Aristotle (384-321 BCE)

Biography• Studied at Plato’s Academy• Founded the Lyceum• Tutored Alexander the Great• Classified and mapped out

knowledgeo Logic, physics, rhetoric, ethics, metaphysics,

etc.

“Everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian”

Platonisto Favor the abstracto Favor Truth and logico Wants to attain perfect

knowledge and ideals

Aristoteliano Favor the concreteo Wants to gather

knowledge of actual things

Aristotelian Metaphysics • Aristotle’s Metaphysics: the study of

substanceo Substance: a unity of form and mattero Hylomorphic Composition: everything is made of BOTH

matter and form• Criticizes Plato’s forms

o Forms can’t explain changeo Forms can’t relate the visible and intelligible worlds.

Aristotle unites Plato’s visible and intelligible world and explains

change• Matter: Potentiality• Form: Actuality

Matter + Form = Substance

Potentiality and Actuality

Acorn Sapling Young Tree Mature TreePotentiality

Actuality(matter)

(form)

S U B S T A N C E

Aristotle’s Causes• Material Cause: determines what a thing is made

of• Formal Cause: determines what a thing is or will

be• Efficient Cause: determines the process by which

it was made or where it came from• Final Cause: determines the purpose for which it

was made

More Metaphysics• Teleology: everything has an end

or purposeo Living things (substances) have ends

• Inherent in their Formal and Final CauseoA dog’s end is to more fully be a dog

o Non-living things (artifacts) have purposes• Imposed upon them from outside

oA knife’s purpose is to cut things

What came first, the Chicken or the Egg?

“In arguing that actuality is more fundamental than potentiality, Aristotle effectively argues that the chicken comes before the egg, as one commentator puts it. He is telling us that an object can only be a potential something if there is already an actual something for that object to become. This claim has the paradoxical result that, for instance, the chicken must already exist for the egg to be a potential chicken. Of course, it is obviously false that individual chickens precede individual eggs: every chicken that now exists must have been an egg at some point. However, according to book Zeta, individual chickens are not substances. The species of chicken is a substance, and there can be no chicken eggs until there is a species called “chicken” for those eggs to become. After all, we cannot point to an object and say, “that is a chicken egg” if there is no such thing as a chicken. Substance is the most fundamental thing there is, so substance must be an actuality. Since, as Aristotle has argued earlier, nothing can exist unless substance exists, that means that potentialities cannot exist unless their actualities as substances already exist.”

More of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

• The universe is mechanical• The “Unmoved Mover”

o God is Pure Formo Cosmological: God is the first cause in a chain of causeso Teleological: defined in terms of cause or purpose. God

is the first cause or purpose.• All objects have a final cause

Aristotle’s Epistemology

• We understand when we know both the material and formal causes

• “Experience, not authority, should be taken as the ultimate standard of judgment.”

• Organized logic as a system of argumentationo Syllogism

Aristotle’s Axiology• What is happiness/the good?

o The “mean”o Rational, objective, and relativeo The life of contemplation

Aristotle’s Legacy• Foundation of science and

astronomy until the 16th century• Foundation of Christian doctrine

o Fused Aristotle with the Bible