Aristotle, Chapter 5

Aristotle

What was Aristotle’s personal life like?

• Born in Macedonia to King Nichomachus, at 17/18 enters Plato’s Academy at Athens for 20 years

• 347 B.C. around Plato’s death Aristotle leaves for Asia Minor to study philosophy and marine biology and marries Pythias, with whom he has a daughter

• Returns to Athens in 335 B.C. after 12 years to found the Lyceum school of philosophy and science

• Flees Athens for Euboea in 323 B.C. due to suspicious about his ties to Macedonia

• Dies in exile on Euboea at 62

How does Aristotle view knowledge and reality?

He believes that we can grasp objective truths about reality → says knowledge is possible and begins with sense experience, contrary to Plato

How does Aristotle create deductive systems?

He invents logic to systematise knowledge acquisition and proposes the syllogism, a logical argument structure with variables standing in for terms and where the intuitive axioms provide reason for a conclusion

How does Aristotle define scientific knowledge?

He sees it not as knowing something to be true, but knowing why something is true and believes logic and his syllogism are the best ways to evaluate whether a proposed explanation for a phenomenon is correct

What was the central metaphysical question examined by Aristotle?

What basic thing do all other things depend on for their existence? → Aristotle believes it is a substance

What metaphysical theories does Aristotle reject?

• Notion that we can’t know the fundamental underlayment of reality

• Featureless prime matter → argues that a nebulous nothing cannot be a substance

How does Aristotle conceive of substance?

Substance is the composite of form and matter, where form is the essential element that makes matter more than amorphous stuff, form is the essence of a thing

What are Aristotle’s believes about change in metaphysics?

Change is commonplace, but with a persisting thing either whose properties change or from which a new thing arises

What are the causes established by Aristotle?

• Material → a thing’s material composition

• Formal → a thing’s properties that make it what it is

• Efficient → main source or initiator of change

• Final → what a thing is for or for what purpose it exists

What is teleology?

The existence of a purpose or end inherent in persons or things

What is the final cause for living things according to Aristotle?

There is a teleological cause for living things in which they are directed to a natural aim, not intentionally, but internally, moving towards the goal to which nature strives

What does Aristotle think makes up a good live?

A good life is one that follows reason, leading to happiness, and is one that possesses moral and intellectual virtues in full

What is a virtue?

A disposition to behave in line with a standard of excellence, and according to Aristotle is the midpoint, the ‘golden mean’, between extremes of excess and deficit, the vices

What is an example of a virtue and its corresponding vices?

Courage is the golden mean between the vices of cowardice and rashness