Aristotle
Aristotle
(348-322 B.C. ) The greatest of ancient philosophers, surnamed Stagirite, because he was born at Stagira, a Grecian colony in the Thracian peninsula. He was a pupil of Plato at Athens from his eighteenth to his thirty-seventh year. He next married Pythias, adopted daughter of Hermias, at whose court in Asia Minor he spent three years. Recalled to Stagira by Philip of Macedon, he acquired influence with the young prince Alexander who aided him liberally in getting books and opportunities for research in natural science. About 335 he returned to Athens and opened his school of philosophy known as the Peripatetic School (Greek: peripateo, walk about) because he walked about with his disciples while teaching. Most of his works were composed at this time. They are a complete treatise of human knowledge. He was the first to make logic a science, and to put philosophical study on a sure foundation. He kept clear the distinction between matter and spirit, sense perception and mental, the principle of cause and effect, and the division of the four causes: the formal and material explaining the constitution of matter, the efficient accounting for the origin and changes of things, and the final establishing their purpose and destiny. Forced to leave Athens, his school continued until it was closed by Justinian in 529 . Translators and commentators carried on his system in Persia, Armenia, Syria. From these sources the Arabians derived it and they with its followers in Byzantium, who had always cultivated it, were the channels through which it reached the University of Paris in the 12th century. The Scholastics favored it because of its logical method and because it emphasized the reality of things outside human consciousness. They, and principally Saint Thomas Aquinas, purged the system of the materialistic and pantheistic elements the Arabians had introduced into it and by means of it established the consistency of reason with faith. In the revival of Scholastic philosophy by the movement known as neo-Scholasticism, Aristotle is still looked to as the exponent of principles which serve to refute the subjective philosophers which have had vogue since Descartes.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Aristotle
The greatest of heathen Philosophers, born at Stagira, a Grecian colony in the Thracian peninsula Chalcidice, 384 B.C.; died at Chalcis, in Euboea, 322 B.C.
His father, Nicomachus, was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia. This position, we have reason to believe, was held under various predecessors of Amyntas by Aristotle’s ancestors, so that the profession of medicine was in a sense hereditary in the family. Whatever early training Aristotle received was probably influenced by this circumstance; when, therefore at the age of eighteen he went to Athens his mind was already determined in the direction which it afterwards took, the investigation of natural phenomena.
From his eighteenth to his thirty-seventh year he remained at Athens as pupil of Plato and was, we are told, distinguished among those who gathered for instruction in the Grove of Academus, adjoining Plato’s house. The relations between the renowned teacher and his illustrious pupil have formed the subject of various legends, many of which represent Aristotle in an unfavourable light. No doubt there were divergencies of opinion between the master, who took his stand on sublime, idealistic principles, and the scholar, who, even at that time, showed a preference for the investigation of the facts and laws of the physical world. It is probable that Plato did, indeed, declare that Aristotle needed the curb rather than the spur; but we have no reason to believe that there was an open breach of friendship. In fact, Aristotle’s conduct after the death of Plato, his continued association with Xenocrates and other Platonists, and his allusions in his writings to Plato’s doctrines, prove that while there were differences of opinion between teacher and pupil, there was no lack of cordial appreciation, or of that mutual forbearance which one would expect from men of lofty character. Besides this, the legends, so far as they reflect unfavourably on Aristotle, are traceable to the Epicureans who were known to antiquity as calumnators by profession; and if such legends were given wide circulation by patristic writers, such as Justin Martyr and Gregory Nazianzen, the reason is to be sought not in any well-grounded historical tradition, but in the exaggerated esteem in which Aristotle was held by the heretics of the early Christian period.
After the death of Plato (347 B.C.), Aristotle went, in company with Xenocrates, to the court of Hermias ruler of Atarneus in Asia Minor, whose niece and adopted daughter, Pythias, he married. In 344 Hermias having been murdered in a rebellion of his subjects, Aristotle went with his family to Mytilene and thence, one or two years later, he was summoned to his native Stagira by King Philip of Macedon, to become the tutor of Alexander, who was then in his thirteenth year. Whether or not we believe Plutarch when he tells us that Aristotle not only imparted to the future world-conqueror a knowledge of ethics and politics, but also initiated him into the most profound secrets of philosophy, we have positive proof, on the one hand, that the royal pupil profited by contact with the philosopher, and, on the other hand, that the teacher made prudent and beneficial use of his influence over the mind of the young prince. It was due to this influence that Alexander placed at the disposal of his teacher ample means for the acquisition of books and the pursuit of his scientific investigation, and history is not wrong in tracing to the intercourse with Aristotle those singular gifts of mind and heart which almost up to the very last distinguished Alexander among the few who have known how to make moderate and intelligent use of victory. About the year 335 Alexander departed for his Asiatic campaign; thereupon Aristotle, who, since his pupil’s accession to the throne of Macedonia had occupied the position of a more or less informal adviser, returned to Athens and there opened a school of philosophy. He may, as Gellius says, have conducted a school of rhetoric during his former residence in the city; but now, following the example of Plato, he gave regular instruction in philosophy choosing for that purpose a gymnasium dedicated to Apollo Lyceios, from which his school has come to be known as the Lyceum. It was also called the Peripatetic School because it was the master’s custom to discuss problems of philosophy with his pupils while walking up and down (peripateo) the shaded walks (peripatoi) around the gymnasium.
During the thirteen years (335-322) which he spent as teacher at the Lyceum, Aristotle composed the greater number of his writings. Imitating the example of his master, he placed in the hands of his pupils “Dialogues” in which his doctrines were expounded in somewhat popular language. Besides he composed the several treatises (of which mention will be made below) on physics, metaphysics, and so forth, in which the exposition is more didactic and the language more technical than in the “Dialogues”. These writings show to what good use he put the means placed at his disposal by Alexander. They show in particular how he succeeded in bringing together the works of his predecessors in Greek philosophy, and how he spared neither pains nor expense in pursuing, either personally or through others, his investigations in the realm of natural Phenomena. When we read the works treating of zoology we are quite prepared to believe Pliny’s statement that Alexander placed under Aristotle’s orders all the hunters, fishermen, and fowlers of the royal kingdom and all the overseers of the royal forests, lakes, ponds and cattle-ranges, and when we observe how fully Aristotle is informed concerning the doctrines of those who preceded him, we are prepared to accept Strabo’s assertion that he was the first who accumulated a great library. During the last years of Aristotle’s life the relations between him and his former royal pupil became very much strained, owing to the disgrace and punishment of Callisthenes whom he had recommended to the King. Nevertheless, he continued to be regarded at Athens as a friend of Alexander and a representative of the Macedonian dominion. Consequently, when Alexander’s death became known at Athens, and the outbreak occurred which led to the Lamian war, Aristotle was obliged to share in the general unpopularity of the Macedonians. The charge of impiety, which had been brought against Anaxagoras and Socrates, was now, with even less reason, brought against him. He left the city, saying (according to many ancient authorities) that he would not give the Athenians a chance to sin a third time against Philosophy. He took up his residence at his country house, at Chalcis, in Euboea, and there he died the following year, 322 B.C. His death was due to a disease from which he had long suffered. The story that his death was due to hemlock poisoning, as well as the legend, according to which he threw himself into the sea “because he could not explain the tides” are absolutely without historical foundation.
