Aristotle: Unlocking Aristotle's Wisdom, a Journey Through the Mind of a Master Philosopher

By Fouad Sabry

Who is Aristotle

Aristotle was a philosopher and polymath in the ancient Greek world. The natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts are only few of the fields that are covered in his publications. A wide range of topics are covered. It was he who initiated the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which laid the foundation for the creation of contemporary science. He was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy, which was located in the Lyceum in Athens.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights about the following:

Chapter 1: Aristotle

Chapter 2: Avicenna

Chapter 3: Alexander of Aphrodisias

Chapter 4: Nicomachean Ethics

Chapter 5: Plato

Chapter 6: Averroes

Chapter 7: Teleology

Chapter 8: Islamic philosophy

Chapter 9: Ancient Greek philosophy

Chapter 10: Al-Farabi

Chapter 11: Aristotelianism

Chapter 12: Renaissance philosophy

Chapter 13: Telos

Chapter 14: Potentiality and actuality

Chapter 15: Aristotelian ethics

Chapter 16: Unmoved mover

Chapter 17: G. E. L. Owen

Chapter 18: Eudorus of Alexandria

Chapter 19: Medieval philosophy

Chapter 20: Philosophy of happiness

Chapter 21: Aristotle's biology

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information about Aristotle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jan 31, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Aristotle

Aristotle (/ˈærɪstɒtəl/; Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs, pronounced [aristotélɛːs]; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath.

His writings cover a wide range of natural science-related topics, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psyche and the humanities.

As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy at the Lyceum in Athens, he is known as Peripatos, He initiated the extensive Aristotelian tradition that followed, which laid the foundation for the growth of modern science.

We know little about Aristotle's life.

He was born in the northern Greek city of Stagira during the Classical period.

His father, Nicomachus, Aristotle's father passed away when he was a child, Moreover, he was raised by a guardian.

At seventeen or eighteen years of age he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BC).

Soon after Plato's death,, Aristotle left Athens and traveled to Egypt, in accordance with the request of Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father instructed him beginning in 343 BC.

He established a library in the Lyceum, which enabled him to produce many of his countless papyrus scroll books.

Even though Aristotle composed many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only about one-third of his original output has survived, none of which was intended for publication. Aristotle provided a sophisticated synthesis of the various pre-existing philosophies. The West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as its problems and methods of inquiry, primarily from his teachings. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on nearly every form of knowledge in the West, and it continues to be a topic of discussion among contemporary philosophers.

The views of Aristotle profoundly influenced medieval scholarship. Physical science's influence spanned Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, and was not systematically replaced until the Enlightenment, when theories such as classical mechanics were developed. Until the 19th century, some of Aristotle's zoological observations in his biology, such as the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were discredited. During the Middle Ages, he also influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies and Christian theology, particularly the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered as The First Teacher by medieval Muslim scholars, as The Philosopher by medieval Christians such as Thomas Aquinas, and as the master of those who know by the poet Dante. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and medieval scholars like Peter Abelard and John Buridan studied them. The influence of Aristotle on logic lasted well into the nineteenth century. In addition, his ethics, which were always influential, attracted renewed interest with the advent of virtue ethics in the modern era.

The specifics of Aristotle's life are not generally well-established. Ancient biographies are frequently speculative, and historians agree on few significant details.

School of Aristotle in Mieza, Macedonia, Greece

Aristotle moved to Athens between the ages of seventeen and eighteen to continue his education at Plato's Academy.

Aristotle tutoring Alexander by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Aristotle was appointed director of the Macedonian royal academy. During Aristotle's time at the Macedonian court, he taught not only Alexander but also two other future kings: Philip and Philip II. Ptolemy and Cassander are mentioned.

Portrait bust of Aristotle; Imperial Roman (1st or 2nd century AD) copy of Lysippos's lost bronze sculpture.

During this time in Athens, between 335 and 323 B.C., Aristotle is believed to have composed the majority of his works.

