Aristotle is for many one of the main pillars of the western world, but we really know Who was Aristotle?, with this article perhaps we can answer this question. To know a little more about him, what did he do? and his biography, we invite you to visit this interesting article.
Who was Aristotle?
One of the main questions that is asked is where he comes from, which is easy to say: Stagira in 384 BC and died in 322 BC But, the other unknown is: Who was Aristotle?
Together with Plato, he is considered the father of future thought, of what Western culture will be. His ideas have had a dramatic impact on Western intellectual history for more than two millennia.
He was a student of Plato and other thinkers, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus, this was for two decades in Athens. After Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens and was the teacher of Alexander the Great in the Kingdom of Macedonia for almost five years. In the last years of his life he founded the Lyceum of Athens, where he taught until a year before his death.
Aristotle wrote approximately 200 works on a wide variety of subjects, including: from the pure sciences to the social sciences.
He is recognized as the progenitor of logic and biology, because although there are reflections and previous writings on both subjects, it is in the work of Aristotle where the first systematic analyzes in this sense can be found.
For Aristotle, unlike his teacher, there is only one world, where each sensitive subject is composed of matter and form (hylemorphism), the latter being its essence, the reason and the purpose for which it exists. According to the philosopher, the human being is a rational animal composed of a body (matter) and a soul (form) and who wants to know and be happy.
Seniority is the source of knowledge and happiness comes from the virtue of the human soul, from reason. Each individual lives in a community, which in turn form states to preserve the happiness of their citizens. He also defended the value of art, rhetoric and the superiority of men.
In the variety of contributions that he left us: the investigations of the theory of spontaneous reproduction, the principle of non-contradiction and the notions of category, substance, act, power and immobile motor.
Some of his ideas, which were new to the philosophy of his time, are now common sense to many people. He influenced Islamic thought in the Middle Ages as well as the Christian Scholastics. His ethics, while still influential, have attracted renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
biography on who was Aristotle
Aristotle came into the world in 384 BC. C. or 383 a. C., during the first year of the Olympiad, in the town of Stagira, today Stavros, which is why it was nicknamed the Stagirite, not far from the current Mount Athos, on the Chalkidiki peninsula, the current Macedonian region of Greece.
His father, Nicomachus, was part of the Asclepiadian society, that is, he taught medicine and was a physician to King Amyntas III of Macedonia, a fact that explains his relationship with the Macedonian royal court, which would have an important presence in his life and his mother, Festis, was from Chalcis and was also related to the Asclepiadians.
During the time of King Archelaus I of Macedon, as his father was a physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon, they both resided in Pella, and Aristotle could not stay there as his parents died while he was still very young and probably moved to Atarneo.
In 367 BC C., when Aristotle was 17 years old his father died, being replaced by his tutor Proxenus of Atarneo, who sent him to Athens, which was considered the center of knowledge of Greece, to train at Plato's Academy, he remained there for Two decades.
Period in the Academy
To finish Aristotle's education, Proxenus sent him to Athens to enroll him in the Academy, as his and Plato's fame had spread throughout the Greek world.
Aristotle met Plato when he was 17 years old and was at the Academy from 367 or 366 BC. C. Until 347 or 346 a. C., just as it coincides with Plato's second trip to Sicily. Like Aristotle he attended what was considered the most prestigious Academy, where he was able to properly train.
Eudoxus exerted the first decisive influence on Aristotle, since he was able to exert his influence on the request "to save the phenomena", which it is the same, of «finding a principle that explains the facts keeping intact their true form of presentation» .
Plato even called him "the reader" because of his desire to educate himself through writing rather than orally as was done at the Academy. It is believed that this sage was perhaps part of the Eleusinian Mysteries, he wrote about them: "Experience is learning."
Formation of his philosophy
After the death of Plato for the 347 a. C., Aristotle left Athens and went to Atarneo and Aso, in Asia Minor, in which he lived under the protection of his comrade from the Academy, Hermias, who was the highest authority in the city.
When Hermias was killed, he moved to the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, where he lived for a couple of years. There he continued his research with Theophrastus, a native of Lesbos, focusing on zoology and biology of the sea, he also married Pythias of Aso, the niece of Hermias, they had a daughter of the same name.
Alexander the Great and the Lyceum
In 343 BC C., King Philip II of Macedonia called Aristotle to be the tutor of his 13-year-old son, who would later be none other than Alexander the Great. Then, Aristotle went to Pella, then the capital of the Macedonian Empire, and instructed Alexander for at least two years, until he began his military career.
During Aristotle's time at the Macedonian Court, he also taught two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassandra.
In 335 BC C., Aristotle returned to Athens and created his own school, the Lyceum, named that way because it was located in a place where the Lycian god Apollo was worshipped. Unlike the Academy, the Lyceum was not a paid school and many were open access.
Aristotle amassed a large library and a number of followers and scholars, known as Peripatetics from περιπατητικό, 'itinerants', named for their habit of analyzing and commenting while walking.
Most of Aristotle's surviving works date from this period. He wrote numerous dialogues, of which only fragments survive. The works that have survived are in the form of treatises and, for the most part, were not intended for publication.
During this period, Aristotle's wife Pythias passed away and he developed a new relationship with Herpilis, who, like him, is said to hail from Stagira.
Although some assume that she was nothing more than his slave; others deduce from Aristotle's last wishes that she was a free woman and was probably his wife at the time of his death.
From this relationship they had children, among them a son, Nicomachus, who mentions the wise man as his father and to whom he dedicated his ethics to Nicomachus.
Although his physical appearance is little known, Aristotle was described as bald, short-legged, small-eyed, stammering, elegant in his clothes, and, according to his own opinions, lacking in ascetic habits.
He was a practical man and an observer, careful, upset and good-natured, devoted to his loved ones and fair to his rivals.
Diogenes Laertius declares that he has a penchant for ridicule and cites some expressions that testify to his calm.
Death
On Alexander's death in 323 B.C. C. It is likely that Athens became an unembarrassing place for those born in Macedonia, particularly those with connections to Aristotle, a clear allusion to the condemnation of Socrates.