Very little is known about Aristotle’s personal appearance except from sources manifestly hostile. There is no reason, however, to doubt the faithfulness of the statues and busts coming down to us, possibly from the first years of the Peripatetic School, which represent him as sharp and keen of countenance, and somewhat below the average height. His character, as revealed by his writings, his will (which is undoubtedly genuine), fragments of his letters and the allusions of his unprejudiced contemporaries, was that of a high-minded, kind-hearted man, devoted to his family and his friends, kind to his slaves, fair to his enemies and rivals, grateful towards his benefactors — in a word, an embodiment of those moral ideals which he outlined in his ethical treatises, and which we recognize to be far above the concept of moral excellence current in his day and among his people. When Platonism ceased to dominate the world of Christian speculation, and the works of the Stagirite began to be studied without fear and prejudice, the personality of Aristotle appeared to the Christian writers of the thirteenth century, as it had to the unprejudiced pagan writers of his own day, calm, majestic, untroubled by passion, and undimmed by any great moral defects, “the master of those who know”.
PHILOSOPHY
Aristotle defines philosophy in terms of essence, saying that philosophy is “the science of the universal essence of that which is actual”. Plato had defined it as the “science of the idea”, meaning by idea what we should call the unconditional basis of phenomena. Both pupil and master regard philosophy as concerned with the universal; the former however, finds the universal in particular things, and calls it the essence of things, while the latter finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal ideas to a contemplation of particular imitations of those ideas. In a certain sense, Aristotle’s method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato’s is essentially deductive. In other words, for Plato’s tendency to idealize the world of reality in the light of intuition of a higher world, Aristotle substituted the scientific tendency to examine first the phenomena of the real world around us and thence to reason to a knowledge of the essences and laws which no intuition can reveal, but which science can prove to exist. In fact, Aristotle’s notion of philosophy corresponds, generally speaking, to what was later understood to be science, as distinct from philosophy. In the larger sense of the word, he makes philosophy coextensive with science, or reasoning: “All science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical.” By practical science he understands ethics and politics; by poetical, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; while by theoretical philosophy he means physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The last, philosophy in the stricter sense, he defines as “the knowledge of immaterial being,” and calls it “first philosophy”, “the theologic science” or of “being in the highest degree of abstraction.” If logic, or, as Aristotle calls it, Analytic, be regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, we have as divisions of Aristotelean phllosophy (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy; and (4) Poetical Philosophy.
1. Logic
Aristotle’s logical treatises, constituting what was later called the “Organon”, contain the first systematic treatment of the laws of thought in relation to the acquisition of knowledge. They form, in fact, the first attempt to reduce logic to a science, and consequently entitle their writer to be considered the founder of logic. They are six in number and deal respectively with: Classification of Notions, Judgments and Propositions, the Syllogism, Demonstration, the Problematic Syllogism, and Fallacies. They thus cover practically the entire field of logical doctrine.
In the first treatise, the “Categories”, Aristotle gives a classification of all concepts, or notions, according to the classes into which the things represented by the concepts or notions, naturally fall. These classes are substance, quantity, relation, action, passion (not to be understood as meaning merely a mental or psychic condition), place, time, situation, and habit (in the sense of dress). They are carefully to be distinguished from the Predicables, namely, genus, species (definition), difference, property, and accident. The latter are, indeed, classes into which ideas fall, but only in so far as one idea is predicated of another. That is to say, while the Categories are primarily a classification of modes of being, and secondarily of notions which express modes of being, the Predicables are primarily a classification of modes of predication, and secondarily of notions or ideas, according to the different relation in which one idea, as predicate stands to another as subject. In the treatise styled “Analytica Priora”, Aristotle treats the rules of syllogistic reasoning, and lays down the principle of induction. In the “Analytica Posteriora” he takes up the study of demonstration and of indemonstrable first principles. Besides, he treats of knowledge in general, its origin, process, and development up to the stage of scientific knowledge. From certain well-known passages in this treatise, and from his other writings, we are enabled to sketch his theory of knowledge. As was remarked above, Aristotle approaches the problems of philosophy in a scientific frame of mind. He makes experience to be the true source of all our knowledge, intellectual, as well as sensible. “There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses” is a fundamental principle with him, as it was later on with the Schoolmen. All knowledge begins with sense-experience, which of course has for its object the concrete, particular, changeable phenomenon. But though intellectual knowledge begins with sense-experience, it does not end there, for it has for its object the abstract, universal, immutable essence. This theory of cognition is, so far, summed up in the principles: Intellectual knowledge is essentially dependent on sense-knowledge, and intellectual knowledge is, nevertheless, superior to sense-knowledge. How, then, does the mind pass from the lower knowledge to the higher? How can the knowledge of the sense-perceived (aistheton) lead to a knowledge of the intelligible (noeton)? Aristotle’s answer is, that the mind discovers the intelligible in the sense-perceived. The mind does not, as Plato imagined, bring out of a previous existence the recollection of certain ideas, of which it is reminded at sight of the phenomenon. It brings to bear on the phenomenon a power peculiar to the mind, by virtue of which it renders intelligible essences which are imperceptible to the senses, because hidden under the non-essential qualities. The fact is, the individual substance (first substance) of our sense experience–this book, this table, this house–has certain individuating qualities (its particular size, shape, colour, etc.) which distinguish it from others of its species and which alone are perceived by the senses. But in the same substance, there is underlying the individuating qualities, its general nature (whereby it is a book, a table, a house); this is the second substance, the Essence, the Universal, the Intelligible. Now, the mind is endowed with the power of abstraction, generalization, or induction (Aristotle is not very clear as to the precise nature of this power) by which it removes, so to speak, the veil of particularizing qualities and thus brings out, or leaves revealed, the actually intelligible, or universal, element in things, which is the object of intellectual knowledge. In this theory intellectual knowledge is developed from sense-knowledge in so far as that Process may be called a development in which what was only Potentially intelligible is rendered actually intelligible by the operation of the active intellect. The Universal was in re before the human mind began to work, but it was there in a manner only potentially because, by reason of the individuating qualities which enveloped it, it was only potentially intelligible. Aristotle’s theory of universals, therefore, is that The Universal does not exist apart from the particular, as Plato taught, but in particular things; The Universal as such, in its full-blown intelligibility, is the work of the mind, and exists in the mind alone though it has a foundation in the potentially universal essence which exists independently of the mind and outside the mind. 2. Theoretical Philosophy
