Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism
The philosophy of Aristotle, (384-322 B.C.). Aristotle was born in the Greek colony of Stagira, in Macedon, the son of Nicomachus, the physician of King Amyntas of Macedon. In his eighteenth 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 he resided for some time at Atarneus, in the Troad, and at Mitylene, on the island of Lesbos, with friends of the Academy; then for several years he acted as tutor to the young Alexander of Macedon. In 335 he returned to Athens, where he spent the following twelve years as head of a school which he set up in the Lyceum. The school also came to be known as the Peripatetic, and its members Peripatetics, probably because of the peripatos, or covered walk, in which Aristotle lectured. As a result of the outburst of anti-Macedonian feeling at Athens in 323 after the death of Alexander, Aristotle retired to Chalcis, m Euboea, where he died a year later.
The extant works of Aristotle cover almost all thc sciences known in his time. They are charactenzed 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 in seven groups
the Organon, or logical treatises, viz. Categories, De Interpretione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistici Elenchi;
the writings on physical science, viz. Physics, De Coelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, and Meteorologica;
the biological works, viz. Historia Animalium, De Partibus Animalium. De Motu and De Incessu Animalium, and De Generatione Animalium;
the treatises on psychology, viz. De Anima and a collection of shorter works known as the Parva Naturalia;
the Metaphysics;
the treatises on ethics and politics, viz. Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Constitution of Athens; and
two works dealing with the literary arts, Rhetoric and 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 above listed are the work, not of Aristotle, but of his contemporaries or successors in the Lyceum.
Besides these treatises there are extant a large number of fragments of works now lost, some of them popular in character, others memoranda or collections of materials made in preparation for the systematic treatises. The most noteworthy member of the second class is the work dealing with the constitutions of one hundred fifty-eight Greek states, of which one part alone, the Constitution of Athens, has been preserved.
The standard edition of the Greek text is that of Bekker (5 vols. Berlin, 1831-1870). A complete English translation of the works included in the Berlin edition has recently been published (Oxford, 1908-1931) under the editorship of W. D. Ross.
Aristotle divides the sciences into the theoretical, the practical and the productive, the aim of the first being disinterested knowledge, of the second the guidance of conduct, and of the third the guidance of the arts. The science now called logic, by him known as “analytic”, is a discipline preliminary to all the others, 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 causes of things. Such demonstrated knowledge is obtained by syllogistic deduction from premises in themselves certain. Thus the procedure of science differs 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, a third follows necessarily from them. The basis of syllogistic inference is the presence of a term common to both premises (the middle term) so related as subj ect or predicate to each of the other two 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 but little has been added since his day. Alongside of deductive reasoning Aristotle recognizes 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 attaches most importance, in this search for premises, to the consideration of prevailing beliefs (endoxa) and the examination of the difficulties (aporiai) that have been encountered in the solution of the problem in hand. At some stage in the survey of the field and the theories previously advanced the universal connection sought for is apprehended; and apprehended, Aristotle eventually says, by the intuitive reason, or nous. Thus knowledge ultimately rests upon an indubitable intellectual apprehension; yet for the proper employment of the intuitive reason a wide empirical acquaintance with the subject-matter is indispensable.
The causes which it is the aim of scientific inquiry to discover are of four sortsthe material cause (that of which a thing is made), the efficient cause (that by which it comes into being), the formal cause (its essence or nature, i.e. what it is), and 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 principlesthe material constituents, or matter (hyle), and the form, structure, or essence which makes of these constituents 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 real being belongs only to the forms or universals, whose existence is independent of the objects that imperfectly manifest them. On the other hand, against the earlier nature-philosophies that found their explanatory principles in matter, to the neglect of form, Aristotle affirms that matter must be conceived as a locus of determinate potentialities that become actualized only through the activity of forms.
With these principles of matter and form, and the parallel distinction between potential and actual existence, Aristotle claims to have solved the difficulties that earlier thinkers 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, or entelechy. The philosophy of nature which results from these basic concepts views nature as a dynamic realm in which change is real, spontaneous, continuous, and in the main directed. Matter, though indeed capable of form, possesses a residual inertia which on occasion produces accidental effects; so that alongside the teological 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. The simplest formed matter is the so-called primary bodies — earth, water, air and fire. From these as matter 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. In this realization of form in matter Aristotle distinguishes three sorts of changequalitative change, or alteration; quantitative change, or growth and diminution; and change, of place, or locomotion, the last being primary, since it is presupposed in all the others. But Aristotle is far from suggesting a mechanical explanation of change, for not even locomotion can be explained by impact alone. The motion of the primary bodies is due to the fact that each has its natural place to which it moves when not opposed; earth to the center, then water, air, and fire to successive spheres about the center. The ceaseless motion of these primary bodies 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.
It is in his biology that the distinctive concepts of Aristotle show to best advantage. The conception of process as the actualization of determinate 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 strikingly evident. His psychology is scarcely separable from his biology, since for Aristotle (as for Greek thought generally) the soul 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 the organic structures involved. Fundamental to all other 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, and which also 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.
The necessity of assuming such a supreme form appears also from the side of 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 the world process. In himself he is pure actuality, the only form without matter, the only being without extension. His activity consists in pure thought, that is, thought which has thought for its object; and he influences the world not by mechanical impulse, 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.
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 distinctive of man, that is the 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 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, viz. the intuitive reason, or 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.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued after his death by other members of the Peripatetic school, the most important of whom were Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, and Strato of Lampsacus. In the Alexandrian Age, particularly after the editing of Aristotle’s works by Andronicus of Rhodes (about 50 B.C.), Aristotelianism was the subject of numerous expositions and commentaries, such as those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. With the closing of the philosophical schools in the sixth century the knowledge of Aristotle, except for fragments of the logical doctrine, almost disappeared in the west. It was preserved, however, by Arabian and Syrian scholars; from whom, with the revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it passed again to western Europe and became in Thomas Aquinas the philosophical basis of Christian theology. For the next few centuries the prestige of Aristotle was immense; he was “the philosopher,” “the master of those who know.” With the rise of modern science his authority has greatly declined. Yet Aristotelianism is still a force in modern thoughtin Neo-Scholasticism; in recent psychology, whose behavioristic tendencies are in part a revival of Aristotelian modes of thought; in the various forms of vitalism in contemporary biology; in the dynamism of such thinkers as Bergson; and in the more catholic naturalism which has succeeded the mechanistic materialism of the last century, and which, whether by appeal to a doctrine of levels or by emphasis on immanent teleology, seems to be striving along Aristotelian lines for a conception of nature broad enough to include the religious, moral and artistic consciousness. Finally, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and in philosophy, is but the translation into modern tongues of the terms used by Aristotle, and carries with it, for better or worse, the distinctions worked out in his subtle mind. — G.R.M.