Week 7:

Aristotle
SFV101 Karabo
Maiyane
Aristotle
(384-322
BCE)
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

• Born in Stagira, Macedonia

• He was a student at Plato’s Academy from the age of 17
• He became Plato’s most prodigious pupil
• At 42, He was a tutor of Alexander the Great and travelled with him everywhere. Alexander
conquered all of Greece and India.
• Later when Alexander was conqueror, Aristotle returned to Greece and set up his school,
the Lyceum or Peripatos (that is why Aristotelians are sometimes called Peripatetics,
meaning walking around teaching and learning )
• When Alexander the Great died, the Athenians turned against Aristotle, giving him the
same choice they gave Socrates (exile or death)
• Aristotle chose exile to the island of Euboea, where he died shortly after
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

• Aristotle was a prolific writer.

• He wrote on virtually every subject: physics, astronomy, meteorology, taxonomy, psychology,
biology, ethics, politics, aesthetics, metaphysics and logic.
• Apart from Plato, Aristotle is the most influential philosopher in the history of Western thought.
• Until deep into the 20th century, logic was Aristotelian logic
• Aristotle dominated the study of the natural sciences until early modern times, and modern
physics was developed in reaction to the Aristotelian tradition
• His metaphysics continues to be the subject of philosophical debate, although his ethics now
constitutes the part of his philosophy which appeals most to contemporary philosophers
• Yet, Aristotle's influence extends far beyond philosophy…
• For example, Aristotle founded biology; Charles Darwin regarded him as the most important contributor.
• Also, Aristotle's Poetics, the first formal work of literary criticism, strongly influenced the theory and practice of modern
classical drama.
Aristotle on
knowledge
Aristotle on knowledge

• Aristotle developed a method of systematising all knowledge

• Aristotle classified knowledge/science into three main categories:
1. Theoretical – aim is impartial and disinterested knowledge
2. Practical – aims to influence and guide human conduct
3. Productive – aims to offer guidance to the various arts
• Fundamental in the three sciences is what is known as logic
• The purpose of knowledge is to set down the necessary and sufficient
conditions for any discipline that has truth as its aim
Aristotle on knowledge

• For Aristotle, “all men by nature desire to know”

• This desire is innate - it is not something you have been conditioned by
authorities to have
• This desire is not just practical knowledge we seek – the wish to know how to
do or make something;
• Rather, it is knowledge for its own sake.
• For example, besides our senses being useful, there is a “delight we take in our
senses; for even apart for their usefulness they are loved for themselves”.
• Whereas Plato considered the world of experiences illusory, knowledge can be
acquired through pure reason and can be communicated only abstractly and
through myths and metaphors.
• In essence, Plato was a rationalist.
Aristotle on knowledge

• Aristotle believed that knowledge is acquired through the senses – thus, he was an empiricist.
• Knowledge can be attained through the senses, but that knowledge is not wisdom – the highest form
of knowledge.
• Knowledge from the senses can tell us that of a thing, not why, E.g., to know that aspirin can help
your headache is knowledge without wisdom.
• Explaining why aspirin works as it does requires much more than seeing that it does.
• It requires reasoning and a deeper understanding of the causes
• Wisdom requires that we go beyond sense experience and reach the truth about the causes of things
through reason.
• Therein lies the true foundation of wisdom: the first principles and causes, which give us knowledge
not of appearances but of what lies behind them and makes them as they are.
First philosophy - Metaphysics

• The central goal of his philosophy was to transform Socratic/platonic conceptual theory into a theory
capable of explaining the phenomenal (mental) world of appearances.
• He calls this goal first philosophy or metaphysics
• The purpose of metaphysics is to discover those first principles from which all other sciences are
derived
• Metaphysics asks questions like: What does it mean to be? What is the cause of being? Why is there
existence – any existence – at all?
• The platonic forms cannot explain the existence of empirical facts or their own existence.
• To claim that forms are eternal is not a sufficient explanation: Why are they eternal? What causes
them to be so? Is there a God?
• Plato's ideas/forms are merely a duplication of the empirical, phenomenal world of appearances.
• There are no two realms. There is just one world.
First philosophy - Metaphysics