A. Metaphysics
Metaphysics, or, more properly, First Philosophy, is the Science of Being as Being. That is to say, although all sciences are concerned with being, the other sciences are concerned only with part of reality, while this science contemplates all reality; the other sciences seek proximate and particular causes while this science seeks the ultimate and universal causes; the other sciences study being in its lower determinations (quantity, motion, etc.), while this science studies Being as such, that is, in its highest determinations (substance, cause, goodness, etc.). The mathematician claims that a certain object comes within the scope of his science if it is circular or square, or in any other way endowed with quantity. Similarly, the physicist claims for his science whatever is endowed with motion. For the metaphysician it is sufficient that the object in question is a being. Like the human soul or God, the object may be devoid of quantity, and of all physical motion; yet so long as it is a being, it comes within the scope of metaphysics. The principal question, then, in First Philosophy is: What are the ultimate principles of Being, or of reality as Being? Here Aristotle passes in review the opinions of all his predecessors in Greek Philosophy from Thales to Plato, showing that each successive answer to the question just quoted was somehow defective. He devotes special attention to the Platonic theory, according to which ideas are the ultimate principles of Being. That theory, he contends was introduced to explain how things are, and how things are known; in both respects, it is inadequate. To postulate the existence of ideas apart from things is merely to complicate the problem; for, unless the ideas have some definite contact with things, they cannot explain how things came to be, or how they came to be known by us. Plato does not maintain in a definite, scientific way a contact between ideas and phenomena — he merely takes refuge in expressions, such as participation, imitation, which, if they are anything more than empty metaphors, imply a contradiction. In a word, Aristotle believes that Plato, by constituting ideas in a world separate from the world of phenomena, precluded the possibility of solving by means of ideas the problem of the ultimate nature of reality. What, then, are, according to Aristotle, the principles of Being? In the metaphysical order, the highest determinations of Being are Actuality (entelecheia) and Potentiality (dynamis). The former is perfection, realization, fullness of Being; the latter imperfection, incompleteness, perfectibility. The former is the determining, the latter the determinable principle. Actuality and potentiality are above all the Categories; they are found in all beings, with the exception of the Supreme Cause, in Whom there is no imperfection, and, therefore, no potentiality. He is all actuality, Actus Purus. All other beings are composed of actuality and potentiality, a dualism which is a general metaphysical formula for the dualism of matter and form, body and soul, substance and accident, the soul and its faculties, passive and active intellect. In the physical order, potentiality and actuality become Matter and Form. To these are to be added the Agent (Efficient Cause) and the End (Final Cause); but as the efficiency and finality are to be reduced, in ultimate analysis, to Form, we have in the physical order two ultimate principles of Being, namely, Matter and Form. The four generic causes–Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final–are seen in the case, for instance, of a statue: The Material Cause, that out of which the statue is made, is the marble or bronze. The Formal Cause, that according to which the statue is made, is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter. The Efficient Cause, or Agent, is the sculptor. The Final Cause is that for the sake of which (as, for instance, the price paid the sculptor, the desire to please a patron, etc.) the statue is made. All these are true causes in so far as the effect depends on them either for its existence or for the mode of its existence. Pre-Aristotelean philosophy either failed to discriminate between the different kinds of causes, confounding the material with the efficient principle, or insisted on formal causes alone as the true principles of Being, or, recognizing that there is a principle of finality, hesitated to apply that principle to the details of the cosmic Process. Aristotelean philosophy, by discriminating between the different generic causes and retaining at the same time, all the different kinds of causes which played a part in previous systems, marks a true development in metaphysical speculation, and shows itself a true synthesis of Ionian, Eleatic, Socratic, Pythagorean, and Platonic philosophy. A point which should be emphasized in the exposition of this portion of Aristotle’s philosophy is the doctrine that all action consists in bringing into actuality what was somehow potentially contained in the material on which the agent works. This is true not only in the world of living things, in which, for example, the oak is potentially contained in the acorn, but also in the inanimate world in which heat, for instance, is potentially contained in water, and needs but the agency of fire to be brought out into actuality. Ex nihilo nihil fit. This is the principle of development in Aristotle’s philosophy which is so much commented on in relation to the modern notion of evolution. Mere potentiality without any actuality or realization–what is called materia prima–nowhere exists by itself, though it enters into the composition of all things except the Supreme Cause. It is at one pole of reality, He is at the other. Both are real. Materia prima possesses what may be called the most attenuated reality, since it is pure indeterminateness, God possesses the highest and most complete reality, since He is in the highest grade of determinateness. To prove that there is a Supreme Cause is one of the tasks of metaphysics the Theologic Science. And this Aristotle undertakes to do in several portions of his work on First Philosophy. In the “Physics” he adopts and improves on Socrates’s teleological argument, the major premise of which is, “Whatever exists for a useful purpose must be the work of an intelligence”. In the same treatise, he argues that, although motion is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of movers and of things moved, that, therefore, there must be one, the first in the series, which is unmoved, to proton kinoun akineton–primum movens immobile. In the “Metaphysics” he takes the stand that the actual is of its nature antecedent to the potential, that consequently, before all matter, and all composition of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality, there must have existed a Being Who is pure actuality, and Whose life is self-contemplative thought (noesis noeseos). The Supreme Being imparted movement to the universe by moving the First Heaven, the movement, however, emanated from the First Cause as desirable; in other words, the First Heaven, attracted by the desirability of the Supreme Being “as the soul is attracted by beauty”, was set in motion, and imparted its motion to the lower spheres and thus, ultimately, to our terrestrial world. According to this theory God never leaves the eternal repose in which His blessedness consists. Will and intellect are incompatible with the eternal unchangeableness of His being. Since matter, motion, and time are eternal, the world is eternal. Yet, it is caused. The manner in which the world originated is not defined in Aristotle’s philosophy. It seems hazardous to say that he taught the doctrine of Creation. This much, however, may safely be said: He lays down principles which, if carried to their logical conclusion, would lead to the doctrine that the world was made out of nothing.
