Aristotle Internet Encyclopedi 03 05 2023 07 08

Aristotle is a towering figure in
ancient Greek philosophy, who made

important contributions to logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology,
psychology, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. He was a
student of Plato for twenty years but is famous for rejecting Plato’s theory of
forms. He was more empirically minded than both Plato and Plato’s teacher,
Socrates.
A prolific writer, lecturer, and polymath, Aristotle radically transformed most
of the topics he investigated. In his lifetime, he wrote dialogues and as many
as 200 treatises, of which only 31 survive. These works are in the form of
lecture notes and draft manuscripts never intended for general readership.
Nevertheless, they are the earliest complete philosophical treatises we still
possess.
As the father of western logic, Aristotle was the first to develop a formal
system for reasoning. He observed that the deductive validity of any
argument can be determined by its structure rather than its content, for
example, in the syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore,
Socrates is mortal. Even if the content of the argument were changed from
being about Socrates to being about someone else, because of its structure,
as long as the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true.
Aristotelian logic dominated until the rise of modern propositional logic and
predicate logic 2000 years later.
The emphasis on good reasoning serves as the backdrop for Aristotle’s
other investigations. In his natural philosophy, Aristotle combines logic with
observation to make general, causal claims. For example, in his biology,
Aristotle uses the concept of species to make empirical claims about the
functions and behavior of individual animals. However, as revealed in his
psychological works, Aristotle is no reductive materialist. Instead, he thinks
of the body as the matter, and the psyche as the form of each living animal.
Though his natural scientific work is firmly based on observation, Aristotle
also recognizes the possibility of knowledge that is not empirical. In his
metaphysics, he claims that there must be a separate and unchanging being
that is the source of all other beings. In his ethics, he holds that it is only by
becoming excellent that one could achieve eudaimonia, a sort of happiness
or blessedness that constitutes the best kind of human life.
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Aristotle was the founder of the Lyceum, a school based in Athens, Greece;
and he was the first of the Peripatetics, his followers from the Lyceum.
Aristotle’s works, exerted tremendous influence on ancient and medieval
thought and continue to inspire philosophers to this day.
Table of Contents
 Life and Lost Works
 Analytics or “Logic”
 The Meaning and Purpose of Logic
 Demonstrative Syllogistic
 Induction, Experience, and Principles
 Rhetoric and Poetics
 Theoretical Philosophy
 Natural Philosophy
 Cosmology and Geology
 Biology
 Psychology
 Mathematics
 First Philosophy
 Practical Philosophy
 Habituation and Excellence
 Ethical Deliberation
 Self and Others
 The Household and the State
 Aristotle’s Influence
 Abbreviations
 Abbreviations of Aristotle’s Works
 Other Abbreviations
 References and Further Reading
 Aristotle’s Complete Works
 Secondary Sources
 Life and Early Works
 Logic
 Theoretical Philosophy
 Practical Philosophy
 Aristotle’s Influence
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1. Life and Lost Works
Though our main ancient source on Aristotle’s life, Diogenes Laertius, is of
questionable reliability, the outlines of his biography are credible. Diogenes
reports that Aristotle’s Greek father, Nicomachus, served as private
physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas (DL 5.1.1). At the age of
seventeen, Aristotle migrated to Athens where he joined the Academy,
studying under Plato for twenty years (DL 5.1.9). During this period Aristotle
acquired his encyclopedic knowledge of the philosophical tradition, which
he draws on extensively in his works.
Aristotle left Athens around the time Plato died, in 348 or 347 B.C.E. One
explanation is that as a resident alien, Aristotle was excluded from
leadership of the Academy in favor of Plato’s nephew, the Athenian citizen
Speusippus. Another possibility is that Aristotle was forced to flee as Philip
of Macedon’s expanding power led to the spread of anti-Macedonian
sentiment in Athens (Chroust 1967). Whatever the cause, Aristotle
subsequently moved to Atarneus, which was ruled by another former
student at the Academy, Hermias. During his three years there, Aristotle
married Pythias, the niece or adopted daughter of Hermias, and perhaps
engaged in negotiations or espionage on behalf of the Macedonians
(Chroust 1972). Whatever the case, the couple relocated to Macedonia,
where Aristotle was employed by Philip, serving as tutor to his son,
Alexander the Great (DL 5.1.3–4). Aristotle’s philosophical career was thus
directly entangled with the rise of a major power.
After some time in Macedonia, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he
founded his own school in rented buildings in the Lyceum. It was presumably
during this period that he authored most of his surviving texts, which have
the appearance of lecture transcripts edited so they could be read aloud in
Aristotle’s absence. Indeed, this must have been necessary, since after his
school had been in operation for thirteen years, he again departed from
Athens, possibly because a charge of impiety was brought against him (DL
5.1.5). He died at age 63 in Chalcis (DL 5.1.10).
Diogenes tells us that Aristotle was a thin man who dressed flashily, wearing
a fashionable hairstyle and a number of rings. If the will quoted by Diogenes
(5.1.11–16) is authentic, Aristotle must have possessed significant personal
wealth, since it promises a furnished house in Stagira, three female slaves,
and a talent of silver to his concubine, Herpyllis. Aristotle fathered a
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daughter with Pythias and, with Herpyllis, a son, Nicomachus (named after
his grandfather), who may have edited Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Unfortunately, since there are few extant sources on Aristotle’s life, one’s
judgment about the accuracy and completeness of these details depends
largely on how much one trusts Diogenes’ testimony.
Since commentaries on Aristotle’s work have been produced for around two
thousand years, it is not immediately obvious which sources are reliable
guides to his thought. Aristotle’s works have a condensed style and make
use of a peculiar vocabulary. Though he wrote an introduction to philosophy,
a critique of Plato’s theory of forms, and several philosophical dialogues,
these works survive only in fragments. The extant Corpus Aristotelicum
consists of Aristotle’s recorded lectures, which cover almost all the major
areas of philosophy. Before the invention of the printing press, handwritten
copies of these works circulated in the Near East, northern Africa, and
southern Europe for centuries. The surviving manuscripts were collected
and edited in August Immanuel Bekker’s authoritative 1831–1836 Berlin
edition of the Corpus (“Bekker” 1910). All references to Aristotle’s works in
this article follow the standard Bekker numbering.
The extant fragments of Aristotle’s lost works, which modern commentators
sometimes use as the basis for conjectures about his philosophical
development, are noteworthy. A fragment of his Protrepticus preserves a
striking analogy according to which the psyche or soul’s attachment to the
body is a form of punishment:
The ancients blessedly say that the psyche pays penalty and that our life is
for the atonement of great sins. And the yoking of the psyche to the body
seems very much like this. For they say that, as Etruscans torture captives
by chaining the dead face to face with the living, fitting each to each part, so
the psyche seems to be stretched throughout, and constrained to all the
sensitive members of the body. (Pistelli 1888, 47.24–48.1)
According to this allegedly inspired theory, the fetters that bind the psyche
to the body are similar to those by which the Etruscans torture their
prisoners. Just as the Etruscans chain prisoners face to face with a dead
body so that each part of the living body touches a part of the corpse, the
psyche is said to be aligned with the parts of one’s living body. On this view,
the psyche is embodied as a painful but corrective atonement for its
badness. (See Bos 2003 and Hutchinson and Johnson’s webpage).
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The incompatibility of this passage with Aristotle’s view that the psyche is
inseparable from the body (discussed below) has been explained in various
ways. Neo-Platonic commentators distinguish between Aristotle’s esoteric
and exoteric writings, that is, writings intended for circulation within his
school, and writings like the Protrepticus intended for a broader reading
public (Gerson 2005, 47–75). Some modern scholars have argued to the
contrary that the imprisonment of the psyche in the body indicates that
Aristotle was still a Platonist at the time he composed the Protrepticus,
which must have been written earlier than his mature works (Jaeger 1948,
100). Aristotle’s dialogue Eudemus, which contains arguments for the
immortality of the psyche, and his Politicus, which is about the ideal
statesman, seem to corroborate the view that Aristotle’s exoteric works hold
much that is Platonic in spirit (Chroust 1965; 1966). The latter contains the
seemingly Platonic assertion that “the good is the most exact of measures”
(Kroll 1902, 168: 927b4–5).
But not all agree. Owen (1968, 162–163) argues that Aristotle’s fundamental
logical distinction between individual and species depends on an antecedent
break with Plato. According to this view, Aristotle’s On Ideas (Fine 1993), a
collection of arguments against Platonic forms, shows that Aristotle rejected
Platonism early in his career, though he later became more sympathetic to
the master’s views. However, as Lachterman (1980) points out, such
historical theses depend on substantive hermeneutical assumptions about
how to read Aristotle and on theoretical assumptions about what constitutes
a philosophical system. This article focuses not on this historical debate but
on the theories propounded in Aristotle’s extant works.
2. Analytics or “Logic”
Aristotle is usually identified as the founder of logic in the West (although
autonomous logical traditions also developed in India and China), where his
“Organon,” consisting of his works the Categories, On Interpretation, Prior
Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Sophistical Refutations, and Topics, long
served as the traditional manuals of logic. Two other works—Rhetoric and
Poetics—are not about logic, but also concern how to communicate to an
audience. Curiously, Aristotle never used the words “logic” or “organon” to
refer to his own work but calls this discipline “analytics.” Though Aristotelian
logic is sometimes referred to as an “art” (Ross 1940, iii), it is clearly not an
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art in Aristotle’s sense, which would require it to be productive of some end
outside itself. Nevertheless, this article follows the convention of referring to
the content of Aristotle’s analytics as “logic.”
a. The Meaning and Purpose of Logic
What is logic for Aristotle? On Interpretation begins with a discussion of
meaning, according to which written words are symbols of spoken words,
while spoken words are symbols of thoughts (Int.16a3–8). This theory of
signification can be understood as a semantics that explains how different
alphabets can signify the same spoken language, while different languages
can signify the same thoughts. Moreover, this theory connects the meaning
of symbols to logical consequence, since commitment to some set of
utterances rationally requires commitment to the thoughts signified by those
utterances and to what is entailed by them. Hence, though Cook Wilson
(1926, 30–33) correctly notes that Aristotle nowhere defines logic, it may be
called the science of thinking, where the role of the science is not to
describe ordinary human reasoning but rather to demonstrate what one
ought to think given one’s other commitments. Though the elements of
Aristotelian logic are implicit in our conscious reasoning, Aristotelian
“analysis” makes explicit what was formerly implicit (Cook Wilson 1926, 49).
Aristotle shows how logic can demonstrate what one should think, given
one’s commitments, by developing the syntactical concepts of truth,
predication, and definition. In order for a written sentence, utterance, or
thought to be true or false, Aristotle says, it must include at least two terms:
a subject and a predicate. Thus, a simple thought or utterance such as
“horse” is neither true nor false but must be combined with another term,
say, “fast” in order to form a compound—“the horse is fast”—that describes
reality truly or falsely. The written sentence “the horse is fast” has meaning
insofar as it signifies the spoken sentence, which in turn has meaning in
virtue of its signifying the thought that the horse is fast (Int.16a10–18,
Cat.13b10–12, DA 430a26–b1). Aristotle holds that there are two kinds of
constituents of meaningful sentences: nouns and their derivatives, which are
conventional symbols without tense or aspect; and verbs, which have a
tense and aspect. Though all meaningful speech consists of combinations of
these constituents, Aristotle limits logic to the consideration of statements,
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which assert or deny the presence of something in the past, present, or
future (Int.17a20–24).
Aristotle analyzes statements as cases of predication, in which a predicate P
is attributed to a subject S as in a sentence of the form “S is P.” Since he
holds that every statement expresses something about being, statements of
this form are to be read as “S is (exists) as a P” (Bäck 2000, 11). In every true
predication, either the subject and predicate are of the same category, or
the subject term refers to a substance while the predicate term refers to one
of the other categories. The primary substances are individuals, while
secondary substances are species and genera composed of individuals
(Cat.2a11–18). This distinction between primary and secondary reflects a
dependence relation: if all the individuals of a species or genus were
annihilated, the species and genus could not, in the present tense, be truly
predicated of any subject.