Aristotle left Athens and settled in Chalcis, on the island of Evia, where he strangely died the following year at the age of 61 or 62, in 322 BC. C., due to a disease of the digestive organs, his will was kept by Diogenes Laertius.
Musical
After seeing who was Aristotle?, we must highlight his idea about thought, which practically all facets of intellectual research. Aristotle made philosophy in the broad sense, which he would also qualify as "science."
The use of the term science has a different meaning than the term "scientific method." It can be noted: the three types of philosophies, sciences or epistemology: practical knowledge, which includes ethics and politics; productive knowledge means studying the arts, including poetics; and theoretical knowledge, including physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.
The latter is purely contemplative, does not intervene in the object of study. Logic and rhetoric do not integrate substantive knowledge.
Metaphysics
Some say that the meaning "metaphysics" was imposed in the XNUMXst century AD by Andronicus of Rhodes, who compiled several of the works of the sage for the treatise we know as Metaphysics.
So who was Aristotle for metaphysics? This term for him, is above all a theory of the general principles of thought; and secondly, a doctrine of being as such. Aristotle's metaphysics revolves around two fundamental questions: that of the beginning and that of unity.
Critique of Plato's theory: The sage harvested and studied the thought of the philosophers before him, from Thales to his teacher. He structured his own philosophical method and imposed Plato's theory of ideas on criticism.
If Aristotle admits, like Socrates and his teacher, that essence is what defines being, he understands that essence as a form (μορφ) that is inseparably fused to matter, constituting together being, or what he calls substance.
General thoughts are rooted in particular things (in re) and are not prior to them (ante rem). For example, health does not exist in itself, but as an attribute in healthy individual beings.
In which if a man is a man, because he has the form of a man, then a third form would be needed to explain how the man and the form of the man are both men.
Unlike Plato, who conceived of the "existence" of two possible or actual worlds, some scholars believe that Plato's theory is in fact a realism of ideas, Aristotle had a theory that went between the world of notions and the sensible world.
Although it was open to accept that reality is made up of distant and motionless substrata. For Aristotle, the true world is the impressionable world and he criticized, in contradiction to the two worlds of Plato, because this makes their definition difficult, by unnecessarily redoubling realities.
The first philosophy: At the beginning of Book IV of the Metaphysics the distinguished and energetic assertion is made that “there is a science that studies what is, as something that is and the attributes that, by themselves, belong to it”.
Here the sage immediately adds that such a science "cannot be identified with any of the peculiar sciences, but has the greatest and least comprehensible object of study that can exist: being."
None of the proper sciences, such as mathematics and the natural sciences (physics), deals "universally with what is", but each of them cuts or limits a part of reality, taking care to study the properties belonging to this. a predetermined plot.
He called it "first philosophy" or "first science" and theology. The first philosophy, later called metaphysics, is the most general science because it is the science of being as being, and Aristotle identified it with wisdom (sophia), of which he also speaks in the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics.
[...] if there is something eternal and immobile and separate, it is obvious that its knowledge corresponds to a speculative science -theory-, but not to physics [...] nor to mathematics, but to another prior to both [...] ... the first science deals with separate and immobile entities…
there will be three speculative philosophies: Mathematics, Physics and Theology (since it is hidden from anyone that, if anywhere the divine is to be found, it is in such a nature (quiet and separate), and the most precious must take care of the most precious kind.
Thus, the speculative sciences are more noble than the other sciences, and this (theology) more noble than the speculative sciences. Metaphysics IX
Since it is a first principle, it cannot be proved and the rest follows from it. Aristotle elaborates these foundations of thought in more detail in his Organon.
Act and power Parmenides of Elea, considered that change is impossible, since change is the passage from being to not being or vice versa, from not being to being. This is unacceptable, because non-being does not exist and nothing can flow from it. On the other hand, the Heraclids supported the constant flow of things.
Plato established a type of summary with a sensitive world, characterized by a permanent process of transmutation and on the other hand, an abstract and perfect world of ideas, characterized by eternity and incorruptibility.
The sage gives his particular observation to the problem of change. Unlike Parmenides and Plato, he recognizes that there is a great variety of meanings of the verb is in its different uses and applications, instituting that "the expression something that is is said in many ways".
However, these different connotations refer to a single thing, of the same nature, to a single principle. Although the sage distinguishes change (μεταβολή) from movement (κίνησις), this term often refers to any change in general.
In Metaphysics, according to the sage, we emphasize being in action (entelechia, Greek: ἐντελέχεια) and in potentiality (dynamis, Greek: δύναμις). The act is substance as it is presented and power is its capacities to be.
He understands change and movement as "the actualization of what is in power" through the action of causes, the two concepts have two different nuances:
- It acts as an entelechy, the "realization" of a being in power. (For example, him love eternal es a entelechy.).
- To act as energy, the action of an active power. (for example, pleasure is an energy of the body).
- Active power, possibility of producing an action.
- Passive power, possibility of receiving the action of an active power.
Non-being for the teacher "is" because non-being is not absolute nothingness, but a power, an activity, a power of the substance to become. Impotence and impossibility are the opposite of power, its deprivation, the act is the recognition of being in potentiality.
So, to change is to actualize from one being to another being, instead of being a non-being of Parmenides. The change of the cosmos is subordinated to the act and to the power, the preceding act being in absolute superiority over the power.
Since any change "is the act of that which has not come to an end." it is an eternal power, because if it is actualized, there is no movement. Therefore, the change is, therefore, an "imperfect act of the potential insofar as it is potential."
substance and accident
He also understood being as substance, the word substance (from the Greek oὐσία ousía) has various definitions. In Book VII of Metaphysics, he thinker says that the substance has at least four meanings: the essence, the universal, the gender or the subject.
Likewise, the substance in regard to abstract philosophy according to the thought of the sage is divided into three types: the sensitive and perishable (four elements), the sensitive and eternal (the ether) and the immobile (god).
