of Aristotle’s philosophical system―which often forms the basis for the subjects and directions of his inquiries. Before anyone panics at the thought of reading Aristotle however, let me assure you that some works are readily understandable to a general reader even if they require persistent attention. In particular, the Poetics and the Nicomachean Ethics provide highly readable introductions to his thought. The Poetics is easier; but the Ethics deals with more central philosophical issues.
Savory Info
Youth, Old Age, and the Prime of Life
In the Rhetoric (Book II, Chapters 12-14), Aristotle offers some insightful commentary on the qualities of people at different ages of their lives.
(Note: Remember that he is describing tendencies of people at different ages, without claiming that every single person fits one particular mold.)
Aristotle describes the young as inclined toward excess, because of their strong passions and inexperience. They tend to give way to their passions with little self-discipline, particularly their sexual passions. They are quick-tempered, easily feeling slighted and quick to feel outrage at perceived injustices; but they also are fickle and quick to move on to different interests. They love victory and seek superiority over others, although they do not want to harm people. And they are moved more by noble ideals than what is merely useful to themselves. They are fun-loving and prefer the company of friends, whom they value for the sake of companionship rather than for usefulness. They are trusting of other people because they have not yet encountered much of others’ wickedness or been cheated much by others. They are confident and fearless because they have yet to experience the disappointments of life. So they have high expectations, looking to the future rather than dwelling on the past. And, of course, they think they know everything, which contributes motivation for their tendency toward excess.
People in old age, according to Aristotle, have just the opposite problems of the young. Instead of being inclined toward excess, they tend to “under-do” everything, because of their weaker passions and negative experiences. They are less confident in their actions and claims to know because of too many bad experiences with others and too many mistakes of their own making. “They are small-minded because they have been humbled by life”; and they are more interested in what is useful to them than what is noble. They are cynical and hold little hope for the future, concentrating instead on their memories of the past. And their capacity for self-control results more from the weakening of their passions than from any genuine self-discipline.
People in their prime, that is, middle age, are the ones best able to escape the excesses of youth and the defects of old age. They strive for a proper combination of what is noble and what is useful. They have the right amount and kinds of experience to judge rightly who can be trusted and who cannot. Their degree of confidence in themselves resides between the excess of rashness in the young and the defect of timidity in the old. Similarly, they are temperate in their passions, avoiding bother the excessive passions of youth and the insensitivity of old age. According to Aristotle, the prime of life for the body occurs about age thirty-five and occurs for the mind at about forty-nine.
The Golden Mean
Aristotle is a man of moderation, usually striving to strike a balance in the middle between extremes. In this sense, he is an advocate for The Golden Mean.
This preference for the middle is evident in his advocacy of middle age as the prime of life. It also is evident in his account of moral virtue, where virtue resides as a mean between vices of excess and defect. And he maintains that a well-functioning society requires a large middle class.
Even in his philosophical system as a whole, Aristotle tends to incorporate the more limited and more extreme positions of his predecessors into a grander, more balanced synthesis.
Immortality
Most persons take comfort in the prospect of personal immortality, that is, retaining the existence of personal identity after bodily death―whether as a way of providing hope for the condition of lost loved ones or as a means of denying any ultimate passing away in their own death.
Although Aristotle thinks that human beings can partake of immortality in some sense, he seems to deny the existence of a personal immortality. Here is his summary statement, “When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks” (De Anima, 430a22-25).
Interpreting the statement is a subject of controversy. But it is clear that Aristotle is placing a limit on human immortality and is denying any immortality for the “passive” mind.
One frequent interpretation by scholars rests upon a distinction between the passive and the active intellect. Passive intellect is the mind taking as the accumulated thinking awareness of what has happened to someone, that is, what one knows as a result of what one’s organism has historically experienced. In particular, this includes all those sense perceptions and passions relating to the body that go into our sense of personal identity. Active intellect is the thinking awareness in itself, that is, knowledge cut off from the history of the organism. For Aristotle, passive intellect is mortal while active intellect is immortal.
Accordingly, we do not retain any sense of personal identity after death; that is, personal immortality does not exist. On the other hand, to the extent that the active mind has grasped universal truths during a lifetime, there is an identification of the mind with the immortal and eternal that will always exist. According to Aristotle’s view then, we gain a measure of immortality to the extent that we acquire knowledge.
His position may not be very comforting to most people. But his basic point is a challenging one, namely, that too much of what we are as individuals is tied to the functioning of our bodies for us to retain any sense of personal identity once the body dies. (For some additional comments about this point in De Anima, see 403a2-24 and 413a3-8.)
Slavery
But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not slavery a violation of nature? There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection and others for rule. Aristotle, Politics, Book I, Chapter 5
Slavery is abhorrent today. So Aristotle’s justification of it will not win followers. In his defense, I should point out that he distinguishes between natural slavery and legal slavery, justifying the first but raising doubts about the second.