Every individual is of a species and that species is predicated of the
individual. Every species is the member of a genus, which is predicated of
the species and of each individual of that species (Cat.2b13–22). For
example, if Callias is of the species “man,” and the species is a member of
the genus “animal,” then “man” is predicated of Callias, and “animal” is
predicated both of “man” and of Callias. The individual, Callias, inherits the
predicate “animal” in virtue of being of the species “man.” But inheritance
stops at the individual and does not apply to its proper parts. For example,
“man” is not truly predicated of Callias’ hand. A genus can be divided with
reference to the specific differences among its members; for example,
“biped” differentiates “man” from “horse.”
While no definition can be given of an individual or primary substance such
as Callias, when one gives the genus and all the specific differences
possessed by a kind of thing, one can define a thing’s species. A specific
difference is a predicate that falls under one of the categories. Thus,
Aristotelian categories can be seen as a taxonomical scheme, a way of
organizing predicates for discovery, or as a metaphysical doctrine about the
kinds of beings there are. But any reading must accommodate Aristotle’s
views that primary substances are never predicated of a subject (Cat.3a6),
that a predicate may fall under multiple categories (Cat.11a20–39), and that
some terms, such as “good,” are predicated in all the categories (NE
1096a23–29). Moreover, definitions are reached not by demonstration but by
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other kinds of inquiry, such as dialectic, the art by which one makes
divisions in a genus; and induction, which can reveal specific differences
from the observation of individual examples.
b. Demonstrative Syllogistic
Syllogistic reasoning builds on Aristotle’s theory of predication, showing
how to reason from premises to conclusions. A syllogism is a discourse in
which when taking some statements as premises a different statement can
be shown to follow as a conclusion (AnPr.24b18–22). The basic form of the
Aristotelian syllogism involves a major premise, a minor premise, and a
conclusion, so that it has the form
If A is predicated of all B,
And B is predicated of all C,
Then A is predicated of all C.
This is an assertion of formal logic, since by removing the values of the
variables A, B, and C, one treats the inference formally, such that the values
of the subject A and predicates B and C are not given as part of the
syllogistic form (Łukasiewicz, 10–14).
Though this form can be utilized in dialectic, in which the major term A is
related to C through the middle term B credibly rather than necessarily
(AnPo.81b10–23), Aristotle is mainly concerned with how to use syllogistic in
what he calls demonstrative reasoning, that is, in inference from certain
premises to a certain conclusion. A demonstrative syllogism is not
concerned with a mere opinion but proves a cause, that is, answers a “why”
question (AnPo.85b 23–26).
The validity of a syllogism can be tested through comparison of four basic
types of assertions: All S are P (A), No S are P (E), Some S are P (I), and
Some S are not P (O). The truth conditions of these assertions are
determined relationally: through contradiction, in which if one of the
assertions is true, the other must be false; contrariety, in which both
assertions cannot be true; and subalternation, in which the universal
assertion’s being true requires that the particular assertion must be true, as
well. These relationships are summed up in the traditional square of
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opposition used by medieval Aristotelian logicians. (see Groarke, Aristotle:
Logic).
Figure 1: The Traditional Square of Opposition illustrates the relations
between the fundamental judgment-forms in Aristotelian syllogistic: (A) All
S are P, (E) No S are P, (I) Some S are P, and (O) Some S are not P.
Syllogistic may be employed dialectically when the premises are accepted
on the authority of common opinion, from tradition, or from the wise. In any
dialectical syllogism, the premises can be generally accepted opinions rather
than necessary principles (Top.100a25–b21). At least some premises in
rhetorical proofs must be not necessary but only probable, happening only
for the most part.
When the premises are known, and conclusions are shown to follow from
those premises, one gains knowledge by demonstration. Demonstration is
necessary (AnPo.73a21–27) because the conclusion of a demonstrative
syllogism predicates something that is either necessarily true or necessarily
false of the subject of the premise. One has demonstrative knowledge when
one knows the premises and has derived a necessary conclusion from them,
since the cause given in the premises explains why the conclusion is so
(AnPo.75a12–17, 35–37). Consequently, valid demonstration depends on the
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known premises containing terms for the genus of which the species in the
conclusion is a member (AnPo.76a29–30).
One interesting problem that arises within Aristotle’s theory of
demonstration concerns the connection between temporality and necessity.
By the principle of excluded middle, necessarily, either there will be a sea-
battle tomorrow or there will not be a sea-battle tomorrow. But since the
sea-battle itself has yet neither come about nor failed to come about, it
seems that one must say, paradoxically, that one alternative is necessary
but that either alternative might come about (Int.19a22–34). The question of
how to account for unrealized possibilities and necessities is part of
Aristotle’s modal syllogistic, which is discussed at length in his Prior
Analytics. For a discussion, see Malink (2013).
c. Induction, Experience, and Principles
Whenever a speaker reasons from premises, an auditor can ask for their
demonstration. The speaker then needs to adduce additional premises for
that demonstration. But if this line of questioning went on interminably, no
demonstration could be made, since every premise would require a further
demonstration, ad infinitum. In order to stop an infinite regress of premises,
Aristotle postulates that for an inference to count as demonstrative, one
must know its indemonstrable premises (AnPo.73a16–20). Thus,
demonstrative science depends on the view that all teaching and learning
proceed from already present knowledge (AnPo.72b5–20). In other words,
the possibility of making a complete argument, whether inductive or
deductive, depends on the reasoner possessing the concept in question.
The acquisition of concepts must in some way be perceptual, since Aristotle
says that universals come to rest in the soul through experience, which
comes about from many memories of the same thing, which in turn comes
about by perception (AnPo.99b32–100a9). However, Aristotle holds that
some concepts are already manifested in one’s perceptual experience:
children initially call all men father and all women mother, only later
developing the capacity to apply the relevant concepts to particular
individuals (Phys.184b3–5). As Cook Wilson (1926, 45) puts it, perception is
in a way already of a universal. Upon learning to speak, the child already
possesses the concept “mother” but does not grasp the conditions of its
correct application. The role of perception, and hence of memory and
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experience, is then not to supply the child with universal concepts but to fix
the conditions under which they are correctly predicated of an individual or
species. Hence the ability to arrive at definitions, which serve as starting
points of a science, rests on the human being’s natural capacity to use
language and on the culturally specific social and political conditions in
which that capacity is manifested (Winslow 2013, 45–49).
While deduction proceeds by a form of syllogistic reasoning in which the
major and minor premise both predicate what is necessarily true of a
subject, inductive reasoning moves from particulars to universals, so it is
impossible to gain knowledge of universals except by induction
(AnPo.81a38–b9). This movement, from the observation of the same
occurrence, to an experience that emerges from many memories, to a
universal judgment, is a cognitive process by which human beings
understand reality (see AnPo.88a2–5, Met.980b28–981a1, EN 1098b2–4,
1142a12).
But what makes such an inference a good one? Aristotle seems to say an
inductive inference is sound when what is true in each case is also true of
the class under which the cases fall (AnPr.68b15–29). For example, it is
inferred from the observation that each kind of bileless animal (men, horses,
mules, and so on) is long-lived just when the following syllogism is sound:
(1) All men, horses, mules, and so on are long-lived; (2) All long-lived
animals are bileless; therefore (3) all men, horses, mules, and so on are
bileless (see Groarke sections 10 and 11). However, Aristotle does not think
that knowledge of universals is pieced together from knowledge of
particulars but rather he thinks that induction is what allows one to actualize
knowledge by grasping how the particular case falls under the universal
(AnPr.67a31–b5).
A true definition reveals the essential nature of something, what it is to be
that thing (AnPo.90b30–31). A sound demonstration shows what is
necessary of an observed subject (AnPo.90b38–91a5). It is essential,
however, that the observation on which a definition is based be inductively
true, that is, that it be based on causes rather than on chance. Regardless of
whether one is asking what something is in a definition or why something is
the way it is by giving its cause, it is only when the principles or starting
points of a science are given that demonstration becomes possible. Since
experience is what gives the principles of each science (AnPr.46a17–27),
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logic can only be employed at a later stage to demonstrate conclusions from
these starting points. This is why logic, though it is employed in all branches
of philosophy, is not a part of philosophy. Rather, in the Aristotelian
tradition, logic is an instrument for the philosopher, just as a hammer and
anvil are instruments for the blacksmith (Ierodiakonou 1998).
d. Rhetoric and Poetics
Just as dialectic searches for truth, Aristotelian rhetoric serves as its
counterpart (Rhet.1354a1), searching for the means by which truth can be
grasped through language. Thus, rhetorical demonstration, or enthymeme, is
a kind of syllogism that strictly speaking belongs to dialectic (Rhet.1355a8–
10). Because rhetoric uses the particularly human capacity of reason to
formulate verbal arguments, it is the art that can cause the most harm when
it is used wrongly. It is thus not a technique for persuasion at any cost, as
some Sophists have taught, but a fundamentally second-personal way of
using language that allows the auditor to reach a judgment (Grimaldi 1972,
3–5). More fundamentally, rhetoric is defined as the detection of persuasive
features of each subject matter (Rhet.1355b12–22).
Proofs given in speech depend on three things: the character (ethos) of the
speaker, the disposition (pathos) of the audience, and the meaning (logos)
of the sounds and gestures used (Rhet.1356a2–6). Rhetorical proofs show
that the speaker is worthy of credence, producing an emotional state
(pathos) in the audience, or demonstrating a consequence using the words
alone. Aristotle holds that ethos is the most important of these elements,
since trust in the speaker is required if one is to believe the speech.
However, the best speech balances ethos, pathos, and logos. In rhetoric,
enthymemes play a deductive role, while examples play an inductive role
(Rhet.1356b11–18).
The deductive form of rhetoric, enthymeme, is a dialectical syllogism in
which the probable premise is suppressed so that one reasons directly from
the necessary premise to the conclusion. For example, one may reason that
an animal has given birth because she has milk (Rhet.1357b14–16) without
providing the intermediate premise. Aristotle also calls this deductive form
of inference “reasoning by signs” or “reasoning from evidence,” since the
animal’s having milk is a sign of, or evidence for, her having given birth.
Though the audience seemingly “immediately” grasps the fact of birth
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without it being given in perception, the passage from the perception to the
fact is inferential and depends on the background assumption of the
suppressed premise.
The inductive form of rhetoric, reasoning from example, can be illustrated as
follows. Peisistratus in Athens and Theagenes in Megara both petitioned for
guards shortly before establishing themselves as tyrants. Thus, someone
plotting a tyranny requests a guard (Rhet.1357b30–37). This proof by
example does not have the force of necessity or universality and does not
count as a case of scientific induction, since it is possible someone could
petition for a guard without plotting a tyranny. But when it is necessary to
base some decision, for example, whether to grant a request for a
bodyguard, on its likely outcome, one must look to prior examples. It is the
work of the rhetorician to know these examples and to formulate them in
such a way as to suggest definite policies on the basis of that knowledge.
Rhetoric is divided into deliberative, forensic, and display rhetoric.
Deliberative rhetoric is concerned with the future, namely with what to do,
and the deliberative rhetorician is to discuss the advantages and harms
associated with a specific course of action. Forensic rhetoric, typical of the
courtroom, concerns the past, especially what was done and whether it was
just or unjust. Display rhetoric concerns the present and is about what is
noble or base, that is, what should be praised or denigrated (Rhet.1358b6–
16). In all these domains, the rhetorician practices a kind of reasoning that
draws on similarities and differences to produce a likely prediction that is of
value to the political community.