He defined essence as being itself, and only substances have essence, the first substance, like gasoline or sex. In a basic sense, there is only the first substance, in which the essence is realized and not the other way around, thus refuting the Platonic theory of thought:
Therefore, Socrates as an individual man is a first substance, and man is his gender, that is, he is a second substance. The changes of a substance would be those in which the substance appears or disappears and the acquisition of another; there could only be two: generation and corruption.
On the other hand, there are accidents, a way of being that occurs in a substance without being one of the distinctive characteristics of its essence. Accidental alterations, on the other hand, are those that occur without their being, the substantial form becomes another.
That is, something (the substratum) passes into another mode of being, but it remains something and continues to be a substratum of change. These accidents cannot exist outside the composition of matter, because "these are the modes of being" that exist in the substance without necessarily being such or constant.
Apart from the substance, the Philosopher establishes that there are, according to his thought, some categories of being and distinguishes three types of changes:
Then, when the ranks are divided into substance, quality, place, time, relationship, quantity, action and passion, there must be three activities, that of quality, that of quantity and that of place. Physics V
hylomorphic theory
He develops his hylomorphic theory, in which a subject as a "sensible substance" can deduce as a mixture (sýnolon) of matter (hilé) and form (morphé – eidos), the form is what unifies certain matter in an object.
Matter is the constituent substrate of something. This is relative, since each form corresponds to its material (the house corresponds to the bricks), and what is material, in another context is a form (the bricks correspond to clay). The material is different from a formless raw material. , unknowable and eternal that constitutes all of reality, of a certain second (like wood or bronze), which underlies the first by analogy.
Matter, as the principle of existing things, is in power because it 'tends to form, so it remains in change. The form updates the matter, being always in action, since it shows what is in action, that is, its essence. When matter is in action it is because it has its form, the theme of the accident is identical to the substantial form, but not to the accident itself.
Theory of the four causes
Aristotle suggested that a being can be explained by four different types of simultaneously active factors which he calls "causes", aition (αἴτιον). Illustrated by a statue to be appreciated: The material cause, which is the material from which it is made; whose statue is marble or bronze.
- The formal cause, which constitutes the essence as the form of the substance supported by matter; it is the way the sculptor has mastered sculpting.
- The actual cause or agent that produces the "motion"; is the sculptor.
- The final cause, which directs movement towards an end; that is the purpose of the statue.
For these reasons, nature is explained according to a teleology of form. For Aristotle, as for many other ancient writers, the final cause was the most important in terms of explaining practical philosophy. The distinction between power and act leads to the doctrine of the hierarchical scale of beings that tends to actualize the perfection of its content (final cause), accidents "caused by" "chance (τυ")". Aristotle could have added chance as the fifth indeterminate cause (apeiron) that occurs when two causal chains come together by accident.
Theology
Who was Aristotle in this area? In this area he argues that the use of the term "god" does not refer to the deity of Christianity or any other monotheistic religion. He is a god considered only as a philosophical hypothesis to complete a whole theory of change.
His theology is based on his cosmological view and he was one of the first philosophers to formulate an argument from the study of the cosmos for the existence of God. His demonstration will later be adopted by Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians and will contribute to the concept of God.
Motors and mobiles
This wise man maintains that all beings move (mobile) due to other beings that are already in activity (motors). Although he believes that the movement of the universe is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of motors, since they do not activate movement but merely transmit it.
Nothing finite can make something move forever, since a finite quantity cannot have infinite power and vice versa. Also, the initial driving force of the movement is gradually lost due to friction. Therefore, there must be beings who are not the first in such a series, but who inspire constant activity without moving "as he beauty moves the soul."
stationary engine
In Book VIII of Physics, he speaks of existing as an impeccable immaterial act that does not undergo any change and that is the physical principle of the world. Since it is not material, it is not itself physical. Later, in Book XII (Lambda) of Metaphysics, Aristotle mediates through the reality of a divinity and seems to identify it with the "immobile motor", possibly influenced by the we of Anaxagoras.
The first motor cannot have a greatness, neither small nor immense and therefore, it is indivisible and without parts. He defines it as an immobile and incorruptible substance in relation to sensible physical substances.
This, together with the fact that in the ninth chapter he speaks of God, the life of the immobile motor is thought of his own way of thinking «νοήσεως νόησις (noéseos noesis)», that is to say «thought of thought», because thought is the best. For the sage, the gods cannot possibly turn away from it eternally by seeing themselves because, at that moment, they would cease to exist. This has led many authors to speak of Providence.
Life also belongs to God; because the actuality of thought is life, and God is this reality; and the autonomous reality of God is supremely good and eternal life. That is why we say that God is a living being, eternal, extremely kind; so that life and duration may belong continually and eternally to God; because he is god. Metaphysics
The Aristotelian "God" is not the creator of the world, he is only the effective and final cause of all eternal variation and action of the universe, reducing the diverse multiplicity of phenomena to an intelligible unit.
The sage defends the idea of various engines, like the intelligent drivers of planets and stars. These seem to be gods, but everything suggests that they are substantially different from the "first".
Who deserves to be identified with the one whom Contemporary man understands as God that which fed the first celestial sphere and lived beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.
The logic
Who was Aristotle for this it? It is a logic based on his great works, he is well known as the founding father of logic. His main works on the subject were grouped under the name Órganon ("tool") and constitute the first systematic investigation of the principles of valid or correct reasoning.
For him, logic was a necessary tool to enter the world of philosophy and science. His ideas exerted an incomparable influence for more than two millennia, to the point that in the eighteenth century the philosopher Kant even stated:
“From the earliest times logic has followed a sure path, this can be seen in the fact that since the time of Aristotle it has not gone back a single step […] What is even more remarkable about logic is that, Until now, it hasn't been able to take a single step forward, so it clearly looks finished and complete." Critique of Pure Reason, B, VIII
Aristotle's work has been seen since the classical period, and especially in the medieval period in Europe and the Middle East, as the very representation of a completely structured method.
