Introduction. Reasons of choosing this theme.
Actuality of the theme of this SSW due to increasing interest, which causes the person and researches of Aristotle.
Aristotle was a student of Plato’s at the Academy in Athens, who then became a tutor to Alexander the Great, before returning to Athens to set up his own philosophy school, called the Lyceum. Aristotle had an incredibly broad and curious mind, and wrote definitive works on physics, biology, ethics and psychology, politics, rhetoric and literary criticism – and those are just the works that survive. He was the greatest biologist of the ancient world (perhaps the greatest of all time). He would get the army of Alexander to send him back any interesting animal and plant specimens they encountered on their campaigns for him to dissect. What you find in his philosophy is a theory of everything: he builds his ethical and political philosophies on the foundation of a biological and psychological understanding of human nature and a physical and spiritual theory of the cosmos.
According to Aristotle, each species has its particular nature, and the good life for that species is one that fulfills its nature. So he begins his ethical inquiry, in the Nichomachean Ethics, by asking what is the nature of man. He decides man has both a rational and an irrational system in his psyche, and that human nature also has a natural drive for human society (‘man is a political animal’), for knowledge, for happiness, and for God. The good life is a life that fulfils these natural drives, and directs them to their highest end. That’s what philosophy does: it uses our rational mind to guide the natural desires of our psyche to their highest fulfillment, which Aristotle calls eudaimonia, or flourishing. Philosophy, then, is the bridge between human nature in its raw and undeveloped form to human nature at its highest.
Philosophy helps us to develop virtues, by which Aristotle means the right way to act in different situations. He didn’t think, as Plato did, that the virtues exist in some eternal and unchanging form in the divine realm. Rather, he thinks virtues exist in a ‘golden mean’ between excesses. So the virtue of courage, for example, exists in the golden mean between recklessness and timidity. The virtue of good humour exists in the golden mean between excessive solemnity and excessive buffoonery. Working out what the appropriate virtue is in different situations takes some theory, but it mainly takes a lot of practice, until your ethical philosophy has become habituated, and you naturally do the right thing at the right time. Aristotle compares this process to learning a musical instrument: initially it’s a lot of hard work to learn the scales and practice the finger-work, but eventually it becomes second nature. He suggests that, just as we can become musical virtuosos through practice, so too we can become virtuosos in living, through philosophy. Aristotle certainly believed that the practice of the virtues is a very important part of the good life. But he differs from the Stoics and Socrates, who thought that virtue was entirely sufficient for the good and happy life (the Stoics even claimed that the wise man could be happy while being tortured, as long as he was virtuous). Aristotle thought you needed virtue for a good life, but you also needed a bit of luck. The good life consists not just in inner virtue, but also in certain external conditions, like good health, a loving family, a fulfilling career and a free society. If one is suddenly deprived of those things, it might become impossible to follow a good and happy life. His vision of the good life is more dependent on chance and fortune than the Stoics, who try to make themselves invulnerable to changes in fortune. His vision of the good life is much more social and political than the vision of other ancient philosophers. Really, we should read his Ethics and his Politics as one continuous work, as the good life for the individual finds its fulfilment in political engagement. In both works, he argues that the good society will be one in which the citizens are enabled to achieve eudaimonia, or flourishing. Aristotle explored many different constitutional models, and their advantages and disadvantages for this over-arching goal of spiritual flourishing, and he decided the best constitution is democracy. In a democratic society, citizens are free to join together, to reason together, and to fulfill their rational, social and political natures.
There are moments of idealism in Aristotle, when he imagines a society joined together in friendship and in a sense of the common good. In such a society, the whole citizenship would be educated in philosophy, and joined together in philosophical practice and discussion. In some ways it’s an inspiring vision, although it’s also very interventionist: the state educates us all in a vision of the good life, then we all join together in this vision. But what if you disagree with the state’s vision of the good life? What if you don’t want your government to educate your children in their official definition of spiritual fulfilment? You can see how an Aristotelian society could be quite illiberal – and we shouldn’t forget that he thought only well-off Greek men should be considered citizens.
Philosophy of Aristotle.
Aristotle was a pupil of Plato and was first reverent to him then very critical, about Plato’s theory of ideas for example. His own work lies mainly in
Physics,
Metaphysics,
Ethics,
Rhetoric,
Poetics.
Researcher and professor at the time, Aristotle has systematized all knowledge of his time. It’s his brilliant mind that has shaped the logical frameworks, theoretical, political knowledge and that we are still appropriate today. It remains primarily the creator of logic.
Logic
Aristotle has written very fully in the area that has come to be identified as logic. His expressed purpose here is to define a method for the isolation and criticism of substance insofar as such isolation and criticism are pertinent to his scientific investigations. Logic is not properly a science in and by itself but an epistemological procedure whereby reality may be described accurately in language. It is an introduction to the pursuit of science. Perhaps the most basic isolation of being is provided in Aristotle's 10 categories. While Aristotle does not insist on analyzing matter in each of these categories, it will be observed that these 10 qualifications serve amply to identify the full nature of an object or being. Taking Socrates as the subject of his definition in the categories, Aristotle would make the complete analysis as follows: (1) substance (man), (2) quantity (five feet tall), (3) quality (white), (4) relation (married), (5) place (in the Athenian Agora), (6) date (400 B.C. ), (7) position (sitting), (8) state (is sober), (9) action (drinking hemlock), (10) passivity (is convicted). The relation of language as thought to material reality and being is conveyed further by the Aristotelian examination of the proposition. In the proposition, Aristotle analyzes the expression of judgment, notably the association between noun and verb. Thus he cites the distinction of meaning in the proposition: "man is" versus "man is not" versus "not-man is" versus "not-man is not." With the addition of a predicate adjective, such as "good," to the original proposition "man is," the variety of identification and analysis is increased. In his treatment of inference Aristotle advances the syllogism. This he defines as an argument that produces a conclusion different from the assumptions employed in reaching that conclusion (for example, A is true of B; B is true of C; therefore, A is true of C). Aristotle was aware, however, of certain weaknesses in the combination of terms a syllogism employs, and subsequent logicians have supplemented his version. One difficulty that he recognized is the question of probability regarding the assumption used in developing the syllogism. There are certain basic principles that must be accepted as postulates, and from these is deduced the proof. Whereas the syllogism proceeds from the universal to the particular, Aristotle proposes induction as the method to reach the universal from the particular. Finally, as it were to introduce his works on essence and being and to clarify his manner of approach, Aristotle effects the relationship of logic and science through a consideration of those premises that are not analyzed by means of demonstrative proof. It may be asked how man knows them and what validity they possess that makes them knowledgeable. Perception and experience are described as potentials that are actualized within the life of man; these enable him to move into the realm of universals, into the area where intuitive reason illuminates all universals.