A common characteristic of insightful philosophers, rhetoricians, and poets
is the capacity to observe similarities in things that are unlike, as Archytas
did when he said that a judge and an alter are kindred, since someone who
has been wronged has recourse to both (Rhet.1412a10–14). This noticing of
similarities and differences is part of what separates those who are living
the good life from those who are merely living (Sens.437a2–3). Likewise, the
highest achievement of poetry is to use good metaphors, since to make
metaphors well is to contemplate what is like (Poet.1459a6–9). Poetry is thus
closely related to both philosophy and rhetoric, though it differs from them
in being fundamentally mimetic, imitating reality through an artistic form.
Imitation in poetry is achieved by means of rhythm, language, and harmony
(Poet.1447a13–16, 21–22). While other arts share some or all these elements
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—painting imitates visually by the same means, while dance imitates only
through rhythm—poetry is a kind of vocalized music, in which voice and
discursive meaning are combined. Aristotle is interested primarily in the
kinds of poetry that imitate human actions, which fall into the broad
categories of comedy and tragedy. Comedy is an imitation of worse types of
people and actions, which reflect our lower natures. These imitations are not
despicable or painful, but simply ridiculous or distorted, and observing them
gives us pleasure (Poet.1449a31–38). Aristotle wrote a book of his Poetics
on comedy, but the book did not survive. Hence, through a historical
accident, the traditions of aesthetics and criticism that proceed from
Aristotle are concerned almost completely with tragedy.
Tragedy imitates actions that are excellent and complete. As opposed to
comedy, which is episodic, tragedy should have a single plot that ends in a
presentation of pity and fear and thus a catharsis—a cleansing or purgation
—of the passions (Poet.1449b24–28). (As discussed below, the passions or
emotions also play an important role in Aristotle’s practical philosophy.) The
most important aspect of a tragedy is how it uses a story or myth to lead the
psyches of its audience to this catharsis (Poet.1450a32–34). Since the
beauty or fineness of a thing—say, of an animal—consists in the orderly
arrangement of parts of a definite magnitude (Poet.1450b35–38), the parts
of a tragedy should also be proportionate.
A tragedy’s ability to lead the psyche depends on its myth turning at a
moment of recognition at which the central character moves from a state of
ignorance to a state of knowledge. In the best case, this recognition
coincides with a reversal of intention, such as in Sophocles’ Oedipus, in
which Oedipus recognizes himself as the man who was prophesied to
murder his father and marry his mother. This moment produces pity and fear
in the audience, fulfilling the purpose of tragic imitation (Poet.1452a23–b1).
The pity and fear produced by imitative poetry are the source of a peculiar
form of pleasure (Poet.1453b11–14). Though the imitation itself is a kind of
technique or art, this pleasure is natural to human beings. Because of this
potential to produce emotions and lead the psyche, poetics borders both on
what is well natured and on madness (Poet.1455a30–34).
Why do people write plays, read stories, and watch movies? Aristotle thinks
that because a series of sounds with minute differences can be strung
together to form conventional symbols that name particular things, hearing
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has the accidental property of supporting meaningful speech, which is the
cause of learning (Sens.437a10–18). Consequently, though sound is not
intrinsically meaningful, voice can carry meaning when it “ensouled,”
transmitting an appearance about how absent things might be (DA 420b5-
10, 27–33). Poetry picks up on this natural capacity, artfully imitating reality
in language without requiring that things are actually the way they are
presented as being (Poet.1447a13–16).
The poet’s consequent power to lead the psyche through true or false
imitations, like the rhetorician’s power to lead it through persuasive speech,
leads to a parallel question: how should the poet use his power? Should the
poet imitate things as they are, or as they should be? Though it is clear that
the standard of correctness in poetry and politics is not the same
(Poet.1460b13–1461a1), the question of how and to what extent the state
should constrain poetic production remains unresolved.
3. Theoretical Philosophy
Aristotle’s classification of the sciences makes a distinction between
theoretical philosophy, which aims at contemplation, and practical
philosophy, which aims at action or production. Within theoretical
philosophy, first philosophy studies objects that are motionless and
separate from material things, mathematics studies objects that are
motionless but not separate, and natural philosophy studies objects that are
in motion and not separate (Met.1026a6–22).
This threefold distinction among the beings that can be contemplated
corresponds to the level of precision that can be attained by each branch of
theoretical philosophy. First philosophy can be perfectly exact because
there is no variation among its objects and thus it has the potential to give
one knowledge in the most profound sense. Mathematics is also absolutely
certain because its objects are unchanging, but since there are many
mathematical objects of a given kind (for example, one could draw a
potentially infinite number of different triangles), mathematical proofs
require a peculiar method that Aristotle calls “abstraction.” Natural
philosophy gives less exact knowledge because of the diversity and
variability of natural things and thus requires attention to particular,
empirical facts. Studies of nature—including treatises on special sciences
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like cosmology, biology, and psychology—account for a large part of
Aristotle’s surviving writings.
a. Natural Philosophy
Aristotle’s natural philosophy aims for theoretical knowledge about things
that are subject to change. Whereas all generated things, including artifacts
and products of chance, have a source that generates them, natural change
is caused by a thing’s inner principle and cause, which may accordingly be
called the thing’s “nature” (Phys.192b8–20). To grasp the nature of a thing is
to be able to explain why it was generated essentially: the nature of a thing
does not merely contribute to a change but is the primary determinant of the
change as such (Waterlow 1982, p.28).
Though some hold that Aristotle’s principles are epistemic, explanatory
concepts, principles are best understood ontologically as unique, continuous
natures that govern the generation and self-preservation of natural beings.
To understand a thing’s nature is primarily to grasp “how a being displays
itself by its nature.” Such a grasp counts as a correct explanation only
insofar as it constitutes a form of understanding of beings in themselves as
they give themselves (Winslow 2007, 3–7).
Aristotle’s description of principles as the start and end of change
(Phys.235b6) distinguishes between two kinds of natural change.
Substantial change occurs when a substance is generated (Phys.225a1–5),
for example, when the seed of a plant gives rise to another plant of the
same kind. Non-substantial change occurs when a substance’s accidental
qualities are affected, for example, the change of color in a ripening
pomegranate. Aristotelians describe this as the activity of contraries of
blackness and whiteness in the plant’s material in which the fruit of the
pomegranate, as its juices become colored by ripening, itself becomes
shaded, changing to a purple color (de Coloribus 796a20–26). Ripening
occurs when heat burns up the air in the part of the plant near the ground,
causing convection that alters the originally light color of the fruit to its dark
contrary (de Plantis 820b19–23). Both kinds of change are caused by the
plant’s containing in itself a principle of change. In substantial change, a
new primary substance is generated; in non-substantial change, some
property of preexisting substance changes to a contrary state.
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A process of change is completely described when its four causes are given.
This can be illustrated with Aristotle’s favorite example of the production of
a bronze sculpture. The (1) material cause of the change is given when the
underlying matter of the thing has been described, such as the bronze
matter of which a statue is composed. The (2) formal cause is given when
one says what kind of thing the thing is, for example, “sphere” for a bronze
sphere or “Callias” for a bronze statue of Callias. The (3) efficient cause is
given when one says what brought the change about, for example, when one
names the sculptor. The (4) final cause is given when one says the purpose
of the change, for example, when one says why the sculptor chose to make
the bronze sphere (Phys.194b16–195a2).
In natural change the principle of change is internal, so the formal, efficient,
and final causes typically coincide. Moreover, in such cases, the
metaphysical and epistemological sides of causal explanation are normally
unified: a formal cause counts both as a thing’s essence—what it is to be
that thing—and as its rational account or reason for being (Bianchi 2014, 35).
Thus, when speaking of natural changes rather than the making of an
artifact, Aristotle will usually offer “hylomorphic” descriptions of the natural
being as a compound of matter and form.
Because Aristotle holds that a thing’s underlying nature is analogous to the
bronze in a statue (Phys.191a7–12), some have argued that the underlying
thing refers to “prime matter,” that is, to an absolutely indeterminate matter
that has no form. But Cook (1989) has shown that the underlying thing
normally means matter that already has some form. Indeed, Aristotle claims
that the matter of perceptible things has no separate existence but is always
already informed by a contrary (Gen et Corr.329a25–27). The matter that
traditional natural philosophy calls the “elements”—fire, water, air, and earth
—already has the form of the basic contraries, hot and cold, and moist and
dry, so that, for example, fire is matter with a hot and dry form (Gen et
Corr.330a25–b4). Thus, even in the most basic cases, matter is always
actually informed, even though the form is potentially subject to change. For
example, throwing water on a fire cools and moistens it, and bringing about
a new quality in the underlying material. Thus, Aristotle sometimes
describes natural powers as being latent or active “in the material”
(Meteor.370b14–18).
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Aristotle’s general works in natural philosophy offer analyses of concepts
necessarily assumed in accounts of natural processes, including time,
change, and place. In general, Aristotle will describe changes that occur in
time as arising from a potential, which is actualized when the change is
complete. However, what is actual is logically prior to what is potential,
since a potentiality aims at its own actualization and thus must be defined in
terms of what is actual. Indeed, generically the actual is also temporally
prior to potentiality, since there must invariably be a preexisting actuality
that brings the potentiality to its own actualization (Met.1049b4–19). Perhaps
because of the priority of the actual to the potential, whenever Aristotle
speaks of natural change, he is concerned with a field of naturalistic inquiry
that is continuous rather than atomistic and purposeful or teleological rather
than mechanical. In his more specific naturalistic works, Aristotle lays out a
program of specialized studies about the heavens and Earth, living things,
and the psyche.
i. Cosmology and Geology
Aristotle’s cosmology depends on the basic observation that while bodies
on Earth either rise to a limit or fall to Earth, heavenly bodies keep moving,
without any apparent external force being exerted on them (DC 284a10–15).
On the basis of this observation, he distinguishes between circular motion,
which is operative in the “superlunary” heavens, and rectilinear motion on
“sublunary” Earth below the Moon. Since all sublunary bodies move in a
rectilinear pattern, the heavenly bodies must be composed of a different
body that naturally moves in a circle (DC 269a2–10, Meteor.340b6–15). This
body cannot have an opposite, because there is no opposite to circular
motion (DC 270a20, compare 269a19–22). Indeed, since there is nothing to
oppose its motion, Aristotle supposes that this fifth element, which he calls
“aether,” as well as the heavenly bodies composed of it, move eternally (DC
275b1–5, 21–25).
In Aristotle’s view the heavens are ungenerated, neither coming to be nor
passing away (DC 279b18–21, 282a24–30). Aristotle defines time as the
number of motion, since motion is necessarily measured by time
(Phys.224a24). Thus, the motion of the eternal bodies is what makes time,
so the life and being of sublunary things depends on them. Indeed, Aristotle
says that their own time is eternal or “aeon.”
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Noticing that water naturally forms spherical droplets and that it flows
towards the lowest point on a plane, Aristotle concludes that both the
heavens and the earth are spherical (DC 287b1–14). This is further confirmed
by observations of eclipses (DC 297b23–31) and that different stars are
visible at different latitudes (DC 297b14–298a22).
The gathering of such observations is an important part of Aristotle’s
scientific procedure (AnPr.46a17–22) and sets his theories above those of
the ancients that lacked such “experience” (Phys.191a24–27). Just as in his
biology, where Aristotle draws on animal anatomy observed at sacrifices
(HA 496b25) and records reports from India (HA 501a25), so in his
astronomy he cites Egyptian and Babylonian observations of the planets (DC
292a4–9). By gathering evidence from many sources, Aristotle is able to
conclude that the stars and the Moon are spherical (DC 291b11–20) and that
the Milky Way is an appearance produced by the sight of many stars moving
in the outermost sphere (Meteor.346a16–24).
Assuming the hypothesis that the Earth does not move (DC 289b6–7),
Aristotle argues that there are in the heavens both stars, which are large
and distant from earth, and planets, which are smaller and closer. The two
can be distinguished since stars appear to twinkle while planets do not
(Aristotle somewhat mysteriously attributes the twinkling stars to their
distance from the eye of the observer) (DC 290b14–24). Unlike earthly
creatures, which move because of their distinct organs or parts, both the
moving stars and the unmoving heaven that contains them are spherical (DC
289a30–b11). As opposed to superlunary (eternal) substances, sublunary
beings, like clouds and human beings, participate in the eternal through
coming to be and passing away. In doing so, the individual or primary
substance is not preserved, but rather the species or secondary substance
is preserved (as we shall see below, the same thought is utilized in
Aristotle’s explanation of biological reproduction) (Gen et Corr.338b6–20).