B. Physics
Physics has for its object the study of “being intrinsically endowed with motion”, in other words, the study of nature. For nature differs from art in this: that nature is essentially self-determinant from within, while art remains exterior to the products of art. In its self-determination, that is to say in its processes, nature follows an intelligent and intelligible form. “Nature is always striving for the best”. Movement is a mode of being, namely, the condition of a potential being actualizing itself. There are three kinds of movement: quantitative (increase and decrease), qualitative (alteration) and spatial (locomotion). Space is neither matter nor form, but the “first and unmoved limit of the containing, as against the contained”. Time is the measure of the succession of motion. In his treatment of the notions of motion, space, and time, Aristotle refutes the Eleatic doctrine that real motion, real space, and real succession imply contradictions. Following Empedocles Aristotle, also, teaches that all terrestrial bodies are composed of four elements or radical principles, namely: fire, air, earth, and water. These elements determine not only the natural warmth or moisture of bodies, but also their natural motion, upward or downward, according to the preponderance of air or earth. Celestial bodies are not constituted by the four elements but by ether, the natural motion of which is circular. The Earth is the centre of the cosmic system; it is a spherical, stationary body, and around it revolve the spheres in which are fixed the planets. The First Heaven, which plays so important a part in Aristotle’s general cosmogonic system, is the heaven of the fixed stars. It surrounds all the other spheres and, being endowed with intelligence, it turned toward the Deity, drawn, as it were, by His Desirability, and it thus imparted to all the other heavenly bodies the circular motion which is natural to them. These doctrines, as well as the general concept of nature as dominated by design or purpose, came to be taken for granted in every philosophy of nature down to the time of Newton and Galileo, and the birth of modern physical science.
Psychology in Aristotle’s philosophy is treated as a branch of physical science. It has for its object the study of the soul, that is to say, of the principle of life. Life is the power of self-movement, or of movement from within. Plants and animals, since they are endowed with the power of adaptation, have souls, and the human soul is peculiar only in this, that to the vegetative and sensitive faculties, which characterize plant-life and animal life respectively it adds the rational faculty–the power of acquiring universal and intellectual knowledge. It must therefore be borne in mind that when Aristotle speaks of the soul he does not mean merely the principle of thought; he means the principle of life. The soul he defines as the form, actualization, or realization of the body, “the first entelechy of the organized body possessing the power of life”. It is not a substance distinct from the body, as Plato taught but a co-substantial Principle with the body, both being united to form the composite substance, man. The faculties or powers of the soul are five-fold: nutritive, sensitive, appetitive, locomotive, and rational. Sensation is defined as the faculty “by which we receive the forms of sensible things without the matter, as the wax receives the figure of the seal without the metal of which the seal is composed”. It is “a movement of the soul”, the “form without the matter” being the stimulus which calls forth that movement. The typos, as that form is called, while it is analogous to the “effluxes” about which the Atomists spoke, is not like the efflux, a diminished object, but a mode of motion, mediating between the object and the faculty. Aristotle distinguishes between the five external senses and the internal senses, of which the most important are the Central sense and the Imagination. Intellect (nous) differs from the senses in that it is concerned with the abstract and universal, while they are concerned with the concrete and particular. The natural endowment of intellect is not actual knowledge, but merely the power of acquiring knowledge. The mind “is in the beginning without ideas, it is like a smooth tablet on which nothing is written”. All our knowledge, therefore, is acquired by a process of elaboration or development of sense-knowledge. In this process the intellect exhibits a two-fold phase an active and a passive. Hence it is customary to speak of the Active and Passive Intellect, though it is by no means clear what Aristotle meant by these concepts. The corruption of the text in some of the most critical passages of the work “On the Soul”–the mixture of Stoic pantheism, in the explanation of the earlier commentators, not to speak of the later addition of extraneous elements on the part of the Arabian, Scholastic, and modern transcendentalist expounders of the text–have rendered it impossible to say precisely what meaning to attach to the terms Active and Passive Intellect. It is enough to remark here that: according to the Scholastics Aristotle understood both Active and Passive Intellect to be parts, or phases, of the individual mind; according to the Arabians and some earlier commentators, the first of these, perhaps, being Aristocles, he understood the Active Intellect to be a divine something, or at least something transcending the individual mind; according to some interpreters the Passive Intellect is not properly an intellectual faculty at all, but merely the aggregate of sensations out of which ideas are made, as the statue is made out of the marble. From the fact that the soul in its intellectual operations attains a knowledge of the abstract and universal, and thus transcends matter and material conditions, Aristotle argues that it is immaterial and immortal. The will, or faculty of choice, is free, as is proved by the recognized voluntariness of virtue, and the existence of reward and punishment.
C. Mathematics
Mathematics was recognized by Aristotle as a division of philosophy, co-ordinate with physics and metaphysics, and is defined as the science of immovable being. That is to say, it treats of quantitative being, and does not, like physics, confine its attention to being endowed with motion.
3. Practical Philosophy
This includes ethics and politics. The starting-point of ethical inquiry is the question: In what does happiness consist? Aristotle answers that man’s happiness is determined by the end or purpose of his existence, or in other words, that his happiness consists in the “good proper to his rational nature”. For man’s prerogative is reason. His happiness, therefore, must consist in living conformably to reason, that is, in living a life of virtue. Virtue is the perfection of reason, and is naturally twofold, according as we consider reason in relation to the lower powers (moral virtue) or in relation to itself (intellectual, or theoretical, virtue). Moral virtue is defined “a certain habit of the faculty of choice, consisting in a mean suitable to our nature and fixed by reason, in the manner in which prudent men would fix it”. It is of the nature of moral virtues, therefore, to avoid all excess as well as defect; bashfulness, for example, is as much opposed to the virtue of modesty as shamelessness is. The intellectual virtues (understanding, science, wisdom, art, and practical wisdom) are perfections of reason itself, without relation to the lower faculties. It is a peculiarity of Aristotle’s ethical system that he places the intellectual virtues above the moral, the theoretical above the practical, the contemplative above the active, the dianoetical above the ethical. An important constituent of happiness, according to Aristotle, is friendship, the bond between the individual and the social aggregation, between man and the State. Man is essentially, or by nature, a “social animal”, that is to say, he cannot attain complete happiness except in social and political dependence on his fellow man. This is the starting point of political science. That the State is not absolute, as Plato taught, that there is no ideal State, but that our knowledge of political organization is to be acquired by studying and comparing different constitutions of States, that the best form of government is that which best suits the character of the people–these are some of the most characteristic of Aristotle’s political doctrines.
4. Poetical Philosophy
Under this head came Aristotle’s theory of art and his analysis of the beautiful. When Aristotle defines the purpose of art to be “the imitation of nature” he does not mean that the plastic arts and poetry should merely copy natural productions; his meaning is that as nature embodies the idea so also does art, but in a higher and more perfect form. Hence his famous saying that poetry is “more philosophical and elevated than history”. Hence his equally famous doctrine that the aim of art is the calming, purifying (katharsis) and ennobling of the affections. For this reason, he prefers music to the plastic arts because it possesses a higher ethical value.