However, he was not alone: the unflappable suggested a system of propositional reasoning that was studied by scholars in medieval times.
The problem of diverse vagueness has also been studied. However, the problems of the rational study of Aristotelian logic were not considered to require revolutionary solutions.
At this time, some researchers maintain that Aristotle's method cannot provide much more than its historical importance, due to the appearance of the so-called rational mathematics.
However, the logic of the wise man is used, among other areas of study and research, in the theory of reasoning to help develop and critically question the analysis schemes used in artificial intelligence reasoning and legal arguments.
Syllogisms and Syllogistics
The implicit knowledge within the reasoning system is the syllogism (or deduction, syllogisms). A syllogism is, according to the definition of this sage, a discourse (logos) in which certain rules are arranged, which has a result, which implies being related to them, for being what they are, and the end will not be different. A classic example of a syllogism is the following:
- All men are mortal.
- All Greeks are men.
- Therefore, all Greeks are mortal.
In this model, after hypotheses (1) and (2) are implemented, conclusion (3) necessarily follows. The idea of the syllogism is similar to the modern notion of an argument with a valid reason, but there are differences.
In the early days of analysis, he established the first valid theory of inference. Called syllogistic, the theory offers a point of view to check the validity of certain very specific types of this theory:
First of all, categorical syllogisms, we must define what a categorical proposition is. A proposition is categorical if it has one of the following four forms:
- Every S is P; for example, all human beings are mammals.
- No S is P; for example, no human is a reptile.
- Some S are P; for example, some people are men.
- Some S are not P; for example, some people are not men.
Each categorical sentence contains two terms: a subject (S) and a predicate (P). A syllogism is categorical if it is made up specifically of two premises and a conclusion and if both premises have exactly one term in common, which is also not present in the conclusion.
For example, the syllogism mentioned above is a terminating syllogism. Granted these descriptions, there are three ways that the middle end can be distributed in facilities. A, B and C are then three different terms:
Figures is the term used by the wise to identify these results. The syllogism mentioned above is an example of the first figure. Since each categorical syllogism consists of three categorical clauses and there are four types of categorical clauses and three types of figures, there are 4×4×4×3 = 192 different categorical syllogisms.
Some of these syllogisms are accurate and some are not. To differentiate one from the other, Aristotle starts with a pair of categorical syllogisms, which he accepts as valid (somewhat like today's rules of inference), and proves (with the help of three conversion rules) the validity of all and only valid categorical syllogisms.
Other contributions to logic
Who was Aristotle for other areas of logic? On hermeneutics, there are some works, research or approaches to modal logic, as well as a controversial and influential discussion on the relationship between time and necessity.
According to the sage, from the pair of inferences "tomorrow there will be a military confrontation" and "tomorrow there will be no military confrontation", it seems that one must be true and the other false. Suppose the first is true, then tomorrow you will have a military confrontation.
But then the future is already determined, and it does not depend on us. The same thing happens if we assume that the second proposition is true today. However, it seems to us that the future is not determined and that, in an important sense, it depends on us.
Faced with this position, he discusses the probability that the propositions about the future are neither one nor the other, that is, a multivalent logic.
He also admitted the validity and importance of inductive content, in which one passes "from the particular to the universal," but devoted little time to his research.
As if that were not enough, he was the first to carry out a systematic study of errors. In his sophistical refutations, he identified and categorized thirteen types of errors, among them the assertion of the consequent, the beginning of the question, and the irrelevant conclusion.
Epistemology
Who was Aristotle for this? He as a philosopher, the type who defends reason, as a student of the great thinker Plato, where a logical method that starts from realities guarantees new worlds and reaches the real and unconscious knowledge of the bases and the intuition of the essences as necessary elements of things.
However, it formulates a theory of knowledge from a vision of truth and experience, where the world of the senses is the only one that exists, where all substances are part, composed of matter and form and rationality.
He is the first to reflect on the value of knowledge from experience and inductive reasoning from examples with deduction, while his great teacher continued in the deduction of a priori principles.
The affirmation of the importance of sensitive knowledge and knowledge of the singular to reach the universal possibilities open to scientific research.
Real knowledge is knowing how to identify the substance of everything, the work of understanding. This form is about understanding causes and principles, among which is the formal cause, or essence.
All these are possibilities that for him reside in matter and that allow us to understand everything and how it will be transformed.
The combination of imagination and memory makes a portrait of what has been experienced through the senses, which allows us to understand what the potentialities of each thing are.
The senses can only grasp the individual, the sensible forms of concrete substances. Comprehension (noûs) is responsible for capturing the universal or its form, through abstraction (aphairesis) in objects, eliminating their sensitive qualities until reaching the essence that defines this entity, it is an inductive process because it goes from the particular to the universal.
agent and patient intellect
This intellectual process is carried out through the intellect, which distinguishes between two by distinguishing its hylomorphic theory:
The agent Intellect (always in action) is the immortal, separable, eternal and efficacious cause of knowledge. It is the active power that produces the general definitions (form) of things (matter).
The patient intellect (in the power to understand) is peculiar to man, inseparable and mortal. In himself, he is not capable of thinking, so he needs to receive the universal concepts to actualize him.
Ethics
Who was Aristotle for it? He considered ethics as a practical study rather than a theoretical one, that is, destined to be well and do good instead of knowing it for oneself. He supported what is now called a virtue ethic. Aristotle considers that the goal pursued by man is happiness, which consists in the contemplative life.
All human action tends to a good. So there is a teleologism, identifying the end with the good. His ethics is an ethics of goods because he assumes that whenever the human acts, he does so in search of a certain good.
The highest good is happiness (eudaimonia) and happiness is wisdom and evil is a form of ignorance of what to do. Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, took into account two things: the quality of the human being and the quality of life.
A sublime man is a successful example of humanity. A person who leads an exceptional life until death reaches the human telos, being well is part of the good life.
Human nature entails, for everyone, the ability to form habits, but the habits formed by a particular individual depend on that individual's culture and repeated personal choices.