Aristotle holds that the Earth is composed of four spheres, each of which is
dominated by one of the four elements. The innermost and heaviest sphere
is predominantly earth, on which rests upper spheres of water, air, and fire.
The sun acts to burn up or vaporize the water, which rises to the upper
spheres when heated, but when cooled later condenses into rain
(Meteor.354b24–34). If unqualified necessity is restricted to the superlunary
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sphere, teleology—the seeking of ends that may or may not be brought
about—seems to be limited to the sublunary sphere.
Due to his belief that the Earth is eternal, being neither created nor
destroyed, Aristotle holds that the epochs move cyclically in patterns of
increase and decrease (Meteor.351b5–19). Aristotle’s cyclical understanding
of both natural and human history is implicit in his comment that while Egypt
used to be a fertile land, it has over the centuries grown arid
(Meteor.351b28–35). Indeed, parts of the world that are ocean periodically
become land, while those that are land are covered over by ocean
(Meteor.253a15–24). Because of periodic catastrophes, all human wisdom
that is now sought concerning both the arts and divine things was previously
possessed by forgotten ancestors. However, some of this wisdom is
preserved in myths, which pass on knowledge of the divine by allegorically
portraying the gods in human or animal form so that the masses can be
persuaded to follow laws (Met.1074a38-b14, compare Meteor.339b28–30,
Pol.1329b25).
Aristotle’s geology or earth science, given in the latter books of his
Meteorology, offers theories of the formation of oceans, of wind and rainfall,
and of other natural events such as earthquakes, lightning, and thunder. His
theory of the rainbow suggests that drops of water suspended in the air
form mirrors which reflect the multiply-colored visual ray that proceeds from
the eye without its proper magnitude (Meteor.373a32–373b34). Though the
explanations given by Aristotle of these phenomena contradict those of
modern physics, his careful observations often give interest to his account.
Aristotle’s material science offers the first description of what are now
called non-Newtonian fluids—honey and must—which he characterizes as
liquids in which earth and heat predominate (Meteor.385b1–5). Although the
Ancient Greeks did not distill alcohol, he reports on the accidental
distillation of some ethanol from wine (“sweet wine”), which he observes is
more combustible than ordinary wine (Meteor.387b10–14). Finally, Aristotle’s
material science makes an informative distinction between compounds, in
which the constituents maintain their identity, and mixtures, in which one
constituent comes to dominate or in which a new kind of material is
generated (see Sharvy 1983 for discussion). Though it would be inaccurate
to describe him as a methodological empiricist, Aristotle’s collection and
careful recording of observations shows that in all of his scientific
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endeavors, his explanations were designed to accord with publicly
observable natural phenomena.
ii. Biology
The phenomenon of life, as opposed to inanimate nature, involves distinctive
types of change (Phys.244b10–245a5) and thus requires distinctive types of
explanation. Biological explanations should give all four causes of an
organism or species—the material of which it is composed, the processes
that bring it about, the particular form it has, and its purpose. For Aristotle,
the investigation of individual organisms gives one causal knowledge since
the individuals belong to a natural kind. Men and horses both have eyes,
which serve similar functions in each of them, but because their species are
different, a man’s eye is similar to the eyes of other men, while a horse’s
eyes are similar to the eyes of other horses (HA 486a15–20). Biology should
explain both why homologous forms exist in different species and the ways
in which they differ, and therefore the causes for the persistence of each
natural kind of living thing.
Although all four causes are relevant in biology, Aristotle tends to group final
causes with formal causes in teleological explanations, and material causes
with efficient causes in mechanical explanations. Boylan (section 4) shows,
for example, that Aristotle’s teleological explanation of respiration is that it
exists in order to bring air into the body to produce pneuma, which is the
means by which an animal moves itself. Aristotle’s mechanical explanation is
that air that has been heated in the lungs is pushed out by colder air outside
the body (On Breath 481b10–16, PA 642a31–b4).
Teleological explanations are necessary conditionally; that is, they depend
on the assumption that the biologist has correctly identified the end for the
sake of which the organism behaves as it does. Mechanical explanations, in
distinction, have absolute necessity in the sense that they require no
assumptions about the purpose of the organism or behavior. In general,
however, teleological explanations are more important in biology (PA
639b24–26), because making a distinction between living and inanimate
things depends on the assumption that “nature does nothing in vain” (GA
741b5).
The final cause of each kind corresponds to the reason that it continues to
persist. As opposed to superlunary, eternal substances, sublunary living
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things cannot preserve themselves individually or, as Aristotle puts it, “in
number.” Nevertheless, because living is better than not living (EN 1170b2–
5), each individual has a natural drive to preserve itself “in kind.” Such a
drive for self-preservation is the primary way in which living creatures
participate in the divine (DA 415a25–b7). Nutrition and reproduction
therefore are, in Aristotle’s philosophy, value-laden and goal-directed
activities. They are activated, whether consciously or not, for the good of
the species, namely for its continuation, in which it imitates the eternal
things (Gen et Corr.338b12–17). In this way, life can be considered to be
directed toward and imitative of the divine (DC 292b18–22).
This basic teleological or goal-directed orientation of Aristotle’s biology
allows him to explain the various functions of living creatures in terms of
their growth and preservation of form. Perhaps foremost among these is
reproduction, which establishes the continuity of a species through a
generation. As Aristotle puts it, the seed is temporally prior to the fully
developed organism, since each organism develops from a seed. But the
fully developed organism is logically prior to the seed, since it is the end or
final cause, for the sake of which the seed is produced (PA 641b29–642a2).
In asexual reproduction in plants and animals, the seed is produced by an
individual organism and implanted in soil, which activates it and thus
actualizes its potentiality to become an organism of the kind from which it
was produced. Aristotle thus utilizes a conception of “type” as an
endogenous teleonomic principle, which explains why an individual animal
can produce other animals of its own type (Mayr 1982, 88). Hence, the
natural kind to which an individual belongs makes it what it is. Animals of
the same natural kind have the same form of life and can reproduce with one
another but not with animals of other kinds.
In animal sexual reproduction, Aristotle understands the seed possessed by
the male as the source or principle of generation, which contains the form of
the animal and must be implanted in the female, who provides the matter
(GA 716a14–25). In providing the form, the male sets up the formation of the
embryo in the matter provided by the female, as rennet causes milk to
coagulate into cheese (GA 729a10–14). Just as rennet causes milk to
separate into a solid, earthy part (or cheese), and a fluid, watery part (or
whey), so the semen causes the menstrual fluid to set. In this process, the
principle of growth potentially contained in the seed is activated, which, like
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a seed planted in soil, produces an animal’s body as the embryo (GA
739b21–740a9).
The form of the animal, its psyche, may thus be said to be potentially in the
matter, since the matter contains all the necessary nutrients for the
production of the complete organism. However, it is invariably the male that
brings about the reproduction by providing the principle of the perceptual
soul, a process Aristotle compares with the movement of automatic puppets
by a mover that is not in the puppet (GA 741b6–15). (Whether the female
produces the nutritive psyche is an open question.) Thus, form or psyche is
provided by the male, while the matter is provided by the female: when the
two come together, they form a hylomorphic product—the living animal.
While the form of an animal is preserved in kind by reproduction, organisms
are also preserved individually over their natural lifespans through feeding.
In species that have blood, feeding is a kind of concoction, in which food is
chewed and broken down in the stomach, then enters the blood, and is
finally cooked up to form the external parts of the body. In plants, feeding
occurs by the nutritive psyche alone. But in animals, the senses exist for the
sake of detecting food, since it is by the senses that animals pursue what is
beneficial and avoid what is harmful. In human beings, a similar explanation
can be given of the intellectual powers: understanding and practical wisdom
exist so that human beings might not only live but also enjoy the good life
achievable by action (Sens.436b19–437a3).
Although Aristotle’s teleology has been criticized by some modern
biologists, others have argued that his biological work is still of interest to
naturalists. For example, Haldane (1955) shows that Aristotle gave the
earliest report of the bee waggle dance, which received a comprehensive
explanation only in the 20th century work of Von Frisch. Aristotle also
observed lordosis behavior in cattle (HA 572b1–2) and notes that some
plants and animals are divisible (Youth and Old Age 468b2–15), a fact that
has been vividly illustrated in modern studies of planaria. Even when
Aristotle’s biological explanations are incorrect, his observations may be of
enduring value.
iii. Psychology
Psychology is the study of the psyche, which is often translated as “soul.”
While prior philosophers were interested in the psyche as a part of political
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inquiry, for Aristotle, the study of the psyche is part of natural science (Ibn
Bajjah 1961, 24), continuous with biology. This is because Aristotle
conceives of the psyche as the form of a living being, the body being its
material. Although the psyche and body are never really separated, they can
be given different descriptions. For example, the passion of anger can be
described physiologically as a boiling of the blood around the heart, while it
can be described dialectically as the desire to pay back with pain someone
who has insulted one (DA 403a25–b2). While the physiologist examines the
material and efficient causes, the dialectician considers only the form and
definition of the object of investigation (DA 403a30–b3). Since the psyche is
“the first principle of the living thing” (DA 402a6–7), neither the dialectical
method nor the physiological method nor a combination of the two is
sufficient for a systematic account of the psyche (DA 403a2, b8). Rather
than relying on dialectical or materialist speculation, Aristotle holds that
demonstration is the proper method of psychology, since the starting point
is a definition (DA 402b25–26), and the psyche is the form and definition of a
living thing.
Aristotle conceives of psychology as an exact science, with greater
precision than the lesser sciences (DA 402a1–5), and accordingly offers a
complete sequence of the kinds or “parts” of psyche. The nutritive psyche—
possessed by both plants and animals—is responsible for the basic
functions of nourishment and reproduction. Perception is possible only in an
animal that also has the nutritive power that allows it to grow and
reproduce, while desire depends on perceiving the object desired, and
locomotion depends on desiring objects in different locations (DA 415a1–8).
More intellectual powers like imagination, judgment, and understanding
itself exist only in humans, who also have the lower powers.
The succession of psychological powers ensures the completeness, order,
and necessity of the relations of psychological parts. Like rectilinear figures,
which proceed from triangles to quadrilaterals, to pentagons, and so forth,
without there being any intermediate forms, there are no other psyches than
those in this succession (DA 414b20–32). This demonstrative approach
ensures that although the methods of psychology and physiology are
distinct, psychological divisions map onto biological distinctions. For
Aristotle, the parts of the psyche are not separable or “modular” but related
genetically: each posterior part of the psyche “contains” the parts before it,
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and each lower part is the necessary but not sufficient condition for
possession of the part that comes after it.
The psyche is defined by Aristotle as the first actuality of a living animal,
which is the form of a natural body potentially having life (DA 412a19–22).
This form is possessed even when it is not being used; for example, a
sleeping person has the power to hear a melody, though while he is
sleeping, he is not exercising the power. In distinction, though a corpse
looks just like a sleeping body, it has no psyche, since it lacks the power to
respond to such stimuli. The second actuality of an animal comes when the
power is actually exercised such as when one actually hears the melody (DA
417b9–16).