Aristotle’s conception of beauty is vague and undefined. At one time he enumerates order, symmetry, and limitation, at another time merely order and grandeur, as constituents of the beautiful. These latter qualities he finds especially in moral beauty. It is impossible here to give an estimate of Aristotle’s philosophy as a whole or to trace its influence on subsequent philosophical systems. Suffice it to say that, taken as a system of knowledge, it is scientific rather than metaphysical; its starting-point is observation rather than intuition; and its aim, to find the ultimate cause of things rather than to determine the value (ethical or aesthetic) of things. Its influence extended, and still extends, beyond the realms of science and philosophy. Our thoughts, even on subjects far removed from science and philosophy, fall naturally into the Categories and formulas of Aristoteleanism, and often find expression in terms which Aristotle invented, so that “the half-understood words of Aristotle have become laws of thought to other ages”.
THE ARISTOTELEAN SCHOOL
The identity of the Aristotelean School was preserved from the time of Aristotle’s death down to the third century of the Christian era by the succession of Scholarchs, or official heads of the school. The first of these — Theophrastus — as well as his immediate successor Strato, devoted special attention to developing Aristotle’s physical doctrines. Under their guidance also, the school interested itself in the history of philosophical and scientific problems. In the first century B.C. Andronicus of Rhodes edited Aristotle’s works, and thereafter the school produced the most famous of its commentators, Aristocles of Messene and Alexander of Aphrodisias (about A.D. 200). In the third century the work of commentating was continued by the Neo-Platonic and Eclectic philosophers, the most famous of whom was Porphyry. In the fifth and sixth centuries the chief commentators were John Philoponus and Simplicius, the latter of whom was teaching at Athens when, in the year 529, the Athenian School was closed by order of the Emperor Justinian. After the close of the Athenian School the exiled philosophers found temporary refuge in Persia. There, as well as in Armenia and Syria, the works of Aristotle were translated and explained. Uranius, David the Armenian, the Christians of the Schools of Nisibis and Edessa, and finally Honain ben Isaac, of the School of Bagdad, were especially active as translators and commentators. It was from the last-named school that, about the middle of the ninth century, the Arabians, who under the reign of the Abassides, experienced a literary revival similar to that of Western Europe under Charlemagne, and obtained their knowledge of Aristotle’s writings. Meantime there had been preserved at Byzantium a more or less intermittent tradition of Aristotelean learning, which, having been represented in successive centuries by Michael Psellus, Photius, Arethas, Nicetas, Johannes Italus, and Anna Comnena, obtained its highest development in the twelfth century, through the influence of Michael Ephesius. In that century the two currents the one coming down through Persia, Syria, Arabia, and Moorish Spain, and the other from Athens through Constantinople, met in the Christian schools of Western Europe, especially in the University of Paris. The Christian writers of the patristic age were, with few exceptions, Platonists, who regarded Aristotle with suspicion, and generally underrated him as a philosopher. The exceptions to be found were John of Damascus, who in his “Source of Science” epitomizes Aristotle’s “Categories” and “Metaphysics”, and Porphyry’s” Introduction”; Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa, who in his “Nature of Man” follows in the footsteps of John of Damascus; and Boethius, who translated several of Aristotle’s logical treatises into Latin. These translations and Porphyry’s “Introduction” were the only Aristotelean works known to the first of the Schoolmen, that is to say, to the Christian philosophers of Western Europe from the ninth to the twelfth century. In the twelfth century the Arabian tradition and the Byzantine tradition met in Paris, the metaphysical, physical, and ethical works of Aristotle were translated partly from the Arabian and partly from the Greek text, and, after a brief period of suspicion and hesitancy on the part of the Church, Aristotle’s philosophy was adopted as the basis of a rational exposition of Christian dogma. The suspicion and hesitation were due to the fact that, in the Arabian text and its commentaries, the teaching of Aristotle had become perverted in the direction of materialism and pantheism. After more than two centuries of almost universally unquestioned triumph, Aristotle once more was made the subject of dispute in the Christian schools of the Renaissance Period, the reason being that the Humanists, like the Arabians, emphasized those elements in Aristotle’s teaching that were irreconcilable with Christian doctrine. With the advent of Descartes, and the shifting of the centre of philosophical inquiry from the external world to the internal, from nature to mind, Aristoteleanism, as an actual system, began to be more and more identified with traditional scholasticism, and was not studied apart from scholasticism except for its historic interest.
WRITINGS
It is customary to distinguish, on the authority of Gellius, two classes of Aristotelean writings: the exoteric, which were intended for the general Public, and the acroatic, which were intended merely for the limited circle of those who were well versed in the phraseology and modes of thought of the School. To the former class belonged the “Dialogues”, of which the best known were the “Eudemus”, three books on “Philosophy”, four books “On Justice”, also the treatises (not in dialogue form) “On the Good”, and “On Ideas”, all of which are unfortunately lost. Under this head mention should be made also of the “Poems”, ” Letters”, “Orations”, “Apology”, etc., which were at one time ascribed to Aristotle, though there can be little doubt of their spuriousness. To the class of acroatic writings belong all the extant works and also the lost treatises, anatomai (containing anatomical charts) peri phytonand the politeiai (a collection of the different political constitutions of the Greek States; a portion, giving the Constitution of Athens was discovered in an Egyptian papyrus and published in 1891). The extant works may be arranged in the following classes, with the Latin titles by which they are generally cited:
Logical Treatises
These were known to the Byzantine writers as the “Organon”, including (1) “Categoriae”; (2) “De Interpretatione”; (3) “Analytica Priora”; (4) “Analytica Posteriora”; (5) “Topica”; (6) “De Sophisticis Elenchis”.
Metaphysical Treatises
The work commonly cited as “Metaphysica” or “Metaphysics” was (or, at least, a portion of it was) entitled by Aristotle “First Philosophy” (prote philosophia). The title meta ta physika was first given it by Andronicus of Rhodes in whose collection, or edition, of Aristotle’s works it was placed after the physical treatises.
Physical Treatises
(1) “Physica”, or “Physica Auscultatio”, commonly called Physics; (2) “De Cœlo”; (3) “Meteorologica”.
Biological and Zoological Treatises
(1) “Historiae Animalium”; (2) “De Generatione et Corruptione”; (3) “De Generatione Animalium”; (4) “De Partibus Animalium”.
Psychological and Anthropological Treatises
(1) “De Anima”; (2) “De Sensu et Sensibili”; (3) “De Memoria et Reminiscentia”, (4) “De Vita et Morte”; (5) “De Longitudine et Brevitate vitae”.
Ethical and Political Treatises
(1) “Ethica Nicomachea”; (2) “Politica”. The “Eudemian Ethics” and the “Magna moralia” are not of directly Aristotelean authorship.