Aristotle's Prior Analytics is credited as the first formal study of logic, What is now known as Aristotelian logic with its syllogism types (methods of logical argument), They are books:

Categories

On Interpretation

Prior Analytics

Posterior Analytics

Topics

On Sophistical Refutations

Plato (left) and Aristotle in Raphael's 1509 fresco, The Athens Academy.

Aristotle holds his Nicomachean Ethics and points to the ground, His representation of immanent realism, While Plato points to the heavens,, referring to his Theory of Forms, and maintains his Timaeus.

The term metaphysics appears to have been coined by the editor of the first century AD who compiled several small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise known as Metaphysics.

It was called first philosophy by Aristotle, and distinguished it from mathematics and natural science (physics) as the contemplative (theoretikē) philosophy which is theological and studies the divine.

He authored the Metaphysics (1026a16):

If there were no other independent things besides the composite natural ones, then the study of nature would be the primary type of knowledge; however, if there is some motionless independent thing, then the knowledge of this precedes it and is first philosophy, and it is universal in this way because it is first. And it is part of this type of philosophy to investigate being as being, both what it is and what it entails by virtue of being.

Aristotle examines the concepts of substance (ousia) and essence (to ti ên einai, the what was to be (Book VII), he concludes that a specific substance is composed of both matter and shape, The philosophical doctrine known as hylomorphism.

In Book Eight, He distinguishes the substance's matter as the substratum, or the material from which it is made.

For example, Bricks are the substance of a home, stones, timbers, etc, or whatever constitutes the possible dwelling, whereas the substance itself is the actual house, namely, covering for bodies and goods or any other distinguishing characteristic that allows us to define something as a house.

The account of the matter is the formula that yields the constituent parts, And the formula that accounts for the differentiation is the form.

Plato's forms exist as universals, similar to the ideal shape of an apple.

For Aristotle, Matter and shape both belong to the individual thing (hylomorphism).

Aristotle's philosophy, like that of his teacher Plato, aims for the universal. Aristotle's ontology locates the universal (katholou) in particulars (kath' hekaston), or worldly things, whereas for Plato, the universal is a form that actual things imitate. According to Aristotle, form is still the foundation of phenomena, but it is instantiated in a particular substance.

As he explains in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption (319b–320), concerning the nature of change (kinesis) and its causes, he distinguishes coming-to-be (genesis, also translated as 'generation') from corruption:

expansion and contraction, which is change in quantity; locomotion, which is space-based movement; and

alteration, which is quality change.

Aristotle argued that a capability like playing the flute could be acquired – the potential made actual – by learning.

Coming-to-be is a change in which the substance of the thing undergoing the change has changed. In this specific modification, he introduces the concepts of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in relation to the matter and the shape. Potentiality refers to what a thing is capable of doing or being acted upon if the conditions are favorable and it is not impeded by another factor. For instance, the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) a plant, and if nothing prevents it from developing into a plant, it will do so. Potentially, beings can 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), which can be innate or acquired. For instance, the eyes have the potential to see (innate - being acted upon), whereas the ability to play the flute can be acquired through practice (exercise - acting). Actuality is the realization of the potentiality's conclusion. Because the end (telos) is the driving force behind all transformations and potentiality exists for the sake of the end, actuality is the end. In light of the preceding illustration, an actuality is when a plant performs one of the activities that plants perform.

For that which a thing is for (to hou heneka) is its principle, and its becoming is for its end; and its actuality is its end, and it is for this reason that its potentiality is acquired. For animals do not have sight in order to see, but rather they have sight in order to see.

In conclusion, the material used to construct a house has the potential to be a house, and both the building process and the final form of the house are actualities, which are also a final cause or goal. Then, Aristotle concludes that actuality is prior to potentiality in terms of formula, time, and substance. With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle attempts to solve the problem of the unity of beings, such as what makes a man one? How is man a unity if, according to Plato, there are two Ideas: animal and biped? According to Aristotle, however, the potential being (matter) and the actual being (form) are identical.

Plato's epistemology begins with knowledge of universal Forms and descends to knowledge of particular imitations of these.

Aristotle's natural philosophy encompasses a vast array of natural phenomena, including those currently studied by physics, biology, and other natural sciences.