Man has "happiness" as his goal, that is, the active and committed realization of his innate capacities, although this goal can be achieved in various ways.
However, Aristotle pointed out that there is an element of luck in happiness to avoid unhappiness and that it is advisable to possess both physical and external goods. As beings of changing nature, the happiness of man is imperfect and we can lose it.
types of virtues
When asked who was Aristotle?, you have to see the virtues according to him. In his Eudemian Ethics, he defines virtue as excellence (areté), the best way of being of everything that has a function. In man, therefore, virtue is the excellence of being.
The reason of the soul is to give life and the mission of the virtue of the soul is the good life and therefore, happiness (eudaimonia), and the best ends and the good are in the soul. Aristotle distinguished two types of virtues:
- Moral: it is an expression of personality, the product of habits that reflect repeated choices. Ethical capacities are acquired by custom or habit and consist, fundamentally, in dominating the irrational part of the soul (sensitive) and in regulating relations between men. A moral capacity is always the balance between two less desirable extremes (for example, courage is the balance between cowardice and thoughtless impetuosity).
- Dianoetic or intellectual virtue: it pertains to the thinking part of the individual, being therefore typical of the intellect (us) or thought (noesis). Its origin is not innate, but must be learned through education or teaching and start from the dianoia, the part that idealizes the soul. The dianoetic virtues are understanding, science, wisdom, art and prudence. Prudence is not science or praxis, it is a virtue and the most important.
Aristotelian ethics is an ethics of the privileged: for him, full excellence can only be achieved by adult men belonging to the wealthy class and not by women, children or "barbarians". Ethics is derived from political science.
Political philosophy
For the philosophy of politics, who was Aristotle? In the first place, it must be emphasized that he was not a study of perfect governments in an indeterminate way, but rather a test of how ideals, norms, customs and properties interact in real cases.
Politics is the main work in which their political doctrines are found. The library of the teaching center of him, had a large number of works, including 158 constitutions, such as Greek and foreign governments.
Aristotle himself wrote the Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, a work that was lost until 1890, the year in which it was recovered. Historians have found in this text very valuable data to reconstruct certain phases of Athenian history.
political naturalism
Who was Aristotle in these ideas? He designs the structure of the State as a union of equals that aspires to the best possible life; a kind of natural being that is not born as the result of a pact or an agreement, but has its roots in the nature of things.
"From all this it follows that the city is a natural thing, and that man is by nature a social animal, and that the unsocial by nature and not by chance is a being inferior or superior to man." Politics
In his studies he combined his naturalist works with his political ideas, prior to ethology and sociobiology. For him, a man is a social animal ("zoon politikon"), that is, a being who lives in a city (from the Greek polis).
He sees evidence that nature does nothing in vain, it has endowed us with the ability to speak, allowing them to share moral concepts such as justice. The human is a social animal that develops his goals within a community.
Human politics is explained by its faculty of language, the only tool capable of creating group thinking and a set of laws that differentiate what is permitted from what is prohibited.
In politics, it holds that human individuals came together to reproduce, then created towns, and finally, several towns came together to form a city-state.
For him, the state must have eugenic control over families and also over the education of their children, since they belong to them, being the very essence of the city.
The philosopher had a natural hierarchical vision of society, in which the Greek male is above other human beings such as women, children and barbarians.
He explicitly recognized the economic necessity of slavery at a time when industrialization did not exist, comparing the slave to a material good. He also excludes the citizenship of artisans, farmers, and merchants.
State Forms
When wondering who was Aristotle, you should also see his forms of political organization. In this sense, the objective of the state is not only to avoid injustice or balance the economy, but to give at least some entitled individuals the possibility of living a good contemplative life.
The sage exposed in this area the classic theory of ways of government, which much later was taken up by various writers.
The well-known theory of the six forms of government is based on the end of the political regime (common or private good). Below is a table with the differences between those who seek good for all and those who are corrupt:
The most "divine" for what is fair, but also rare, is the form of government of kings. They are followed by the aristocracy and the republic. The deviation of the first regime is the worst form of government: tyranny, followed by oligarchy and democracy.
He also refers to a mixed "democratic-aristocratic" form of government, which he defined as Politeia. He opts for a class between high and low, which allows citizens to live in leisure activities while doing their jobs (judges, merchants, priests).
“It is obvious that the average type diet is the best, since it is the only one free from sedition. Where the middle class is large, this is where sedition and discord occur less among citizens.
And the big cities are more free from sedition for the same reason, because the middle class is numerous; on the other hand, in small ones it is easier for all the citizens to be divided into two classes, so that nothing remains between them, and almost all are poor or rich». Politics, 1296a, 13-14
Who was Aristotle in Economics?
He used the word economy to speak to the management of the house and the home. To refer to what we consider to be economic problems, he used the Greek word chrematistics.
Although he did not analyze economic problems in detail, he did make substantial contributions to economic thought, especially thought of in the Middle Ages.
Who was Aristotle for politics? He deals with the city, private property, commerce, and offers one of the initial reasons for the origin of money.
Money came into use because people became dependent on it. each other, need and export the surplus. For convenience, people agreed to trade something useful and easily applicable, like iron or silver.
Aristotle wrote that the value of all good derives from the need for a single type of universal category of the measured. Thus, money accepts the union of different products and makes them «commensurable».
Who was Aristotle in the theory of value? It is said that he differentiated price from value and made a distinction between use value and exchange value, present in him, he had an unfavorable view of retail because he believed that the use of money for profit through interest was not natural. , because he made a profit from the money itself and not from its use.
His response to criticisms of private property, from the point of view of Lionel Robbins, anticipated later advocates of private property among philosophers and economists, regarding the general usefulness of social arrangements.
Science
Who was Aristotle for this area of knowledge? His so-called "natural philosophy" deals with the search for "causes" in the world. He encompasses a wide range of natural phenomena, including those now spanning physics, biology, and other natural sciences.
Aristotle did not perform experiments in the modern sense of the term. He used the ancient Hellenic term "pepeiramenoi" to denote observations or, in most cases, investigative procedures such as dissection.