Perception is the reception of the form of an object of perception without its
matter, just as wax receives the seal of a ring without its iron or gold (DA
424a17–28). When one sees wine, for example, one perceives something
dark and liquid without becoming dark and liquid. Some hold that Aristotle
thinks the reception of the form happens in matter so that part of the body
becomes like the object perceived (for example, one’s eye might be dark
while one is looking at wine). Others hold that Aristotelian perception is a
spiritual change so that no bodily change is required. But presumably one is
changing both bodily and spiritually all the time, even when one is not
perceiving. Consequently, the formulation that perception is of “form without
matter” is probably not intended to describe physiological or spiritual
change but rather to indicate the conceptual nature of perception. For, as
discussed in the section on first philosophy below, Aristotle considers forms
to be definitions or concepts; for example, one defines “horse” by
articulating its form. If he is using “form” in the same way in his discussion of
perception, he means that in perceiving something, such as in seeing a
horse, one gains an awareness of it as it is; that is, one grasps the concept
of the horse. In that case, all the doctrine means is that perception is
conceptual, giving one a grasp not just of parts of perceptible objects, say,
the color and shape of a horse, but of the objects themselves, that is, of the
horse as horse. Indeed, Aristotle describes perception as conferring
knowledge of particulars and in that sense being like contemplation (DA
417b19–24).
This theory of perception distinguishes three kinds of perceptible objects:
proper sensibles, which are perceived only by one sense modality; common
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sensibles, which are perceived by all the senses; and accidental sensibles,
which are facts about the sensible object that are not directly given (DA
418a8–23). For example, in seeing wine, its color is a proper sensible, its
volume a common sensible, and the fact that it belongs to Callias an
accidental sensible. While one normally could not be wrong about the wine’s
color, one might overestimate or underestimate its volume under
nonstandard conditions, and one is apt to be completely wrong about the
accidental sensible (for example, Callias might have sold the wine).
The five senses are distinguished by their proper sensibles: though the
wine’s color might accidentally make one aware that it is sweet, color is
proper to sight and sweetness to taste. But this raises a question: how do
the different senses work together to give one a coherent experience of
reality? If they were not coordinated, then one would perceive each quality
of an object separately, for example, darkness and sweetness without
putting them together. However, actual perceptual experience is
coordinated: one perceives wine as both dark and sweet. In order to explain
this, Aristotle says that they must be coordinated by the central sense,
which is probably located in the body’s central organ, the heart. When one is
awake, and the external sense organs are functioning normally, they are
coordinated in the heart to discern reality as being the way it is
(Sens.448b31–449a22).
Aristotle claims that one hears that one hears and sees that one sees (DA
425b12–17). Though there is a puzzle as to whether such higher-order
seeing is due to sight itself or to the central perceptual power (compare On
Sleep 455a3–26), the higher-order perception counts as an awareness of
how the perceptual power grasps an object in the world. Though later
philosophers named this higher-order perception “consciousness” and
argued that it could be separated from an actualized perception of a real
object, for Aristotle it is intrinsically dependent on the first-order grasp of
an object (Nakahata 2014, 109–110). Indeed, Aristotle describes perceptual
powers as being potentially like the perceptual object in actuality (DA 418a3–
5) and goes so far as to say that the activity of the external object and that
of the perceptual power are one, though what it is to be each one is different
(DA 425b26–27). Thus, consciousness seems to be a property that arises
automatically when perception is activated.
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In at least some animals, the perceptual powers give rise to other
psychological powers that are not themselves perceptual in a strict sense. In
one simple case, the perception of a color is altered by its surroundings, that
is, by how it is illuminated and by the other colors in one’s field of vision. Far
from assuming the constancy of perception, Aristotle notes that under such
circumstances, one color can take the place of another and appear
differently than it does under standard conditions, for example, of full
illumination (Meteor.375a22–28).
Memory is another power that arises through the collection of many
perceptions. Memory is an affection of perception (though when the content
of the memory is intellectual, it is an affection of the judgmental power of
the psyche, see Mem.449b24–25), produced when the motion of perception
acts like a signet ring in sealing wax, impressing itself on an animal and
leaving an image in the psyche (Mem.450a25–b1). The resultant image has a
depictive function so that it can be present even when the object it portrays
is absent: when one remembers a person, for example, the memory-image is
fully present in one’s psyche, though the person might be absent
(Mem.450b20–25).
Closely related to memory, the imagination is a power to present absent
things to oneself. Identical neither to perception nor judgment (DA 427b27–
8, 433a10), imagining has an “as if” quality. For example, imagining a terror is
like looking at a picture without feeling the corresponding emotion of fear
(DA 427b21–24). Imagination may be defined as a kind of change or motion
that comes about by means of activated perception (DA 429a1–2). This does
not entail that imagination is merely reproductive but simply that activated
perceptions trigger the imagination, which in turn produces an image or
appearance “before our eyes” (DA 427b19–20). The resultant appearances
that “comes to be for us” (DA 428a1–2, 11–12) could be true or false, since
unlike the object of perception, what is imagined is not present (Humphreys
2019).
Human beings are distinct from other animals, Aristotle says, in their
possession of rational psyche. Foremost among the rational powers is
intellect or understanding (this article uses the terms interchangeably),
which grasps universals in a way that is analogous to the perceptual grasp
of particulars. However, unlike material particulars grasped by perception,
universals are not mixed with body and are thus in a sense contained in the
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psyche itself (DA 417b22–24, 432a1–3). This has sometimes been called the
intentional inexistence of an object, or intentionality, the property of being
directed to or about something. Since one can think or understand any
universal, the understanding is potentially about anything, like an empty
writing tablet (DA 429b29–430a1).
The doctrine of the intentionality of intellect leads Aristotle to make a
distinction between two kinds of intellect. Receptive or passive intellect is
characterized by the ability to become like all things and is analogous to the
writing tablet. Productive or active intellect is characterized by the ability to
bring about all things and is analogous to the act of writing. The active
intellect is thus akin to the light that illuminates objects, making them
perceptible by sight. Aristotle holds that the soul never thinks without an
image produced by imagination to serve as its material. Thus, in
understanding something, the productive intellect actuates the receptive
intellect, which stimulates the imagination to produce a particular image
corresponding to the universal content of the understanding. Hence, while
Aristotle describes the active intellect as unaffected, separate, and
immaterial, it serves to bring to completion the passive intellect, the latter of
which is inseparable from imagination and hence from perception and
nutrition.
Aristotle’s insistence that intellect is not a subject of natural science (PA
641a33–b9) motivates the view that thinking requires a contribution from
the supernatural or divine. Indeed, in Metaphysics (1072b19–30) Aristotle
argues that intellect actively understanding the intelligible is the everlasting
God. For readers like the medieval Arabic commentator Ibn Rushd, passive
intellect is spread like matter among thinking beings. This “material intellect”
is activated by God, the agent intellect, so that when one is thinking, one
participates in the activity of the divine intellect. According to this view,
every act of thinking is also an act of divine illumination in which God
actuates one’s thinking power as the writer actuates a blank writing tablet.
However, in other passages Aristotle says that when the body is destroyed,
the soul is destroyed too (Length and Shortness of Life, 465b23–32). Thus, it
seems that Aristotle’s psychological explanations assume embodiment and
require that thinking be something done by the individual human being.
Indeed, Aristotle argues that if thinking is either a kind of imaginative
representation or impossible without imagination, then it will be impossible
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without body (DA 403a8–10). But the psyche never thinks without
imagination (DA 431a16–17). It seems to follow that far from being a part of
the everlasting thinking of God, human thinking is something that happens in
a living body and ends when that body is no longer alive. Thus, Jiminez
(2014, 95–99) argues that thinking is embodied in three ways: it is
proceeded by bodily processes, simultaneous with embodied processes, and
anticipates bodily processes, namely intentional actions. For further
discussion see Jiminez (2017).
The whole psyche governs the characteristic functions and changes of a
living thing. The nutritive psyche is the formal cause of growth and
metabolism and is shared by plants, while the perceptual psyche gives rise
to desire, which causes self-moving animals to act. When one becomes
aware of an apparent good by perception or imagination, one forms either an
appetite, the desire for pleasure, or thumos, the spirited desire for revenge
or honor. A third form of desire, wish, is the product of the rational psyche
(DA 433a20–30).
Boeri has pointed out that Aristotle’s psychology cuts a middle path
between physicalism, which identifies the psyche with body, and dualism,
which posits the independent existence of the soul and body. By
characterizing the psyche as he does, Aristotle can at once deny that the
psyche is a body but also insist that it does not exist without a body. The
living body of an animal can thus be thought of as a form that has been
“materialized” (Boeri 2018, 166–169).
b. Mathematics
Aristotle was educated in Plato’s Academy, in which it was commonly
argued that mathematical objects like lines and numbers exist independently
of physical beings and are thus ”separable” from matter. Aristotle’s
conception of the hierarchy of beings led him to reject Platonism since the
category of quantity is posterior to that of substance. But he also rejects
nominalism, the view that mathematical things are not real. Against both
positions, Aristotle argues that mathematical things are real but do not exist
separately from sensible bodies (Met.1090a29–30, 1093b27–28).
Mathematical objects thus depend on the things in which they inhere and
have no separate or independent being (Met.1059b12–14).
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Although mathematical beings are not separate from the material cosmos,
when the mathematician defines what it is to be a sphere or circle, he does
not include a material like gold or bronze in the definition, because it is not
the gold ball or bronze ring that the mathematician wants to define. The
mathematician is justified in proceeding in this way, because although there
are no separate entities beyond the concrete thing, it is just the
mathematical aspects of real things that are relevant to mathematics (DC
278a2–6). This process by which the material features of a substance are
systematically ignored by the mathematician, who focuses only on the
quantitative features, Aristotle describes as “abstraction.” Because it always
involves final ends, no abstraction is possible in natural science (PA 641b11–
13, Phys.193b31–35). A consequence of this abstraction is that “why”
questions in mathematics are invariably answered not by providing a final
cause but by giving the correct definition (Phys.198a14–21, 200a30–34).
One reason that Aristotle believes that mathematics must proceed by
abstraction is that he wants to prevent a multiplication of entities. For
example, he does not want to say that, in addition to there being a sphere of
bronze, there is another separate, mathematical sphere, and that in addition
to that sphere, there is a separate mathematical plane cutting it, and that in
addition to that plane, there is an additional line limiting the plane (see Katz
2014). It is enough for a mathematical ontology simply to acknowledge that
natural objects have real mathematical properties not separate in being,
which can nevertheless be studied independently from natural investigation.
Aristotle also favors this view due to his belief that mathematics is a
demonstrative science. Aristotle was aware that geometry uses
diagrammatic representations of abstracted properties, which allow one to
grasp how a demonstration is true not just of a particular object but of any
class of objects that share its quantitative features (Humphreys 2017).
Through the concept of abstraction, Aristotle could explain why a particular
diagram may be used to prove a universal geometrical result.
Why study mathematics? Although Aristotle rejected the Platonic doctrine
that mathematical beings are separate, intermediate entities between
perceptible things and forms, he agreed with the Platonists that
mathematics is about things that are beautiful and good, since it offers
insight into the nature of arrangement, symmetry, and definiteness
(Met.1078a31–b6). Thus, the study of mathematics reveals that beauty is not
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so much in the eye of the beholder as it is in the nature of things (Hoinski
and Polansky 2016, 51–60). Moreover, Aristotle holds that mathematical
beings are all potential objects of the intellect, which exist only potentially
when they are not understood. The activity of understanding is the actuation
of their being, but also actuates the intellect (Met.1051a26–33).
Mathematics, then, not only gives insight into beauty but is also a source of
intellectual pleasure, since gaining mathematical knowledge exercises the
human being’s best power.
c. First Philosophy
In addition to natural and mathematical sciences, there is a science of
independent beings that Aristotle calls “first philosophy” or “wisdom.” What
is the proper aim of this science? In some instances, Aristotle seems to say
that it concerns being insofar as it is (Met.1003a21–22), whereas in others,
he seems to consider it to be equivalent to “theology,” restricting
contemplation to the highest kind of being (Met.1026a19–22), which is
unchanging and separable from matter. However, Menn (2013, 10–11) shows
that Aristotle is primarily concerned with describing first philosophy as a
science that seeks the causes and sources of being qua being. Hence, when
Aristotle holds that wisdom is a kind of rational knowledge concerning
causes and principles (Met.982a1–3), he probably means that the
investigation of these causes of being as being seeks to discover the divine
things as the cause of ordinary beings. First philosophy is consequently
quite unlike natural philosophy and mathematics, since rather than
proceeding from systematic observation or from hypotheses, it begins with
an attitude of wonder towards ordinary things and aims to contemplate them
not under a particular description but simply as beings (Sachs 2018).