Poetical and Rhetorical Treatises
(1) “De Poeticâ”; (2) “De Rhetoricâ”; both of these are genuine only in parts.
Of the extant works, some were written in their present form and were intended for finished scientific expositions. Others, though written by Aristotle, were intended merely for lecture notes, to be filled out in oral teaching. Others, finally, are nothing but the notes jotted down by his pupils, and were never retouched by the master. This consideration, it is obvious, leads the student of Aristotle to attach very different values to different parts of the text; no one, for example, would think of attaching to a citation from the First Book of the “Metaphysics” the same value as to a quotation from the Second Book. According to a well-known story, first told by Strabo and repeated by Plutarch and Suidas, Aristotle’s library, including the manuscripts of his own works, was willed by him to Theophrastus, his successor as head of the Peripatetic School. By Theophrastus it was bequeathed to his heir, Neleus of Scepsis. After Neleus’s death the manuscripts were hidden in a cellar or pit in order to avoid confiscation at the hands of royal book collectors, and there they remained for almost two centuries, until in Sulla’s time they were discovered and brought to Rome. At Rome they were copied by a grammarian named Tyrannion and edited (about 70 B.C.) by Andronicus of Rhodes. The substance of this story may be regarded as true; the inference, however, that during all that time there was no copy of Aristotle’s writings available, is not warranted by the facts. It is not implied in Strabo’s narrative, nor is it in itself probable. One or two books may have been lost to the School until Andronicus’s edition appeared; but the same cannot be true of the whole Corpus Aristotelicum. Andronicus’s edition remained in use in the Peripatetic School during the first few centuries of our era. For the various translations of the text into Syriac, Arabic, Latin, etc., see preceding.
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WILLIAM TURNER Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Aristotle
(), one of the greatest philosophers of ancient times, whose philosophical system has exercised for a long time a controlling influence on the development of Christian philosophy and on Christian literature in general. Aristotle was born in B.C. 384, at Stagira, in Macedonia, whence he received his surname, The Stagirite. He was first instructed by his father, Nicomachos, the private physician of King Augustus III of Macedonia; afterward by Proxenos in Atarneus. At the age of 17 years he went to Athens, where he enjoyed for 20 years the instruction of, and intercourse with, Plato. In B.C. 343 he was appointed by Philip of Macedonia teacher of his son Alexander. About 335 he returned to Athens, where he established a new school of philosophy in the Lyceum (, so called from an epithet of Apollo), a gymnasium near the city. There he instructed in the mornings a select circle of disciples (Acroatoe, Esoterics), while in the afternoons he gave popular lectures to all kinds of readers (Esoterics). After having taught for 13 years he was accused of impiety, and conpelled to leave Athens. He went to Chalcis, and died soon after (B.C. 322). At Stagira an annual festival, called the Aristotelea, was celebrated in his honor. According to a Jewish legend, he is paid to have turned Jew in consequence of a conversation held with a Jew at Athens. He is said to have composed about 800 works, lists of which are given by Diogenes Laertius and others. Many of his works are lost; while, on the other hand, several that bear his name are undoubtedly spurious. The oldest complete edition of his works was published by Aldus Manutius (Venice, 1495-98, 5 vols. fol.); the latest and best by Imman. Bekker (Berlin, 1831 sq. 4 vols.). Smith’s Dict. of Class. Biog. s.v.
The influence of the philosophic system of Aristotle on the intellectual development of the human race has been more extensive and more lasting than that of any other philosopher except Plato. This supremacy is to be ascribed (1) to his method, which not only restricted the range of human observation and thought, but, also fixed the laws of their operation, so far as the field of the outer world is concerned, on principles fundamental to the human mind; (2) to his logic, which grew out of his method and also complemented it; (3) to the practical character of his intellect, and the practical tendency of his speculations, even the: most subtle; and (4) to the comparative clearness and simplicity of his system, which arises partly from the really luminous clearness of his own intellect, and partly from the fact that the most profound problems of philosophy do not come within the range of his method when confined to its legitimate application. His method is the so-called empirical one, viz., to begin with the observation of phenomena, and to reason upon them. Art commences when, from a great number of experiences, one general conception is formed, which will embrace all similar cases; experience is the knowledge of individual things; art is that of universals’ (Metaphys. 1, 1).
What Aristotle here calls art’ is plainly what we now call induction;’ and had he adhered throughout to the method here indicated, he would have been, in reality, what Bacon is called, the father of the inductive philosophy. The distinction between Aristotle and Plato is, that while both held that science could only be formed from universals, , Aristotle contended that such universals had purely a subjective existence, i.e. that they were nothing more than the inductions derived from particular facts. He therefore made experience the basis of all science, and reason the architect. Plato made reason the basis. The tendency of the one was to direct man to the observation and interrogation of nature, that of the other was to direct man to the contemplation of ideas (Lewes, Hist. of Philosophy, 2, 114). In passing from Plato to Aristotle, the thoughtful student observes that he comes into a different if not a lower atmosphere. The end of all Plato’s teaching is to show, in opposition to the Sophists, that the mind of man is not its own standard; the tendency of Aristotle’s teaching is to show that it is. It has been the fashion, since Hegel’s exposition of Aristotle, to deny that his doctrine is substantially realism, in the empirical sense, as opposed to Plato’s idealism. To illustrate: Both Plato and Aristotle could say that dialectics is that science which discovers the difference between the false and the true. But the false in Plato is the semblance which any object presents to the sensualized mind; the true the very substance and meaning of that object.
The false in Aristotle is a wrong affirmation concerning any matter whereof the mind takes cognizance; the true a right affirmation concerning the same matter. Hence the dialectic of the one treats of the way whereby we obtain to a clear and vital perception of things; the dialectic of the other treats of the way in which we discourse of things. Words to the one are the means whereby we descend to an apprehension of realities of which there are no sensible exponents. Words to the other are the formulas wherein we set forth our notions and judgments. The one desires to ascertain of what hidden meaning the word is an index; the other desires to prevent the word from transgressing certain boundaries which he has fixed for it. Hence it happened that the sense and leading maxim of Plato’s philosophy became not only more distasteful, but positively more unintelligible to his wisest disciple than to many who had not studied in the Academy, or who had set themselves in direct opposition to it. When Aristotle had matured his system of dialectics, there was something in it so perfect and satisfactory that he could not even dream of any thing lying outside of its circle, and incapable of being brought under its rules. He felt that he had discovered all the forms under which it is possible to set down any proposition in words; and what there could be besides this, what opening there could be for another region entirely out of the government of these forms, he had no conception. At any rate, if there were such a one, it must be a vague, uninhabited world. To suppose it peopled with other, and those more real and distinct forms, was the extravagance of philosophical delirium. Accordingly, when he speaks of the doctrine of substantial ideas of ideas, that is to say, which are the grounds of all our forms of thought, and consequently cannot be subject to them, he is reduced to the strange, and, for so consummate a logician, most disagreeable necessity of begging the whole question; of arguing that, since these ideas ought to be included under some of the ascertained conditions of logic, and by the hypothesis are not included under any, they must be fictitious (Maurice, Moral and Metaph. Philosophy, ch. 6, div. 3, 2).