Instead, he pursued a different style of science: like systematically compiling data, finding patterns common to entire groups of animals, and deducing possible causal explanations from them.
Physics
Who was Aristotle for it? His philosophy in this area is the set of philosophical and cosmological theses and physical approaches such as the stars promoted from his circle of thinkers. These thought forms integrated within themselves: the elements such as air or fire, ether, movement, four causes, celestial spheres, geocentrism, among other things.
The most relevant studies of the Thinker where his physical ideas are built are: Physics, On Heaven and On Generation and Corruption. The fundamental foundations of his physics are:
- Natural places: each element would like to be in a different position with respect to the center of the Earth, which is also the center of the universe.
- Gravity / Lightness: To reach this place, matter feels an upward or downward force.
- Rectilinear Motion: Motion in response to this force is in a straight line at constant speed.
- Relationship between speed and density: this means that the first term is inversely proportional to the second term in the middle.
- The void is impossible to imagine: the transfer of this environment is very fast according to him.
- Ether: all points in space are filled with matter.
- Continuity theory: If spherical atoms existed, there would be a vacuum between them, so matter cannot be atomic.
- Quintessence: Objects on the planet are not made of the matter of the planet.
- The incorruptible and eternal cosmos: the Sun and the planets are circumferences without any type of deformation.
- Circular motion: the planets move in a perfect circumference.
- Time: linked to movement and space.
- The now, the before and the after: measurements of the beings of time and of a cosmic time that shelters the time of perishable beings.
Elements
In his work on generation and corruption, He proposed that the universe was structured by the combination of basic or compound elements based on the four pre-Socratic elements of Empedocles' pluralistic theory.
For the study carried out at the time, everything is made up of: earth, water, air, fire and ether. In this area, each one of them has a suitable place, determined by its weight or gravity that will depend on the situations that are found.
Regarding the fifth element, Aristotle argued that all the heavens, and every particle of matter in the universe, was formed from another element, which he called "ether" (from the Greek Αἰθήρ). This element is said to be weightless and was "harmless." The ether was also called "quintessence", that is, "fifth substance".
Spring Suspension
Who was Aristotle for this area? He states that each element of the Earth moves, naturally, in a straight line towards its corresponding place, where it will stop when it reaches it, so the movement of the Earth is always linear and always ends up stopping.
Water and earth naturally move toward the center of the universe, air and fire move away from the center, and ether revolves around the center. These principles have been used to explain phenomena such as falling rocks and rising smoke.
They also explained the roundness of the planet and the orbits of the heavenly bodies. The heavens move in a natural and infinite way in an intricate circular movement, so, according to logic, they must be composed of an additional element, which he called ether, a superior element that is not susceptible to any change other than that of location made by a circular motion.
The laws of motion established by him establish that objects fall at a speed proportional to their weight and behave on the contrary proportionally to the density of the fluid in which they are submerged.
This is an exact approximation for objects in the Earth's gravitational field moving through air or water, however its physical theories are known to be wrong. Aristotle claimed that heavy objects (the Earth, for example) require more force to move them; and objects pushed with greater force move faster, that is:
- F=mv
This formula is incorrect in modern physics, the sage also specifies that:
“We see that the same weight and the same body move faster than another for two reasons: either because what it crosses is different (such as passing through water, land or air), or because the body that one moves differs from another for being overweight or light, although the other factors are the same.”
This argument could elaborate the following formula: the speed of a body is proportional to the force applied during its movement and inversely proportional to its mass and resistance. Namely:
- v=F/mr
The Aristotelian theory that linear motion will never fail to take place through a resisting medium is in fact valid for all observable ground motions. Aristotle also argued that heavier bodies of a specific matter fall faster than lighter ones when their shapes are the same.
A misconception that was accepted as the norm for about 1.800 years until the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei conducted his experiments with spheres on inclined planes.
Who was Aristotle for Astronomy?
He supported the sphericity of the Earth using logical and mathematical evidence, as well as empirical data, such as the variation in the position of stars in different places and the round shadow of the Earth cast in lunar eclipses. The philosopher also argued that the Earth was the size of about 40 myriad stages (about 80,468 km).
Another thing about Who was Aristotle in astronomy?, is that he proposed the existence of a spherical and finite Universe. The Earth was stationary in a geocentric system, while the Sun revolved around it along with other planets. Aristotle holds that the perpetual motion of the universe must be caused by a simple stationary motor, otherwise it will go backwards ad infinitum.
The stationary motor must occupy the outer circumference of the sphere, because the things closest to the stationary motor are the ones that move with the greatest speed, that is, the stars. The stationary motor drives the first celestial sphere, and the movement of the "wandering stars" (this is what the Greek word "planets" means) needs other spheres and, consequently, other motors.
Each sphere is inhabited by an immaterial being that Aristotle called "Intelligence". Following the cosmology of Eudoxus of Cnidos and his disciple Calipus, that he would take into account 33 spheres to explain the observable celestial displacements. He introduced more balls to explain the movement of the five planets or "wandering bodies", the sun and the stars. He suggested that the number of them was "55 or 47".
He was the first to criticize the Pythagorean notion of the harmony of the spheres. The Pythagoreans believed that the movement of the planets must produce a noise, but they explain that it cannot be improved because this noise goes back to our ears from our birth. He considered this idea ingenious and very poetic, but impossible.
This theory of the Earth as the center of the universe lasted for several centuries until Copernicus in the XNUMXth century changed the concept and introduced a new set of paradigms, seeing the Sun as the center of the universe.
Maths
Who was Aristotle for this science? Although he did not make any specific mathematical discoveries, he made a significant contribution to the development of mathematics by laying down the principles of logic.
In the philosophy raised in this area, he considers that the objects in it are, unlike his teacher, abstractions of objects and true necessary elements of the physical world and cannot have an existence other than empirical things.
Mathematics can be considered universal, Aristotle also wrote about the concept of infinity, differentiating between potential infinity and real infinity, the paradox of the wheels was attributed to him.