• Criticised Plato's theory of ideal forms – it fails to explain anything, and Plato can't prove their existence
with his arguments
• What is real is substance – you, me, the table, the chair, rocks etc.
• These substances are known through a classification of substances.
• How do these particular substances relate to universals?
• Universals don’t exist independently of particular individuals
• Each individual thing in the world is a primary substance whose species and genera (category) are
secondary substances that make the thing what it is rather than some other thing, E.g., Socrates is
pale. Socrates (substance) is pale (quality)
• These features may be basic without being simple e.g., Socrates has arms and legs and eyes etc., which
in themselves are categories.
• Aristotle's theory of categories spans his entire career and serves as a kind of scaffolding for much of his
philosophical theorising.
• Also denied that the soul or mind exists separately from the body; it is itself part of the living process
 Category Illustration

Substance man, horse

Quality white, grammatical

Quantity two-feet long

Categories of Relative double, slave

being Place in the market

Time yesterday, tomorrow

Position lying, sitting

Having has shoes on

Acting Upon cutting, burning

Being Affected being cut, being burnt

Causality

• The theory of causality is Aristotle's most significant philosophical contribution.

• To understand something, we need not only to know what kind of thing it is but also what it
is made of, how it was created and why it exists; that is, we must know its cause.
• This is known as Metaphysics as teleology – an account of being in terms of its purpose.
• In asking these questions, we are seeking knowledge of the substance (e.g., a statue)
• There are four causes (aitia): formal, material, efficient, and final.
• All motion and causality must begin somewhere
• for Aristotle; the beginning is Unmoved Mover, the first principle of all motion which itself
is not moved and moves other things by being an object of thought and desire
• So, we have an origin of causality, but what are its mechanics?
Causality

• There are four causes:

1. Material cause – that from which something comes from. E.g., the
bronze of the statue
2. Formal or ideal cause - the essence or nature of something. E.g., what
the particular statue is.
3. Efficient cause – the source of something, what has made something
become what it is. E.g., parents are a cause of a child.
4. Final cause - the end or purpose for which something is done. E.g. The
statue was made to commemorate…
• For Aristotle: citing all four causes is necessary for adequacy in explanation,
and these four causes are sufficient for adequacy in explanation
1 - The Material Cause 2 – The Formal Cause

3 – The Efficient Cause 4 – The Final Cause

Hylomorphism
Hylomorphism

• Central to Aristotle’s causal theory are the notions of matter (hulê) and form (eidos or
morphê)
• Hylomorphism = ordinary objects are composites of matter and form.
• Hylomorphism was formulated to address issues about change.
• How is change possible?
• All change involves at least two factors: something persisting and something gained or lost.
• In whatever category a change occurs, something is lost, and something gained within that
category, even while something else, a substance, remains as the subject of that change.
• E.g., in the case of the generation of a statue, the stone persists, but it comes to acquire a
new form, a substantial rather than accidental form
• what persists is matter, and what is gained is form
Hylomorphism

• Potentiality and Actuality

• In the case of the generation of a statue, the stone is potentially a
statue, but it is an actual statue when and only when it is informed with
the form of a statue.
• before being made into a statue, the stone was also in potentiality a fair
number of other artefacts—a brick, tabletop,
• Thus:
• form = that which makes some matter which is potentially F actually F
• matter = that which persists, and which is, for some range of Fs,
potentially F
Separable Soul
 Developmentalism

Because Aristotle rejects separable Forms, he must reject the separability

of the soul, which is the ‘form’ of the body.
• As such, Aristotle’s theory of the soul is opposed to the Platonic theory
of the soul.
• Moreover, this implies that Aristotle’s ethics is fundamentally different
than Plato’s
 Harmonism

• If Aristotle does not reject separable Forms, then it does not follow simply
that he rejects the separable soul - Aristotle’s view of the soul is far more
nuanced than simple hylomorphism.
• Aristotle agrees with Plato on the primacy of the intellect and the causal and
metaphysical primacy of form and actuality over matter and potency
• Aristotle also argues that the soul is in some ways separable and in other ways
inseparable from the body.
• As such, Aristotle’s theory of the soul as form and actuality is complementary
to the Platonic theory of part of the soul as eternal and indestructible.
• Moreover, this implies that Aristotle’s ethics is fundamentally similar to Plato’s
– philosophising is a moral imperative since it involves identifying ourselves
with our most essential Self