The fundamental premise of this science is the law of noncontradiction,
which states that something cannot both be and not be (Met.1006a1).
Aristotle holds that this law is indemonstrable and necessary to assume in
any meaningful discussion about being. Consequently, a person who
demands a demonstration of this principle is no better than a plant. As
Anscombe (1961, 40) puts it, “Aristotle evidently had some very irritating
people to argue with.” But as Anscombe also points out, this principle is
what allows Aristotle to make a distinction between substances as the
primary kind of being and accidents that fall in the other categories. While it
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is possible for a substance to take on contrary accidents, for example,
coffee first being hot and later cold, substances have no contraries. The law
requires that a substance either is or is not, independently of its further,
accidental properties.
Aristotle insists that in order for the word “being” to have any meaning at all,
there must be some primary beings, whereas other beings modify these
primary beings (Met.1003b6–10). As we saw in the section on Aristotle’s
logic, primary substances are individual substances while their accidents
are what is predicated of them in the categories. This takes on metaphysical
significance when one thinks of this distinction in terms of a dependence
relation in which substances can exist independently of their accidents, but
accidents are dependent in being on a substance. For example, a shaggy
dog is substantially a dog, but only accidentally shaggy. If it lost all its hair, it
would cease to be shaggy but would be no less a dog: it would then be a
non-shaggy dog. But if it ceased to be a dog—for example, if it were turned
into fertilizer—then it would cease to be shaggy at the same moment. Unlike
the “shagginess,” “dogness” cannot be separated from a shaggy dog: the
“what it is to be” a dog is the dog’s dogness in the category of substance,
while its accidents are in other categories, in this case shagginess being in
the category of quality (Met.1031a1–5).
Given that substances can be characterized as forms, as matter, or as
compounds of form and matter, it seems that Aristotle gives the cause and
source of a being by listing its material and formal cause. Indeed, Aristotle
sometimes describes primary being as the “immanent form” from which the
concrete primary being is derived (Met.1037a29). This probably means that a
primary substance is always a compound, its formal component serving as
the substance’s final cause. However, primary beings are not composed of
other primary beings (Met.1041a3–5). Thus, despite some controversy on the
question, there seems to be no form of an individual, form being what is
shared by all the individuals of a kind.
A substance is defined by a universal, and thus when one defines the form,
one defines the substance (Met.1035b31–1036a1). However, when one
grasps a substance directly in perception or thought, one grasps the
compound of form and matter (Met.1036a2–8). But since form by itself does
not make a primary substance, it must be immanent—that is, compounded
with matter—in each individual, primary substance. Rather, in a form-matter
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compound, such as a living thing, the matter is both the prior stuff out of
which the thing has become and the contemporaneous stuff of which it is
composed. The form is what makes what a thing is made of, its matter, into
that thing (Anscombe 1961, 49, 53).
Due to this hylomorphic account, one might worry that natural science
seems to explain everything there is to explain about substances. However,
Aristotle insists that there is a kind of separable and immovable being that
serves as the principle or source of all other beings, which is the special
object of wisdom (Met.1064a35–b1). This being might be called the good
itself, which is implicitly pursued by substances when they come to be what
they are. In any case, Aristotle insists that this source and first of beings
sets in motion the primary motion. But since whatever is in motion must be
moved by something else, and the first thing is not moved by something
else, it is itself motionless (Met.1073a25–34). As we have seen, even the
human intellect is “not affected” (DA 429b19–430a9), producing its own
object of contemplation in a pure activity. Following this, Aristotle describes
the primary being as an intellect or a kind of intellect that “thinks itself”
perpetually (Met.1072b19–20). Thus, we can conceive of the Aristotelian god
as being like our own intellect but unclouded by what we undergo as mortal,
changing, and fallible beings (Marx 1977, 7–8).
4. Practical Philosophy
Practical philosophy is distinguished from theoretical philosophy both in its
goals and in its methods. While the aim of theoretical philosophy is
contemplation and the understanding of the highest things, the aim of
practical philosophy is good action, that is, acting in a way that constitutes
or contributes to the good life. But human beings can only thrive in a
political community: the human is a “political animal” and thus the political
community exists by nature (Pol.1253a2–5, compare EN 1169b16–19). Thus,
ethical inquiry is part of political inquiry into what makes the best life for a
human being. Because of the intrinsic variability and complexity of human
life, however, this inquiry does not possess the exactness of theoretical
philosophy (EN 1094b10–27).
In a similar way that he holds animals are said to seek characteristic ends in
his biology, Aristotle holds in his “ergon argument” that the human being has
a proper ergon—work or function (EN 1097b24–1098a18). Just as craftsmen
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like flautists and sculptors and bodily organs like eyes and ears have a
peculiar work they do, so the human being must do something peculiarly
human. Such function is definitive, that is, distinguishes what it is to be the
thing that carries it out. For example, a flautist is a flautist insofar as she
plays the flute. But the function serves as an implicit success condition for
being that thing. For example, what makes a flautist good as a what she is
(“good qua flautist” one might say) is that she plays the flute well.
Regardless of the other work she does in her other capacities (qua human,
qua friend, and so forth) the question “is she a good flautist?” can be
answered only in reference to the ergon of the flautist, namely flute playing.
The human function cannot be nutrition or perception, since those activities
are shared with other living things. Since other animals lack reason, the
human function must be an activity of the psyche not without reason. A
human being that performs this function well will be functioning well as a
human being. In other words, by acting virtuously one will by that fact
achieve the human good (Angier 2010, 60–61). Thus, Aristotle can
summarize the good life as consisting of activities and actions in
accordance with arete—excellence or virtue—and the good for the human
being as the activity of the psyche in accordance with excellence in a
complete life (EN 1098a12–19). Though it has sometimes been objected that
Aristotle assumes without argument that human beings must have a
characteristic function, Angier (2010, 73–76) has shown that the key to
Aristotle’s argument is his comparison of the human function to a craft: just
as a sculptor must possess a wide variety of subordinate skills to achieve
mastery in his specialized activity, so in acting well the human being must
possess an inclusive set of dispositions and capacities that serve to fulfill
the specialized task of reason.
Ethics and politics are, however, not oriented merely to giving descriptions
of human behavior but on saying what ends human beings ought to pursue,
that is, on what constitutes the good life for man. While the many, who have
no exposure to philosophy, should agree that the good life consists in
eudaimonia—happiness or blessedness—there is disagreement as to what
constitutes this state (EN 1095a18–26). The special task of practical
philosophy is therefore to say what the good life consists in, that is, to give
a more comprehensive account of eudaimonia than is available from the
observation of the diverse ends pursued by human beings. As Baracchi
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(2008, 81–83) points out, eudaimonia indicates a life lived under the
benevolent or beneficial sway of the daimonic, that is, of an order of
existence beyond the human. Thus, the view that eudaimonia is a state of
utmost perfection and completion for a human being (Magna Moralia
1184a14, b8) indicates that the full actualization of a human depends on
seeking something beyond what is strictly speaking proper to the human.
a. Habituation and Excellence
Though the original meaning of ethics has been obscured due to modern
confusion of pursuing proper ends with following moral rules, in the
Aristotelian works, ethical inquiry is limited to the investigation of what it is
for a human being to flourish according to her own nature. For the purposes
of this inquiry, Aristotle distinguishes three parts of the psyche: passions,
powers, and habits (EN 1105b20). Passions include attitudes such as feeling
fear, hatred, or pity for others, while powers are those parts of our form that
allow us to have such passions and to gain knowledge of the world.
However, while all human beings share passions and powers, they differ
with regard to how they are trained or habituated and thus with respect to
their dispositions or states of character. Those who are habituated correctly
are said to be excellent and praiseworthy, while those whose characters are
misshapen through bad habituation are blameworthy (EN 1105b28–a2).
How does a human being become good, cultivating excellence within
herself? Aristotle holds that this happens by two related but distinct
mechanisms. Intellectual excellences arise by teaching, whereas ethical
excellences by character, such as moderation and courage, arise by ethos,
habituation, or training (EN 1103a14–26). Since pleasure or pain results from
each of our activities (EN 1104b4), training happens through activity; for
example, one learns to be just by doing just things (EN 1103a35–b36).
Legislators, who aim to make citizens good, therefore must ensure that
citizens are trained from childhood to produce certain good habits—
excellences of character—in them (EN 1103b23–25).
Such training takes place via pleasure and pain. If one is brought up to take
pleasure or suffer pain in certain activities, one will develop the
corresponding character (EN 1104b18–25). This is why no one becomes good
unless one does good things (EN 1105b11–12). Rather than trying to answer
the question of why one ought to be good in the abstract, Aristotle assumes
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that taking pleasure in the right kinds of activities will lead one to have a
good life, where “right kinds” means those activities that contribute to one’s
goal in life. Hence the desires of children can be cultivated into virtuous
dispositions by providing rewards and punishments that induce them to
follow good reason (EN 1119b2–6).
Since Aristotle conceives of perception as the reception of the perceived
object’s form without its matter, to perceive correctly is to grasp an object
as having a pleasurable or painful generic form (DA 424a17–19, 434a27–30).
The cognitive capacity of perception and the motive capacity of desire are
linked through pleasure, which is also “in the soul” (EE 1218b35). Excellence
is not itself a pleasure but rather a deliberative disposition to take pleasure
in certain activities, a mean between extreme states (EN 1106b36–1107a2).
Although he offers detailed descriptions of the virtues in his ethical works,
Aristotle summarizes them in a table:
Excess Mean Deficiency
Irascibility Gentleness Spiritlessness
Rashness Courage Cowardice
Shamelessness Modesty Diffidence
Profligacy Temperance Insensitiveness
Envy Righteous Indignation Malice
Greed Justice Loss
Prodigality Liberality Meanness
Boastfulness Honesty Self-deprecation
Flattery Friendliness Surliness
Subservience Dignity Stubborness
Luxuriousness Hardness Endurance
Vanity Greatness of Spirit Smallness of Spirit
Extravagance Magnificence Shabbiness
Rascality Prudence Simpleness
This shows that each excellence is a mean between excessive and defective
states of character (EE 1220b35–1221a15). Accordingly, good habituation is
concerned with avoiding extreme or pathological states of character. Thus,
Aristotle can say that ethical excellence is “concerned with pleasures and
pains” (EN 1104b8–11), since whenever one has been properly trained to take
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the correct pleasure and suffer correct pain when one acts in excess or
defect, one possesses the excellence in question.
b. Ethical Deliberation
Human action displays excellence only when it is undertaken voluntarily,
that is, is chosen as the means to bring about a goal wished for by the
agent. Excellence in general is thus best understood as a disposition to
make correct choices (EN 1106b36–1107a2), where “choice” is understood as
the product of deliberation or what “has been deliberated upon” (EN 1113a4).
Deliberation is not about ends but about what contributes to an end already
given by one of the three types of desire discussed above: appetite, thumos,
or wish (EN 1112b11–12, 33–34).
But if all excellent action must be chosen, how can actions undertaken in an
instant, such as when one acts courageously, be excellent? Since such
actions can be undertaken without the agent having undergone a prior
process of conscious deliberation, which takes time, it seems that one must
say that quick actions were hypothetically deliberated, that is, that they
count as what one would have chosen to do had one had time to deliberate
(Segvic 2008, 162–163).
Such reasoning can be schematized by the so-called the “practical
syllogism.” For example, supposing one accepts the premises
One should not drink heavy water
This water in this cup is heavy
The syllogism concludes with one’s not drinking water from the cup (EN
1142a22–23). If this is how Aristotle understands ethical deliberation, then it
seems that all one’s voluntary actions count as deliberated even if one has
not spent any time thinking about what to do.
