Aristotle's Key Concepts

Aristotle [384 - 322 BC]

Epistemology: Theory of Knowledge

• Three types of knowledge:
  • Productive: Creating an object (e.g., building, cooking). Discussed in The Rhetoric and The Poetics.
  • Practical: Acting well in private and social life (e.g., courage, justice). Discussed in The Ethics and The Politics.
  • Theoretical: Related to truth, including sciences.
    • Subcategories: Mathematical objects, Natural Sciences objects, Metaphysical objects (study of Being qua Being).
• Levels of Knowledge:
  • Knowledge from senses (e.g., fire is hot) is not wisdom.
  • Wisdom involves understanding the causes of experiences, similar to scientists going beyond sense experience.
• Each science focuses on discovering causes/reasons/principles.
• The science knowing the end goal is the most authoritative.

Substance as the Primary Essence of Things

• Knowing what a thing is is more important than its qualities.
• Essence (Ousia) of a thing is independent of particular qualities.
• A thing is more than the sum of its qualities, with a substratum beneath.

Matter and Form

• Form and matter must combine for knowledge.
• Form gives meaning derived through interaction with experience.
• "There is no form without matter and no matter without form".
• Aristotle acknowledges universals and their role in effective knowledge.
• Aristotle rejects Plato's Forms because they don't explain motion or sense impressions.

The Four Causes [The Process of Change]

• Change includes motion, growth, decay, generation, and corruption.
• Two kinds of change.
• Four questions to ask about anything.
• Nature inherently has ends or built-in ways of behaving.
• Change occurs in a combination of form and matter moving toward something new.

Potentiality & Actuality

• Matter has the potential to realize a specific form (actuality).
• Example: A newborn has the potential to become an adult.
• Entelechy is the self-contained end of anything.
• Change is the transition from potentiality to actuality.
• Actuality is prior to potentiality.
• A being of pure actuality exists at the highest level.

The Unmoved Mover

• Motion requires something actual prior to potential.
• The Unmoved Mover is pure actuality, like the form of an adult directing a child's development."