Aristotle Practice Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering the life, metaphysics, logic, and ethics of Aristotle based on the provided lecture transcript.

Aristotle

A student of Plato and natural scientist who invented formal logic and numerous academic disciplines, often characterized first and foremost as a biologist interested in understanding organisms.

Parmenides

An early Greek metaphysician who argued that things either exist or do not exist and denied the possibility of change, claiming everything has permanent eternal existence.

Potentiality

A defining characteristic of an object that describes what it can become, such as an acorn having the potential to become an oak tree.

Actuality

The state of a thing fulfilling its potential, such as when an acorn has successfully become an oak tree.

Democritus

An early atomist who presented reductive materialism, the theory that everything in the universe can be reduced to matter in motion.

Atom

A term meaning "indivisible," used by philosophers like Democritus to describe the most indivisible small unit of matter.

Hylomorphism

A metaphysical concept combining "hylo" (matter) and "morphe" (form) to describe an object as a mixture of both.

Efficient Cause

One of the four explanations for a thing, identifying the agent or process that made the object come about.

Material Cause

One of the four explanations for a thing, describing what the object is physically made out of.

Formal Cause

One of the four explanations for a thing, referring to the structure, shape, and organization of its matter.

Final Cause (Telos)

One of the four explanations for a thing, defining its purpose, goal, function, or what it is for.

Unmoved Mover

Aristotle's conception of God as an eternally existing first cause that serves as the ultimate origin of movement and activity to avoid an infinite regress.

Psyche (Soul)

The animating power or set of capacities that makes something alive; it is the form of a living thing rather than a separate immortal component.

Logos

A Greek term meaning "word," "reason," or "explanation," used to describe the unique human capacity to explain and reflect upon the world.

Formal Logic

A discipline invented by Aristotle to determine when a conclusion follows deductively from premises by abstracting the structure of an argument (e.g., all $A$'s are $B$, all $B$'s are $C$, therefore all $A$'s are $C$).

Eudaimonia

A term translated as "happiness," "flourishing," or "a good life," referring to the objective state of actualizing one's potential as a rational being.

Moral Virtues

Character traits like courage and moderation developed to manage animal desires and appetites through the use of reason.

Intellectual Virtues

Virtues associated with the rational pursuit of understanding the universe, including biology, philosophy, and metaphysics.

Golden Mean

The ethical principle that a virtue exists as a sensible middle ground between two extremes of vice, such as courage sitting between cowardice and recklessness.

Friendships of Utility

Transactional relationships based on give-and-take and mutual benefit rather than deep care or concern.