However, Contreras (2018, 341) points out that the “practical syllogism”
cannot represent deliberation since its conclusion is an action, whereas the
conclusion of deliberation is choice. Though one’s choice typically causes
one to act, something external could prevent one from acting even once the
choice has been made. Thus, neither are choice and action the same, nor are
the processes or conditions from which they result identical. Moreover, even
non-rational desires like appetite and thumos present things under the
“guise of the good” so that whatever one desires appears to be good. Hence
an action based on those desires could still be described by a practical
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syllogism, though it would not be chosen through deliberation. Deliberation
does not describe a kind of deduction but a process of seeking things that
contribute to an aim already presented under the guise of the good (Segvic
2008, 164–167).
This “seeking” aspect of deliberation is brought out in Aristotle’s comparison
of the deliberator to the geometer, who searches and analyzes by diagrams
(EN 1112b20–24). Geometrical analysis is the method by which a
mathematician works backwards from a desired result to find the elements
that constitute that result. Similarly, deliberation is a search for the elements
that would allow the end one has in view to be realized (EN 1141b8–15).
However, while geometrical reasoning is abstracted from material
conditions, the prospective reasoning of deliberation is constrained both
modally and temporally. One cannot deliberate about necessities, since
practical things must admit of being otherwise than they are (DA 433a29–
30). Similarly, one cannot deliberate about the past, since what is chosen is
not what has become—“no one chooses that Ilium be destroyed”—but what
may or may not come about in the future (EN 1139b5–9, DA 431b7–8). One
can describe deliberation, then, as starting from premises in the future
perfect tense, and as working backwards to discover what actions would
make those statements true.
In addition to these constraints, the deliberating agent must have a belief
about herself, namely that she is able to either bring about or not bring
about the future state in question (EN 1112a18–31). Since rational powers
alone are productive of contrary effects, deliberation must be distinctively
rational, since it produces a choice to undertake or not to undertake a
certain course of action (Met.1048a2–11). In distinction to technical
deliberation, the goal of which is to produce something external to the
activity that brings it about, in ethical deliberation there is no external end
since good action is itself the end (EN 1140b7). So rather than concerning
what an agent might produce externally, deliberation is ethical when it is
about the agent’s own activity. Thus, deliberation ends when one has
reached a decision, which may be immediately acted upon or put into
practice later when the proper conditions arise.
c. Self and Others
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Life will tend to go well for a person who has been habituated to the right
kinds of pleasures and pains and who deliberates well about what to do.
Unfortunately, this is not always sufficient for happiness. For although
excellence might help one manage misfortunes well and avoid becoming
miserable as their result, it is not reasonable to call someone struck with a
major misfortune blessed or happy (EN 1100b33–1101a13). So there seems to
be an element of luck in happiness: although bad luck cannot make one
miserable, one must possess at least some external goods in order to be
happy.
One could also ruin things by acting in ignorance. When one fails to
recognize a particular as what it is, one might bring about an end one never
intended. For example, one might set off a loaded catapult through one’s
ignorance of the fact that it was loaded. Such actions are involuntary. But
there is a more fundamental kind of moral ignorance for which one can be
blamed, which is not the cause of involuntary actions but of badness (EN
1110b25–1111a11). In the first case, one does what one does not want to do
because of ignorance, so is not worthy of blame. In the second case, one
does what one wants to do and is thus to be blamed for the action.
Given that badness is a form of ignorance about what one should do, it is
reasonable to ask whether acting acratically, that is, doing what one does
not want to do, just comes down to being ignorant. This is the teaching of
Socrates, who, arguing against what appears to be the case, reduced
acrasia to ignorance (EN 1145b25–27). Though Aristotle holds that acrasia is
distinct from ignorance, he also thinks it is impossible for knowledge to be
dragged around by the passions like a slave. Aristotle must, then, explain
how being overcome by one’s passions is possible, when knowledge is
stronger than the passions.
Aristotle’s solution is to limit acrasia to those cases in which one generically
knows what to do but fails to act on it because one’s knowledge of sensibles
is dragged along by the passions (EN 1147b15–19). In other words, he admits
that the passions can overpower perceptual knowledge of particulars but
denies that it can dominate intellectual knowledge of universals. Hence, like
Socrates, Aristotle thinks of acrasia as a form of ignorance, though unlike
Socrates, he holds that this ignorance is temporary and relates only to one’s
knowledge of particulars. Acrasia consists, then, in being unruled with
respect to thumos or with respect to sensory pleasures. In such cases, one
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is unruled because one’s passions or lower desires temporarily take over
and prevent one from grasping things as one should (EN 1148a2–22). In this
sense, acrasia represents a conflict between the reasoning and unreasoning
parts of the psyche (for discussion see Weinman 2007, 95–99).
If living well and acting well are the same (EN 1095a18–20, EE 1219b1–4) and
acting well consists in part in taking the proper pleasure in one’s action, then
living well must be pleasurable. Aristotle thinks the pleasure one has in
living well comes about through a kind of self-consciousness, that of being
aware of one’s own activity. In such activity, one grasps oneself as the
object of a pleasurable act of perception or contemplation and consequently
takes pleasure in that act (Ortiz de Landázuri 2012). But one takes pleasure
in a friend’s life and activity almost as one takes pleasure in one’s own life
(EN 1170a15–b8). Thus, the good life may be accompanied not only by a
pleasurable relation to oneself but also by relationships to others in which
one takes a contemplative pleasure in their activities.
The value of friendship follows from the ideas that when a person is a friend
to himself, he wishes the good for himself and thus to improve his own
character. Only such a person who has a healthy love of self can form a
friendship with another person (EN 1166b25–29). Indeed, one’s attitudes
towards a friend are based on one’s attitudes towards oneself (EN 1166a1–
10), attitudes which are extended to another in the formation of a friendship
(EN 1168b4–7). However, because people are by nature communal or
political, in order to lead a complete life, one needs to form friendships with
excellent people, and it is in living together with others that one comes to
lead a happy life. When a true friendship between excellent persons is
formed, each will regard one another with the same attitude with which he
regards himself, and thus as an “another self” (EN 1170b5–19)
Friendship is a bridging concept between ethics concerning the relations of
individuals and political science, which concerns the nature and function of
the state. For Aristotle, friendship holds a state together, so the lawgiver
must focus on promoting friendship above all else (EN 1155a22–26). Indeed,
when people are friends, they treat one another with mutual respect so that
justice is unnecessary or redundant (EN 1155a27–29). Aristotle’s ethics are
thus part of his political philosophy. Just as an individual’s good action
depends on her taking the right kinds of pleasures, so a thriving political
community depends on citizens taking pleasure in one another’s actions.
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Such love of others and mutual pleasure are strictly speaking neither
egoistic nor altruistic. Instead, they rest on the establishment of a harmony
of self and others in which the completion of the individual life and the life of
the community amount to the same thing.
d. The Household and the State
Aristotle’s political philosophy stems from the idea that the political
community or state is a creation of nature prior to the individual who lives
within it. This is shown by the fact that the individual human being is
dependent on the political community for his formation and survival. One
who lives outside the state is either a beast or a god, that is, does not
participate in what is common to humanity (Pol.1253a25–31). The political
community is natural and essentially human, then, because it is only within
this community that the individual realizes his nature as a human being.
Thus, the state exists not only for the continuation of life but for the sake of
the good life (Pol.1280a31–33).
Aristotle holds that the human being is a “political animal” due to his use of
speech. While other gregarious animals have voice, which nature has
fashioned to indicate pleasure and pain, the power of speech enables human
beings to indicate not only this but also what is expedient and inexpedient
and what is just and unjust (Pol.1253a9–18). Berns (1976, 188–189) notes that
for Aristotle, the speech symbol’s causes are largely natural: the material
cause of sound, the efficient cause of the living creatures that produce
them, and the final cause of living together, are all parts of human nature.
However, the formal cause, the distinctive way in which symbols are
organized, is conventional. This allows for a variability of constitutions and
hence the establishment of good or bad laws. Thus, although the state is
natural for human beings, the specific form it takes depends on the wisdom
of the legislator.
Though the various forms of constitution cannot be discussed here (for
discussion, see Clayton, Aristotle: Politics), the purpose of the state is the
good of all the citizens (Pol.1252a3), so a city is excellent when its citizens
are excellent (Pol.1332a4). This human thriving is most possible, however,
when the political community is ruled not by an individual but by laws
themselves. This is because even the best rulers are subject to thumos,
which is like a “wild beast,” whereas law itself cannot be perverted by the
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passions. Thus, Aristotle likens rule of law to the “rule of God and reason
alone” (Pol.1287a16–32). Although this is the best kind of political
community, Aristotle does not say that the best life for an individual is
necessarily the political life. Instead he leaves open the possibility that the
theoretical life, in which philosophy is pursued for its own sake, is the best
way for a person to live.
The establishment of any political community depends on the existence of
the sub-political sphere of the household, the productive unit in which
goods are produced for consumption. Whereas the political sphere is a
sphere of freedom and action, the household consists of relations of
domination: that of the master and slave, that of marriage, and that of
procreation. Hence household management or “economics” is distinct from
politics, since the organization of the household has the purpose of
production of goods rather than action (Pol.1253b9–14). Crucial to this
household production is the slave, which Aristotle defines as a living tool
(Pol.1253b30–33) who is controlled by a master in order to produce the
means necessary for the survival and thriving of the household and state. As
household management, economics is concerned primarily with structuring
slave labor, that is, with organizing the instruments of production so as to
make property necessary for the superior, political life.
Aristotle thus offers a staunch defense of the institution of slavery. Against
those who claim that slavery is contrary to nature, Aristotle argues that
there are natural slaves, humans who are born to be ruled by others
(Pol.1254a13–17). This can be seen by analogy: the body is the natural slave
of the psyche, such that a good person exerts a despotic rule over his body.
In the same way, humans ought to rule over other animals, males over
females, and masters over slaves (Pol.1254a20–b25). But this is only natural
when the ruling part is more noble than the part that is ruled. Thus, the
enslavement of the children of conquered nobles by victors in a war is a
mere convention since the children may possess the natures of free people.
For Aristotle, then, slavery is natural and just only when it is in the interest
of slave and master alike (Pol.1255b13–15).
The result of these doctrines is the view that political community is
composed of “unlikes.” Just as a living animal is composed of psyche and
body, and psyche is composed of a rational part and an appetite, so the
family is composed of husband and wife, and property of master and slave.
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It is these relations of domination, in Aristotle’s view, that constitute the
state, holding it together and making it function (Pol.1277a5–11). As noted in
the biographical section, Aristotle had close ties to the expanding
Macedonian empire. Thus his political philosophy, insofar as it is prescriptive
of how a political community should be managed, might have been intended
to be put into practice in the colonies established by Alexander. If that is the
case, then perhaps Aristotle’s politics is at base a didactic project intended
to teach an indefinite number of future legislators (Strauss 1964, 21).
5. Aristotle’s Influence
Aristotle and Plato were the most influential philosophers in antiquity, both
because their works were widely circulated and read and because the
schools they founded continued to exert influence for hundreds of years
after their deaths. Aristotle’s school gave rise to the Peripatetic movement,
with his student Theophrastus being its most famous member. In late
antiquity, there emerged a tradition of commentators on Aristotle’s works,
beginning with Alexander of Aphrodisias, but including the Neo-Platonists
Simplicius, Syrianus, and Ammonius. Many of their commentaries have been
edited and translated into English as part of the Ancient Commentators on
Aristotle project.