In order to classify facts, and to arrive at the universal from the particular, we must reason; and the theory of reasoning is logic, which, according to Aristotle, is the organon or instrument of all science, quoad formam. In this field the pre-eminence of Aristotle is indisputable; he may, indeed, be said to have invented logic as the formal part of reasoning, and it remains to this day substantially what he made it. Grote observes that what was begun by Socrates, and improved by Plato, was embodied as a part of a comprehensive system of formal logic by the genius of Aristotle; a system which was not only of extraordinary value in reference to the processes and controversies of its time, but which also, having become insensibly worked into the minds of instructed men, has contributed much to form what is correct in the habits of modern thinking. Though it has now been enlarged and recast by some modern authors (especially by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his admirable System of Logic) into a structure commensurate with the vast increase of knowledge and extension of positive method belonging to the present day, we must recollect that the distance between the best modern logic and that of Aristotle is hardly so great as that between Aristotle and those who preceded him by a century Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Pythagoreans; and that the movement in advance of these latter commences with Socrates (History of Greece, pt. 2, ch. 48).
In Psychology Aristotle anticipated a great deal of what is called mental philosophy at present. The soul, he says, is an entity; not the product of matter or of organization, but distinct from the body, though not separable from it as to its form (De Anima, 2, 1). In this principle he agrees with Plato, and it saves his doctrine from becoming wholly materialistic, a tendency natural to the empirical method. The faculties () of the soul are production and nutrition (De Anim. 2, 2, 4; De Gener. Anim. 2, 3), sensation (Ibid. 2, 5, 6, 12; 3, 12), thought ( ), and will or impulse. His remarks are particularly interesting on the manifestations of the cognitive powers (De Anim. 2, 6; 3, 12 sq.; De Sensu et Sensibili), i.e. on the senses; on common sense ( ); the first attempt toward a clearer indication of consciousness (Ibid. 3, 1 sq.), on imagination, reminiscence, and memory (Ibid. 3, 3, et De Memoria). The act of intuition and perception is a reception of the forms of objects; and thought is a reception of the forms presupposed by feeling and imagination (Ibid. 3, 4). Hence a passive (, intellectus patiens) and an active understanding ( . intellectus agens). The first implies receptivity for those forms, therefore it has the closest relation with the faculty of feeling, and hence with the body; to the latter, which elaborates those forms into judging () and inferring (), and which moreover itself thinks, appertains indestructibility (immortality without consciousness or memory) (De Anim. 2, 1-6; 3, 2 sq. 5). Thought itself is a power separate from the body, coming from without into man (De Gener. Anim. 2, 3), similar to the element of the stars (Cic. Acad. Quaest. 1, 7). Further, the understanding is theoretical or practical; it is the latter, inasmuch as it proposes ends and aims. The will () is an impulse directed toward matters of practice that is to say, toward good; which is real or apparent, according as it procures a durable or a transient enjoyment (De An. 3, 9-11; Eth. 3, 6): is subdivided into and the will, properly so called, and desire. Pleasure is the result of the perfect exertion of a power an exertion by which the power again is perfected. The noblest pleasures spring from reason (Ethic. 10, 4, 5, 8). Tennemann, 145.
From Psychology we proceed to Metaphysics, or the first philosophy, as Aristotle called it, i.e. the attempt to solve the problem of being. Had Aristotle adhered strictly to his own empirical method, he would have confined himself to the relative, and not sought the absolute at all. His prima philosophia deals with the unchangeable, while physical science deals with change or movement. Matter, he said, exists in a threefold form. It is,
I. Substance, perceptible by the senses, which is finite and perishable. This substance is either the abstract substance, or the substance connected with form (v).
II. The higher substance, which, though perceived by the senses, is imperishable, such as are the heavenly bodies. Here the active principle () steps in, which, in so far as it contains that which is to be produced, is understanding (). That which it contains is the purpose ( ), which purpose is realized in the act. Here we have the two extremes of potentiality and agency, matter and thought. The often- mentioned entelechic is the relation between these two extremes. It is the point of transition between and , and is accordingly the cause of motion, or efficient cause, and represents the soul.
III. The third form of substance is that in which the three forms of power, efficient cause and effect, are united the absolute substance, eternal unmoved, God himself (Lewes, Hist. of Philosophy, 2, 126). As to the relative place of the idea of God in the systems of Plato and of Aristotle, Maurice well remarks that it cannot be denied that the recognition of an absolute being, of an absolute good, was that which gave life to the whole doctrine of Plato, and without which it is unmeaning; that, on the contrary, it is merely the crowning result, or, at least, the necessary postulate of Aristotle’s philosophy. In strict consistency with this difference, it was a being to satisfy the wants of man which Plato sighed for; it was a first cause of things to which Aristotle did homage. The first would part with no indication or symbol of the truth that God has held intercourse with men, has made himself known to them; the second was content with seeking in nature and logic for demonstrations of his attributes and his unity. When we use personal language to describe the God of whom Plato speaks, we feel that we are using that which suits best with his feelings and his principles even when, through reverence or ignorance, he forbears to use it himself. When we use personal language to describe the deity of Aristotle, we feel that it is improper and unsuitable, even if, through deference to ordinary notions, or the difficulty of inventing any other, he resorts to it himself (Maurice, Moral and Metaph. Philosophy, ch. 6, div. 3, 5).
Practical philosophy, according to Aristotle, includes ethics, the laws of the individual moral life; oeconomics, those of the family; and politics, those of man in the state. His inquiry starts from the conception of a sovereign good and final end. The final end () is happiness (, ), which is the result of the energies of the soul ( ) in a perfect life (Eth. Nic. 1, 1-7; 10:5, 6); to it appertains true dignity, as being the highest thing. This perfect exercise of reason is virtue, and virtue is the perfection of speculative and practical reason; hence the: subdivision of intellectual virtue ( ) and moral (, Eth. Nic. 1, 13; 2:1). The first belongs, in its entire plenitude, to God alone, and confers the hibhest felicity, or absolute beatitude; the second, which he also styles the human, is the constant perfecting of the reasonable will (, habitus), the effect of a deliberate resolve, and consequently of liberty (), of which Aristotle was the first to display its psychological character, and of which the subjective form consists in always taking the mean between two extremes ( , ). Aristotle may be said to have been the first to analyze , or deliberate free choice (Eth. Nic. 2, 6).
