Aristotle

I. Life (p. 214)

A. birth

1. Stagira-Thrace

2. 384 B.C.

3. Plato

a. 43

4. Socrates

a. dead for 15 years

B. Father

1. physician to king of Macedonia

C. education

1. Plato's Academy

2. began at 17

3. arrived during Plato's experiments in Sicily

4. remained 20 years

5. probably wrote dialogues

a. fragments exist

D. early thought (p. 215)

1. influenced by Plato

2. dialogues

a. stylistically Platonic

b. views are characteristically Platonic

c. Eudemus

1. account of soul

d. differ from later theories

E. work as a whole

1. effort to reformulate insights of Plato

2. fundamentally and acknowledgedly

a. Platonic

F. primary interest

1. like Plato

a. reaffirm

1. existence of

a. public and knowable reality

b. answer question

1. "What is the good life for man?"

a. Like Plato

1. found answer in reinterpretation and reformulation of traditional Greek beliefs

b. grounded beliefs

1. in comprehensive metaphysics

a. traditional and political values

1. rooted in nature and structure of universe as they conceive of it

G. Departure from Academy

1. after Plato's death

a. 347 B.C.

2. Plato's successor

a. carried emphasis on mathematics and mathematical knowledge to extreme

3. traveled

4. became tutor to young Alexander

a. 343 or 342 B.C.

b. son of king Philip of Macedonia

c. 2-3 years

d. developed counter views

1. Aristotle

a. city state

1. largest organization allowing political realization

2. Alexander

a. built an empire

3. Aristotle

a. Greeks superior race

4. Alexander

a. believed in racial merging between

1. Greeks and Orientals

e. seems to have remembered Aristotle

1. may be factual

a. army

1. to collect and ship any rare flora and fauna

5. return to Athens

a. by 335 B.C.

b. established Lyceum

c. most work produced

1. treatise on separate subjects

a. logic, physics, biology, ethics, meteorology

b. often repetitious

c. sometimes break off abruptly

d. apparently quickly assembled from previously existing work

1. may be constructed from lecture notes (p. 216)

2. probably lumped together after death

H. Lyceum

1. headed by Aristotle for 12 years

a. until Alexander's death

1. 323 B.C.

2. released strong anti-Macedonian sentiment

2. withdrew to Macedonian garrison

a. death

1. 322 BC.

II. Aristotle's aim (p. 216)

A. identical to Plato and predecessors

1. discover what is real

a. Thales and Atomists

1. looked to material universe

a. matter

1. water, air, boundless, seeds, atoms

2. the only real

3. over ext century

a. theory failed

1. materialists

a. could not account for man as a moral and religious being

b. Plato

1. located reality

a. immaterial world of Forms

1. too simple

a. Forms separate from things

1. failed to relate values to world of sense perception

B. Aristotle

1. theory of reality

a. values and sense perception to be real

1. must account for change (p.217)

a. Atomists

1. reduced all qualitative change to motion

a. change of place

b. Plato

1. in beginning nearly denied change

a. Parmenides

1. real and knowable

a. unchanging

2. eventually

a. allowed motion initiated by psyche

C. Aristotelian metaphysics

1. reality changes as it appears to do

2. man is a moral creature

III. nature of reality (p.217)

A. Contrast between Plato and Aristotle

1. Plato

a. Form

1. coextensive with reality

b. perfectionist (p.218)

1. solutions idealistic

c. bias

1. oward mathematics

a. Ideal objects

2. Aristotle

a. Form (p.217)

not coextensive with reality

b. realistic (p.218)

1. solutions practical and empirical

c. bias

1. toward biology

a. imperfect living objects

IV. Revision of Plato's Forms (p.218)

A. Plato (p.219)

1. Forms

a. separate entities

1. particulars of this world participate

b. Aristotle

1. Forms embedded in particulars

2. two consequences of Plato's concept

a. first

1. if what we know is form and

2. if form is separate from space time world

3. then, things perceived by the senses are not truly real

B. Aristotle

1. separation of Forms

a. leads to a chasm between

1. actual and ideal

2. what is known about can only be

a. "likely story"

3. what ought to be has no relevence to

a. moral, political, and social problems

4. resolution

a. denied Plato's dualism

1. division of universe into two worlds

b. one world

1. actual things

2. Forms

a. one aspect of this world

1. distinguishable in thought

a. color from shape

2. not distinguishable in fact

a. never find uncolored shapes or shapeless colors

b. taking as separate entities

1. confusion between

a. intellectual analysis

b. ontological analysis

C reality

1. individual things

a. from which Forms are abstraction

b. particulars

1. men, plants, rocks, animals

a. "substances"

D. individual substance

1. any particular thing

a. has two aspects

1. properties shared with other particulars (whatness)

a. Socrates and Plato

1 . men

2. rational animal

3. living thing

b. if no properties in common with something else

1. cannot speak of it

c. listing properties

1. never gets at individuality

a. Socrates v.s. Plato

2. properties not shared with other particulars (thisness) (p. 220)