Geology
Who was Aristotle for this area? He was one of the first to carry out the various initial studies of this fascinating science. He claimed that geological change was too slow to be observed in a person's lifetime.
Geologist Charles Lyell noted that Aristotle described such change as including "lakes that had dried up" and "deserts that had been watered by rivers"; Giving as examples the growth of the Nile delta from the time of Homer, and "the uplift of one of the Aeolian islands, before a volcanic eruption", he was the first to speak of an "Antarctic region".
Who was Aristotle for Optics?
The first theories of light come from the ancient Greeks, they believed that light was a kind of disturbance of the air. However, according to him, light does not travel or move, but is a presence that fills space.
According to the Aristotelian treatise on vision, sensations are created thanks to a medium, for example, air or water. Which are seen as transparent, in terms of possibility or power. The transparency update is slight; it is, therefore, a state of transparency as such rather than a movement, and its appearance is instantaneous.
The color acts on the transparency in act that, in turn, acts on the corresponding organ, indicated an approach of the seven tones that finds its support in the seven musical notes: white, yellow, red, violet, green, blue and black .
According to its degree of transparency, white is the maximum transparency and black is the opposite. All other colors occur in a variety of these two ratios.
According to Aristotle, there is a causal procedure from object to organ. This process transmits the quality of the object of each sense according to its environment, and finally to the soul.
When the color reaches the eyes, they send information through the blood vessels to the heart, which is responsible for distinguishing all the signals that reach it.
Aristotle explained optical experiments using a camera obscura in his Problems. It consisted of a room with a small opening that let in light.
With it, he saw that no matter how the hole was made, the image of the sun always remained circular. He also noted that as the distance between the aperture and the image surface increased, the image grew larger. He also mentioned in his writings the typical defects of vision, due to lens defects, for myopia and hyperopia.
Biology
Who was Aristotle for this topic? Well, he is considered the father of it. He was a great observer and scholar, describing more than 500 "living creatures". A study of the animal kingdom affirming that even the inferior ones have something admirable and divine.
The philosopher collected this material thanks to the Hippocratic treatises and information from fishermen, shepherds, hunters, beekeepers. He approached the subject of the soul as a biologist, because he considered the soul as the vital beginning. What is alive is alive thanks to her, not to matter. The soul is the form and final cause of the body, and there are three types of soul:
- The vegetative soul (typical of plants): nutrition and reproduction.
- The sensitive soul (characteristic of animals): perception, movement and desire.
- The rational soul (typical of humans): reasoning.
In his book Histoire des Animaux, he made a natural hierarchical scale of beings according to their characteristics and their elements (Great Chain of Being): form without matter is at one end and matter without form is at the other end.
The transition from matter to form must be shown in its different levels of the natural world. What is higher in the scale has more value, because the principle of form is further advanced. Species on this scale are fixed, but that individual who asks us who was Aristotle? He himself does not maintain that these species cannot evolve, change or become extinct with the passage of time.
The beginnings of zoology must be sought specifically in the studies of the generation and anatomy of animals in the Aristotelian work. Aristotle believed that intentional final causes guided all natural processes; this teleological vision justified its observed data as an expression of cause and formal conception. Each group of animals was divided into "genos", which in turn were divided into "eidos" species, he distinguished two groups of "maximum genera":
- enaima (animals with blood), which is similar to vertebrates. They are divided into viviparous (humans and mammals) and oviparous with perfect eggs (birds, fish and reptiles).
- He stopped (animals without bloodshed), which is similar to invertebrates. Includes insects, worms, crustaceans, and molluscs with or without shells.
This ranking remained in force in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, until Carlos Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. However, he noted several exceptions to his classification as sharks that had a placenta. For a modern biologist, the explanation is convergent evolution.
Embryology
The embryogenesis model sought to explain how hereditary characteristics from parents cause the formation and development of an embryo. Who was Aristotle for it? He constructed the growth of the embryo based in part on studies of chicken eggs: Pneuma first makes the heart appear; this is vital, as the heart nourishes all other organs.
The concept of pneuma causes the phenomenon of growth of the other organs to occur, first the internal parts and finally the external ones, which are created from the first mentioned. He explained that the vegetative soul enters the fetus first, then the animal soul, and finally the human soul.
The sex of the child depends on factors such as temperature, diet and age of the father and whether the sperm exceeds menstruation. On the other hand, he wrote about the spontaneous generation of plants, fish and insects by the combination of decomposed matter with the heat of the environment.
Psychology
Who psychology was Aristotle for, he describes memory as the ability to take into account a perceived experience and to distinguish between the internal "appearance" and an event in the past.
In other words, a memory is a mental image that can be retrieved, he believed that an impression is left on a bodily organ that undergoes different transformations to create a memory.
A remembrance occurs when factors such as images or sounds are so complex that the nervous system cannot receive all the impressions at once. These variations are the same as those involved in the operations of sensation, Aristotelian "common sense," and thought.
Aristotle also about dreams in Sleep and Wake resulting from excessive use of the senses or digestion while a person sleeps. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud has commented on and relied on passages from Aristotle for his work on dream interpretation.
Esthetic
Who was Aristotle for it? He reflects extensively on the arts, of which the philosophical study was part of aesthetics. In such a way that his most relevant work, especially for its future importance, is Poetics, which was interpreted as dogma in the XNUMXth century.
He is also considered the first author to write methodically on aesthetics, although as a discipline, it appeared in today's Germany already in the modern era. His thinking focuses on the arts, materials and concrete, and not so much on the abstract concept of beauty as his teacher, he had proposed.
However, who is Aristotle in art? He seems to dismiss the fact that the art form exists in objects. Instead, he advocated an idealized universal form, similar to Plato. He defines as art all human activity of sensible performance based on knowledge and makes the following classification:
- Imitative: imitation as means and end. It is something natural in the human being and produces pleasure. The term imitation was for him different from what it is today; thus, he writes that art must represent the universal in relation to the particular, and that the harmony of what is represented is more important than its fidelity to the real model.