Ethical virtue presents itself under six principal characters, having reference to the different objects of desire and avoidance (the cardinal virtues), namely, courage (), temperance (), generosity (), delicacy (), magnanimity and a proper love of glory (Eth. Nic. 5, 1, 6 sq.), (), gentleness and moderation. To these are added the accessory virtues, such as politeness of manners (), amiability, the faculty of loving and being beloved (), and, lastly, justice (), which comprises and completes all the others, and on that account is called perfect virtue (). Under the head of justice Aristotle comprehends right also. Justice he regards as the special virtue (applied to the notion of equality, ) of giving every man his due; and its operation may be explained by applying to it the arithmetical and geometrical proportions conformably to the two species, the distributive and corrective, into which he subdivided the virtue. To these must be added equity, which has for its end the rectification of the defects of law. Under the head of right () he distinguishes that appertaining to a family () from that of a city (), dividing the latter into the natural () and the positive (). A perfect unity of plan prevails throughout his ethics, his politics, and his economics. Both the latter have for their end to show how the object of man’s existence defined in the ethics, viz. virtue combined with happiness, may be attained in the civil and domestic relations through a good constitution of the state and household.
The state () is a complete association of a certain number of smaller societies sufficient to satisfy in common all the wants of life (Pol. 1, 2). Mental power alone should preponderate. The science of politics is the investigation of means tending to the final end proposed by the state. Its principle is expediency, and its perfection the suitableness of means to the end. By this principle Aristotle would prove the lawfulness of slavery. (W. T. Krug, De Aristotele Servitutis Defensore (Lips. 1813, 4to); C. G. Gottling, Commentatio di Notione Servitutis apud Aristotelem (Jen. 1821, 4to); Wallon, Hist. de Esclavuge d ans P Antiquite (Paris, 1847, 3 vols. 8vo); Tenneman in, Manual Hist. Phil. ( 147, 148). Professor Shedd (History of Doctrines, bk. 1, ch. 1) adopt, perhaps too closely, Ritter’s reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, going so far as to say that Platonism and Aristotelianism differ only in form, not in substance. While we cannot agree to this broad statement, there is yet, as to the points named, reason for what he says, viz. that, in reference to the principal questions of philosophy, both are found upon the same side of the line that divides all philosophies into the material, the spiritual, the pantheistic, and the theistic. There is a substantial agreement between Plato and his pupil Aristotle respecting the rationality and immortality of the mind as mind in distinction from matter, respecting the nature and origin of ideas, respecting the relative position and importance of the senses, and of knowledge by the senses. But these are subjects which immediately reveal the general spirit of a philosophic system. Let any one read the ethical treatises of Plato and Aristotle, and he will see that both held the same general idea of the Deity as a moral governor, of moral law, and of the immutable reality of right and wrong. But the fundamental difference of the two systems still remains, viz. that Plato regards the ideas or eternal archetypes of things as forming the true substance of the latter, and as having their existence in themselves, independent of the material things, their soulless shadows; while Aristotle was of opinion that the individual thing contained the true substance, which forms whatever is permanent in the flux of outward appearances.
For a long time the Aristotelian philosophy remained in Greece a rival of the Platonic, but at last the latter gained the ascendency. In Rome Aristotle found but few adherents. The fathers of the ancient Church were, on the whole, not favorable to Aristotelianism, but it was cultivated with great zeal by several sects, especially those which were inclined toward a kind of rationalism. (Comp. Lecky, History of Rationalism 1, 417.) Thus the Artemonites were reproached with occupying themselves more with the study of Aristotle than with that of the Scriptures. The Anomceans of the school of Eunomius were called by the fathers young Aristotelians (see, on the opinions of the Greek fathers respecting this point, Launoy, De varia Aristotelis in Acad. Par. fortuna, in his Opera omnia, 4:175 sq. Colossians 1732; Kuhn, Katholische Dogmatikc, 2, 369). Nevertheless, the influence of Aristotle commenced to spread in Christian philosophy during the 4th and 5th centuries, especially in the West. Previously the Neo- Platonic philosophy, which tried to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, had given a new impulse to the study of Aristotle, and called forth a number of commentaries, of which that of Porphyry is the most celebrated. Among the Christian Aristotelians of those times was Nemesius, bishop of Emesa, A.D. 400, whose work on the Nature of the Soul is based on the Aristotelian anthropology, and remained long in use and influence in Christian philosophy. Eneus of Gaza, toward the end of the 5th century, and Zacharius Scholasticus (first half of 6th century), opposed Aristotle, especially with regard to the world, and approached nearer the doctrine of Plato. Of greater significance was Johannes Philoponus, who called himself
Grammaticus, and is supposed by modern writers to have lived in the first half of the 6th century. He combated the Platonic philosophy, and followed Aristotle so closely as even to deviate from the commonly received doctrines of Christianity. Thus, applying the Aristotelian doctrine that individual things are substances, he changed the doctrine of the Trinity into a kind of Tritheism. John Damascenus, the chief theologian of the Greek Church, knew and used the dialectics of Aristotle, but made no attempt to thoroughly blend it with the doctrines of Christianity. A new era in the history of the Aristotelian philosophy within the Christian Church begins after the Christianization of the Germanic tribes, for the treatment of which SEE SCHOLASTICISM.
A very full account of Aristotle’s writings and of his system (from the Hegelian point of view), by Prof. Stahr, is given in Smith, Dict. of Gr. and Roman Biog. etc., vol. 1. For an excellent sketch of the Life of Aristotle, by Prof. Park, see Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. 1. The literature of the subject is copiously given in Stahr’s article above referred to. See also Maurice, Moral and Metoph. Philosophy, ch. 6, div. 3; Haureau, Philosophie Scholastique, vol. 1; Gioberti, Introd. a Il’etude de la Philosophie, 1, 98; Kitter, History of Philosophy, vol. 3; North Brit. Rev. Nov. 1858; Ama. Bibl. Repos. July, 1842; Meth. Quart. Rev. July, 1853, p. 342 sq.; Biese, Philos. des Aristoteles (Berlin, 1835, 2 vols. 8vo); St. Hilaire, Logique d’Aristote (Par. 1838, 2 vols. 8vo); Ravaisson, La Metaphysique d’Aristote (Paris,. 1840, 2 vols. 8vo); Vacherot, Thorie des prem. principes selon Aristote (Par. 1836, 8vo); Simon, Du Dieu d’Aristote (Par. 1840, 8vo).; Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen-Lexikon, 1:412. For references as to the influence of Aristotle on Christian theology, SEE SCHOLASTICISM.