Aristotle thinks that ruling and being ruled are part of the natural order of things. Just as objects and animals are naturally suited to serve the needs of human beings, some humans are naturally suited to serve others. And just as the appetites are naturally suited to be the slaves of reason, some human beings, by reason of their limited abilities, are naturally suited to be slaves of other human beings. This natural slavery is justifiable. Aristotle even suggests that the relation of master and slave, under the condition of natural slavery, is one of friendship and common interest (1255b14-15).
Legal slavery in ancient society however often included enslavement of conquered peoples or slavery accepted as a custom, both of which may well conflict with the principle that justifies natural slavery. Merely being defeated in battle seems to provide a flimsy excuse for claiming the natural inferiority of peoples. So legal slavery can lend itself to an injurious abuse of authority that incites enmity and divisiveness.
Any points Aristotle gains by raising doubts about some forms of legal slavery though are probably outweighed by our doubts that the natural order of things is sufficient to justify natural slavery. Moreover, his position is troubling because he offers no practical procedures for insuring against an injurious abuse of authority where slavery is legal. In particular, we would question how one determines the potentialities of a person with an accuracy sufficient to assign the individual slave status.
Acquiring Wealth
Aristotle agrees with the acquisition of wealth to meet the necessities of life (such as food) as a matter of good “household management.” Such acquisition is a natural pursuit; and it can include exchange through barter and retail trade.
But problems arise with the introduction of money.
Money is convenient in exchange because it eliminates the need for carrying goods around all the time. However it also can corrupt the acquisition of wealth―generally, through the unlimited accumulation of money in retail trade and, in particular, through usury. Aristotle argues that unlimited desires and the unlimited pursuit of money to satisfy those desires are contrary to living well. Moreover usury, the practice of gaining interest by loaning money (the “birth of money from money”), is unnatural because it runs contrary to the essential function of money, which consists in facilitating the process of exchange.
See Politics, Book I, Chapters 8-10.
Knowingly Doing Evil
According to Socrates, no one knowingly does evil; hence evil results from ignorance. See . Aristotle appreciates Socrates’ position enough to make some sense of it; but he also views the situation as being more complicated.
If at the point of action, ignorant persons always act in terms of what they think or know at the moment to be best, their knowing cannot be a true state of knowledge―since they do evil acts. So what they know at the moment to be best must be merely their perception at the time, that is, perceptual knowledge rather than true knowledge. Interpreted this way, Aristotle is willing to grant Socrates’ point.
But he also wants to make further distinctions relating to our moral judgments of persons and to issues of moral responsibility.
Aristotle makes a moral distinction between two kinds of persons. There is first the “self-indulgent” person who does evil acts cluelessly, thinking always that the actions are justified and good. Yet there is also the “incontinent” person who regards an action as evil prior to a particular time, but still does it in the heat of the moment―only to regret the action later. Both persons engage in evil actions and both act in terms of their perceptions of good at the time of the action; but there is a real difference in their states of ignorance. The self-indulgent person is deeply ignorant and unlikely to change, whereas the incontinent person exhibits moral weakness at a particular time but also is more likely to change (because the state of ignorance is temporary interruption of what the person knows to be good). In addition to attributing evil to ignorance then, Aristotle wants to introduce into the discussion moral weakness (weakness of will).
(Note: See Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Chapters 2 – 4.)
With respect to evil and ignorance, Aristotle also wants to preserve the concept of moral responsibility for actions. If persons do evil acts out of ignorance, someone may argue that they are not blamable for their wrongdoing. So Aristotle distinguishes between “acting by reason of ignorance” and “acting in ignorance.” When we act by reason of ignorance, the ignorance is not of our own making and hence we are not blamable for wrong actions. When we act in ignorance however, the ignorance results from our own voluntary actions and therefore we are responsible for wrongdoing. For example, the drunk driver acts in ignorance in swerving off the road and hitting a pedestrian; but, in choosing to drink while reasonably knowing the effects of too much alcohol consumption, the person has chosen to produce the state of ignorance and is therefore responsible for it.
(Note: See Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapters 1 - 5.)
Some Biological Mistakes
Through extensive observation and analysis, Aristotle made fundamental contributions to the development of biology. Working in ancient times though with a limited knowledge base, he was quite capable of making some biological mistakes―two of the biggest howlers being his failure to detect the circulation of the blood and his position that the heart, not the brain, was the seat of sensation.
For Aristotle, animal life required heat, and the heart was the central producer of heat for the body. So the heart was the center of life and also the seat of sensation. The brain, which Aristotle described as being cold to the touch, functioned to cool excessive heat in the body. (See Parts of Animals, 652a24 – 653a10, 656a14 – 656b8.)
Blood provided the nourishment of the body. And surplus nourishment produced (concocted) useful residues such as semen, menstrual fluid, fat, hair, and nails. Finger nails and toenails then resulted from the congealing of blood at the extremities of the body. So his biological research never led to discovery of the circulation of the blood. Perhaps though it is hard to fault Aristotle when the discovery was not made until nearly two thousands years after his death, by William Harvey (1578 – 1657 C.E.).
(See Generation of Animals, 743a2 – 743a17, 744b12 – 745a19).