- Non-imitative: those that do not express emotions. An example of this is a scientific treatise. Note, that although a treatise is not considered art today, it fits the Aristotelian definition and ancient Greek consciousness in general.
Despite his fixation on concrete art, he devotes some writings to the more general concept of beauty. So, for Aristotle, knowledge is pleasant, therefore, it implies aesthetic enjoyment, and what is loved with sight and hearing is beautiful.
He divided these senses according to the enjoyment they generated by capturing something beautiful: sight, intellectual pleasure, hearing, moral pleasure. For him, beauty was a unit of parts that had the following formal conditions:
- Taxis: Spatial distribution of the constituent elements of the beautiful object.
- Symmetry: the correct proportion of these parts.
- To horisménon: The extension or size of the beautiful. It must not be fatally exceeded or diminished in its dimensions.
Poetics
Who was Aristotle in poetics? The first thing to know is his affirmation of his voice in animals, but that only men have words (logos) to discern between what is correct and what is good.
The philosopher has worked on the use of language, both in his Rhetoric and the art of convincing communication, and in his Poetics or Art of creative writing. In chapter 20 of Poetics, he considers utterance (lexicon) as a linguistic expression of thought, and in this he describes its grammatical parts:
«The diction, considered as a whole, is composed of the following parts: letters (or last elements), syllable, conjunction, article, noun, verb, case and discourse. The letter is a sound. Indivisible sounds of a particular type, which can be explained in intelligible sounds. Animals also make indivisible sounds, but none of them is a letter in our sense of the word.
Literature
Who was Aristotle in this area? The influence of poetics is still imprinted in the tradition of modern literary theory, such as the concepts of "mimesis", "catharsis", "diction", "vicissitudes", "anagnorisis", "knot", "result" and their distinction between the different "literary genres" in its fragments:
- Serious genre: formed by epic (narrative) and tragedy (dramatic).
- Type of joke: made up of satire (narrative) and comedy (dramatic).
In the literature of who was Aristotle, he devotes a book to each genre in his Poetics, but the second devoted to comedy has been lost.
Rhetoric
Who was Aristotle on this topic? He has more respect for rhetoric than Plato, who condemned the sophists. Rhetoric is an «art», a tékhne, that is, a compendium where the theory and practice on a specific object, in this case the persuasive word, is the rhetorical discourse.
A distinction with other living beings according to who Aristotle was, is language, transmission of knowledge, supported by logical factors and a series of effective subjective factors for communication, of which Aristotle says:
“Well, (he is persuaded) by the mood, when the speech is said in such a way that it makes the speaker trustworthy.
Because we believe honest people more and more, generally in all things, but, of course, completely in those in which there is no room for correction, but are questionable; although this must also be done through the discourse and not because it is prejudged by the way the speaker is.
Therefore, no (it is true that in art, as some writers assert, the honesty of the speaker adds nothing to the order, convincing me, but rather, so to speak, it is almost the personal disposition that constitutes the (means of) stronger persuasion.
Rhetoric.
The technical means of persuasion are divided into three groups:
- Pathos: It is the ability of the speaker to transmit sensations and expressions to the audience, seeking empathy when the arguments to be made are controversial.
- Ethos: the speaker's attitude is therefore his state of mind, a decisive factor in reaching a listener's settlement.
- Logos: can be understood as the word, talk or think. This is the logical reasoning behind any attempt to appeal to the intellect, to logical approaches.
Aristotle divides all speeches between the types of oratory:
- deliberative oratory
- forensic oratory
- exhibition oratory
Aristotle's ability to convince occurs by virtue of the proof of the truth of what has been said. It is based on the persuasive power of the irrational elements of speech, recognizing the importance of the cognitive value of emotions.
Faced with Plato's contempt for rhetoric, he rehabilitates it. This discipline has become part of the TK block of the trivium.
Influence Contemporary
For two centuries, the great thinker has had a great influence on a large number of scholars from all areas, for example, Ravaisson and Brentano.
Hegel, following German thinkers, expands the field of teleology, which no longer concerns only men, but also the system. In addition, it goes from a universal fact to temporal facts, a change that strongly marks modern teleologies.
Hegel also has a conception of the individual different from that of the Hellenic sage. According to Hegel, humans are part of a universal whole that gives them a representation, a role and functions; instead, the character of this article is more individualistic, putting more detail on the centrality of the human being.
Karl Marx is sometimes considered to be influenced by Aristotle because in him lies the idea of free action to realize the "potential" of human beings that capitalism prevents. Marx called him "the world's greatest thinker." world. antiquity” in El Capital.
And Who was Aristotle for Friedrich Nietzsche. He was based on the thoughts made by the Hellenic. Implausible as it may be, it is true that Aristotle's rigid separation between action and production and his justification for the subordination of slaves and others to virtue.
Currently, the Aristotelian biological essentialism in the species is out of use, being the idea proposed by Darwin capable of explaining the differentiation within a species without offering an essence in the species that the Greek sage develops.
The ordered arrangement of the parts of the embryo is a precursor to the processes proposed by two later scientists: the laws of embryology proposed by Karl Ernst von Baer and The Theory of Recapitulation by Ernst Haeckel.
In the last century, Heidegger also returned to the ideas of the Hellenic sage, elaborating a new interpretation with the intention of justifying the disarmament of the scholastic and philosophical tradition.
Various political scientists have taken up his practical philosophy in their ethical and political theories. Ayn Rand stated that she regarded the thinker as the world's greatest philosopher and particularly appreciated his Órganon ("Logic").
On the other hand, who was Aristotle George Boole. He blindly accepted the thinker's logic, but decided to go everywhere with his system of algebraic logic in his 1854 book The Laws of Thought.
However, Gottlob Frege developed notions of quantification and predication into his logic, rendering his syllogism obsolete. Bertrand Russell in his book History of Western Philosophy was very critical of his logic and went so far as to say of him in The Scientific Perspective that:
He is the worst exponent of the human being.
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