In the middle ages, Aristotle’s works were translated into Arabic, which led
to generations of Islamic Aristotelians, such as Ibn Bajjah and Ibn Rushd (see
Alwishah and Hayes 2015). In the Jewish philosophical tradition, Maimonides
calls Aristotle the chief of the philosophers and uses Aristotelian concepts
to analyze the contents of the Hebrew Bible. Though Boethius’ Latin
commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works were available from the fifth
century onwards, the publication of Aristotle’s works in Latin in the 11th and
12th centuries led to a revival of Aristotelian ideas in Europe. Indeed, a major
controversy broke out at the University of Paris in the 1260s between the
Averroists—followers of Ibn Rushd who believed that thinking happens
through divine illumination—and those who held that the active intellect is
individual in humans (see McInerny 2002). A further debate, concerning
realism (the doctrine that universals are real) and nominalism (the doctrine
that universals exist “in name” only) continued for centuries. Although they
disagreed in their interpretations, prominent scholastics like Bacon, Buridan,
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Ockham, Scotus, and Aquinas, tended to accept Aristotelian doctrines on
authority, often referring to Aristotle simply as “The Philosopher.”
Beginning in the sixteenth century, the scholastics came under attack,
particularly from natural philosophers, often leading to the disparagement of
Aristotelian positions. Copernicus’ model made Earth not the center of the
universe as in Aristotle’s cosmology but a mere satellite of the sun. Galileo
showed that some of the predictions of Aristotle’s physical theory were
incorrect; for example, heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter objects.
Descartes attacked the teleological aspect of Aristotle’s physics, arguing for
a mechanical conception of all of nature, including living things. Hobbes
critiqued the theory of perception, which he believed unrealistically
described forms or ideas as travelling through the air. Later, Hume
disparaged causal powers as mysterious, thus undermining the conception
of the four causes. Kantian and utilitarian ethics argued that duties to
humanity rather than happiness were the proper norms for action. Darwin
showed that species are not eternal, casting doubt on Aristotle’s conception
of biological kinds. Frege’s logic in the late nineteenth century developed
notions of quantification and predication that made the syllogism obsolete.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Aristotle looked not particularly
relevant to modern philosophical concerns.
The latter part of the twentieth century, however, has seen a slow but
steady intellectual shift, which has led to a large family of neo-Aristotelian
positions being defended by contemporary philosophers. Anscombe’s (1958)
argument for a return to virtue ethics can be taken as a convenient starting
point of this change. Anscombe’s claim, in summary, is that rule-based
ethics of the deontological or utilitarian style is unconvincing in an era
wherein monotheistic religions have declined, and commandments are no
longer understood to issue from a divine authority. Modern relativism and
nihilism on this view are products of the correct realization that without
anyone making moral commandments, there is no reason to follow them.
Since virtue ethics grounds morality in states of character rather than in
universal rules, only a return to virtue ethics would allow for a morality in a
secular society. In accordance with this modern turn to virtue ethics, neo-
Aristotelian theories of natural normativity have increasingly been defended,
for example, by Thompson (2008). In political philosophy, Arendt’s (1958)
distinction between the public and private spheres takes the tension
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between the political community and household as a fundamental force of
historical change.
In the 21st century, philosophers have drawn on Aristotle’s theoretical
philosophy. Cartwright and Pemberton (2013) revive the concept of natural
powers being part of the basic ontology of nature, which explain many of the
successes of modern science. Umphrey (2016) argues for the real existence
of natural kinds, which serve to classify material entities. Finally, the ‘Sydney
School’ has adopted a neo-Aristotelian, realist ontology of mathematics that
avoids the extremes of Platonism and nominalism (Franklin 2011). These
philosophers argue that, far from being useless antiques, Aristotelian ideas
offer fruitful solutions to contemporary philosophical problems.
6. Abbreviations
a. Abbreviations of Aristotle’s Works
Cat. Categoriae Categories
Int. Liber de interpretatione On Interpretation
AnPr. Analytica priora Prior Analytics
AnPo. Analytica posteriora Posterior Analytics
Phys. Physica Physics
Met. Metaphysica Metaphysics
Meteor. Meteorologica Meteorology
DC De Caelo On the Heavens
HA Historia Animalium The History of Animals
Genn et Corr. De Generatione et Corruptione On Generation and Corruption
EN Ethica Nicomachea Nicomachean Ethics
DA De Anima On the Soul
MA De Motu Animalium On the Motion of Animal
Mem. De Memoria On Memory
Sens. De Sensu et Sensibili On Sense and its Objects
Pol. Politica Politics
Top. Topica Topics
Rhet. Rhetorica Rhetoric
Poet. Poetica Poetics
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SophElen. De Sophisticiis Elenchiis Sophistical Refutations
b. Other Abbreviations
DL Diogenes Laertius, The Life of Aristotle.
August Immanuel Bekker.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 9th ed., vol. 3,
Bekker “Cambr idge University Press, 1910, p. 661.
7. References and Further Reading
a. Aristotle’s Complete Works
Aristotelis Opera. Edited by A.I. Bekker, Clarendon, 1837.
Complete Works of Aristotle. Edited by J. Barnes, Princeton University
Press, 1984.
b. Secondary Sources
i. Life and Early Works
Bos, A.P. “Aristotle on the Etruscan Robbers: A Core Text of ‘Aristotelian
Dualism.’” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 41, no. 3, 2003, pp.
289–306.
Chroust, A-H. “Aristotle’s Politicus: A Lost Dialogue.” Rheinisches Museum
für Philologie, Neue Folge, 108. Bd., 4. H, 1965, pp. 346–353.
Chroust, A-H. “Eudemus or on the Soul: A Lost Dialogue of Aristotle on the
Immortality of the Soul.” Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, vol. 19, fasc. 1, 1966,
pp. 17–30.
Chroust, A-H. “Aristotle Leaves the Academy.” Greece and Rome, vol. 14,
issue 1, April 1967, pp. 39–43.
Chroust, A-H. “Aristotle’s Sojourn in Assos.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte
Geschischte, Bd. 21, H. 2, 1972, pp. 170–176.
Fine, G. On Ideas. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Jaeger, W. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. 2nd
ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948.
Kroll, W., editor. Syrianus Commentaria in Metaphysica (Commentaria in
Aristotelem Graeca, vol. VI, part I). Berolini, typ. et impensis G. Reimeri,
1902.
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Lachterman, D.R. “Did Aristotle ‘Develop’? Reflections on Werner Jaeger’s
Thesis.” The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter, vol. 33,
1980.
Owen, G.E.L. “The Platonism of Aristotle.” Studies in the Philosophy of
Thought and Action, edited by P.F. Strawson, Oxford University Press,
1968, pp. 147–174.
Pistelli, H., editor. Iamblichi Protrepticus. Lipsiae: In Aedibus B.G. Tubneri,
1888.
ii. Logic
Bäck, A.T. Aristotle’s Theory of Predication. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
Cook Wilson, J. Statement and Inference, vol.1. Clarendon, 1926.
Groarke, L.F. “Aristotle: Logic.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
www.iep.utm.edu/aris-log.
Ierodiakonou, K. “Aristotle’s Logic: An Instrument, Not a Part of
Philosophy.” Aristotle: Logic, Language and Science, edited by N. Avgelis
and F. Peonidis, Thessaloniki, 1998, pp. 33–53.
Lukasiewicz, J. Aristotle’s Syllogistic. 2nd ed., Clarendon, 1957.
Malink, M. Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic. Harvard University Press, 2013.
iii. Theoretical Philosophy
Anscombe, G.E.M. and P.T. Geach. Three Philosophers. Cornell University
Press, 1961.
Bianchi, E. The Feminine Symptom. Fordham University Press, 2014.
Boeri, M. D. “Plato and Aristotle on What Is Common to Soul and Body.
Some Remarks on a Complicated Issue.” Soul and Mind in Greek Thought.
Psychological Issues in Plato and Aristotle, edited by M.D. Boeri, Y.Y.
Kanayama, and J. Mittelmann, Springer, 2018, pp. 153–176.
Boylan, M. “Aristotle: Biology.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-bio.
Cook, K. “The Underlying Thing, the Underlying Nature and Matter:
Aristotle’s Analogy in Physics I 7.” Apeiron, vol. 22, no. 4, 1989, pp. 105–
119.
Hoinski, D. and R. Polansky. “Aristotle on Beauty in Mathematics.” Dia-
noesis, October 2016, pp. 37–64.
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Humphreys, J. “Abstraction and Diagrammatic Reasoning in Aristotle’s
Philosophy of Geometry.” Apeiron, vol. 50, no. 2, April 2017, pp. 197–224.
Humphreys, J. “Aristotelian Imagination and Decaying Sense.” Social
Imaginaries. 5:1, 37-55, Spring 2019.
Ibn Bjjah. Ibn Bajjah’s ‘Ilm al-Nafs (Book on the Soul). Translated by M.S.H.
Ma’Sumi, Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1961.
Ibn Rushd. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle. Translated by
R.C. Taylor, Yale University Press, 2009.
Jiminez, E. R. “Mind in Body in Aristotle.” The Bloomsbury Companion to
Aristotle, edited by C. Baracchi, Bloomsbury, 2014.
Jiminez, E. R. Aristotle’s Concept of Mind. Cambridge University Press,
2017.
Katz, E. “An Absurd Accumulation: Metaphysics M.2, 1076b11–36.”
Phronesis, vol. 59, no. 4, 2014, pp. 343–368.
Marx, W. Introduction to Aristotle’s Theory of Being as Being. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.
Mayr, E. The Growth of Biological Thought. Harvard University Press,
1982.
Menn, S. “The Aim and the Argument of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.”
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2013, www.philosophie.hu-
berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/antike/mitarbeiter/menn/contents.
Nakahata, M. “Aristotle and Descartes on Perceiving That We See.” The
Journal of Greco-Roman Studies, vol. 53, no. 3, 2014, pp. 99–112.
Sachs, J. “Aristotle: Metaphysics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
www.iep.utm.edu/aris-met.
Sharvy, R. “Aristotle on Mixtures.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 80, no.
8, 1983, pp. 439–457.
Waterlow, S. Nature, Change, and Agency in Aristotle’s Physics: A
Philosophical Study. Clarendon, 1982.
Winslow, R. Aristotle and Rational Discovery. New York: Continuum, 2007.
iv. Practical Philosophy
Angier, T. Techne in Aristotle’s Ethics: Crafting the Moral Life. London:
Continuum, 2010.
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Baracchi, C. Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy. Cambridge University
Press, 2008.
Berns, L. “Rational Animal-Political Animal: Nature and Convention in
Human Speech and Politics.” The Review of Politics, vol. 38, no. 2, 1976,
pp. 177–189.
Clayton, E. “Aristotle: Politics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
www.iep.utm.edu/aris-pol.
Contreras, K.E. “The Rational Expression of the Soul in the Aristotelian
Psychology: Deliberating Reasoning and Action.” Eidos, vol. 29, 2018, pp.
339–365 (in Spanish).
Ortiz de Landázuri, M.C. “Aristotle on Self-Perception and Pleasure.”
Journal of Ancient Philosophy, vol. VI, issue. 2, 2012.
Segvic, H. From Protagoras to Aristotle. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Strauss, L. The City and Man. University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Weinman, M. Pleasure in Aristotle’s Ethics. London: Continuum, 2007.
v. Aristotle’s Influence
Alwishah, A. and J. Hayes, editors. Aristotle and the Arabic Tradition.
Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Anscombe, G.E.M. “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Philosophy, vol. 33, no.
124, 1958, pp. 1–19.
Arendt, H. The Human Condition. 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press,
1958.
Cartwright, N. and J. Pemberton. “Aristotelian Powers: Without Them,
What Would Modern Science Do?” Powers and Capacities in Philosophy:
The New Aristotelianism, edited by R. Groff and J. Greco, Routledge, 2013,
pp. 93–112.
Franklin, J. “Aristotelianism in the Philosophy of Mathematics.” Studia
Neoaristotelica, vol. 8, no. 1, 2011, pp. 3–15.
McInerny, R. Aquinas Against the Averroists: On There Being Only One
Intellect. Purdue University Press, 2002.
Umphrey, S. Natural Kinds and Genesis. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016.
Author Information
Justin Humphreys
Email: jhh@sas.upenn.edu
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University of Pennsylvania
U. S. A.
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