Aristotle
Introduction
and Posterior Analytics
Introduction
I. Core of
Platonism
A. Metaphysical – Forms and
participation
B. Epistemic – Innate knowledge
through recollection
II.
Aristotle rejects the World of the Forms
Three basic reasons that we will see in the Metaphysics, but let’s just review them now.
A. “Participation” is an empty term.
B. Parsimony.
C. Arguments render all these weird
and incoherent views of form – e.g. If we argue that there must be one Form when
we use the same name for many things then we Forms of negations. Blind.
D. The Forms can’t explain change
III. What is
really real is the individual “substance”. (“Sub” – under, “stare” -- to stand)
(p.251)
A. “Primary
substance” individual things. (e.g. This
individual human being)
B. “Secondary
substance” – species and genera.
(e.g. man and animal)
C. All properties and
secondary substances are either said of primary substances or are in primary
substances. (p.252). If there were no human beings there would be no species
“man”. If there were no blue things, “blue” would just not exist.
-- But how
can we talk and think about such things? --
IV.
Consistency of human grasp on mental likenesses (“affections”). (Contrary to Gorgias) We all have the same likeness in mind. (p.254)
V.
Universals vs. Particulars (p.255)
-- n.b. with all this talk of secondary substances and
universals, Aristotle is agreeing with Plato that there is a Form or Nature, and
that grasping this nature or form, the unity that is shared by the many, is
what is crucial for understanding. --
VI.
Deduction (a valid argument) and Demonstration (a deduction which is not only
valid, but sound argument AND
the premises not only happen to be true, but are seen to be true upon acquaintance with
them.) (P. 258). The premises of a demonstration are better known than the
conclusion.
An example
of a deduction: All X are Y., q is an X, therefore q
is a Y.
An example
of a demonstration: All men are animals. X is a man. X is an animal.
Posterior Analytics
-- Problems
with how we acquire these premises --
I. First
Puzzle: It seems like either… (pp.262-263)
A. Our primary
principles i.e. our premises in a demonstration themselves must be proved. But
then we get an infinite regress and can’t ever know anything.
B. We can allow circular demonstration, and then anything and
everything can be proven. (A is explained by B and B is explained by C and C is
explained by A, but then A is explained by A, and that’s NOT an explanation.)
C. So we have to say that we can grasp some primary
principles without their being proven in a demonstration. But
how?
II. Second
Puzzle: It seems like either… (p.264)
A. We already knew them (Plato). Absurd to say we have this
high degree of knowledge without noticing it.
B. We can acquire them, but that seems impossible since, if
we don’t already possess knowledge we can’t recognize that something is the
case.
C. So we have to say that there’s something in us – a
potentiality – to grasp truth.
III. How we
come to know things. (pp.264-265)
A. It all starts with perception!!! Empiricism.
B. Need retention to produce memory.
C. For rational beings, many memories produce “experience”, a
particular kind of experience. “ – the one apart from
the many, whatever is present as one and the same in all of them –“
D. the stopping of the retreat –
induction.
IV. Levels
of cognitive grasp (p.265)
A. belief and reasoning admit of
being false.
B. Knowledge is the conclusion of a
demonstrative argument.
C. Understanding, better than
knowledge. Grasp of the universal.
Physics
I. A kind of
analogy between nature and craft
A. Craft is trying to complete or imitate nature. House building, medicine.
B. This means that you can argue that if craft works a
certain way, entails certain principles, nature does, too.
II. The four
causes – we’re trying to explain what it takes for something to exist as it
does.
-- Let’s
look at examples from both craft and nature --
A. matter –
can’t be just that. (p.268)
B. form
-- Note hylomorphism! – Form explains what something is, while
matter individuates.
C. agent
D. final
II. “The
last three often amount to one;…” (p.273) So form is just super-important!
III. A
puzzle – maybe nature – unlike craft -- does not act “for” something.
A.
“Necessity” – it’s all matter which is determined. For
example, Empedocles’ theory of evolution. The parts of natural organisms
seem to be for something, -- have a
proper function – but really they just “pop up by chance” i.e. they’re “thrown
up” by the determined material universe, and if an animal with these parts can
survive it does.
B. --things
that happen by luck or chance happen rarely—Chance is pointless e.g. a stone
falls and hits someone, “by chance”.
C. Can’t be
right. Parts apparently serving purposes always or usually the case, so can’t be chance. Analogy with
craft. (p.274)
(Isn’t the
thought that evolution occurs through random mutation and survival of the
fittest under attack? LeMaitre? )
De Anima (On the Soul)
I. The soul
is the form of the body for any living thing. (p.278)
II. The
“actuality”, the “doing” thing. Analogy, sight is the actuality of the eye.
III. Is the
soul separable? At first glance you’d say, “no”.
IV. Kinds or
aspects or parts of soul
A. Nutritive and perceptive are actualities of the body.
B. Understanding? Book 3, Chapter 4)
1. The
puzzle – Anaxagoras – if intellect is simple and unaffected, having nothing in
common with anything, how can it be affected? (p.284)
2. Tabula
rasa (Passive or receiving intellect)
C. Book 3, Chapter 5!
1. In the
soul there is a sort of matter (potentiality) and then the producing part. “Passive intellect” and “Active or agent intellect”.
2.
Long-debated issue – Do we each have our own agent intellect, or is there a
single agent intellect which is shared by all of us? Immutable
and eternal? While passive is perishable?
3. Immortal
“part” of soul, but not personal?
V. Book 3,
Chapter 10; The “desiring part” call it the “will”. A moved mover. Moved by desire it moves the human being (or
other animal). So there must be an
object of desire to move the human being or other animal.
Metaphysics
Book 1
I.
Philosophy -- Most basic questions about any being.
II. A brief
history
A. It’s all matter
B. Need a cause of motion.
(Anaxagoras and Empedocles hint at a
cause for motion that explains why things move towards the good. Teleology. Atomists say there’s motion, but don’t try to
explain it.)
C.Plato –
definitions and Ideas
III. Why
Platonism is wrong. (pp.292-293)
A. Unparsimonious
B. “One over many”
> forms of negations.
C. Ideas of relatives
D. The Third Man
E. Participation is “empty talk”
IV. Most
importantly…no explanation of change!
Books 4-12
I. We are
studying Being qua being.
A.
Two Substances ; The form and the compound of
matter and form. (p.299)(Remember Introduction with Primary and Secondary
substances? The individual object is primary, the form
is a secondary substance)
B. But there must be a third –
something not given in the observable world. (p.299)
II. The ultimate
cause of change. (Terminology – motion=change; all motion can be described as
going from potential to actual)
A. Aristotle’s universe
B. It’s always been moving and changing in this teleological
way.
III. The
Unmoved Mover – The explanation for teleological change; god
A. The Proof
1. Things are in motion.
(Observation)
2. Nothing can cause its own motion.
3. A thing’s motion must be caused by
something already actual (in all except one case that would be something
already in motion).
4. There cannot be an infinite series
of moved movers.
5. Therefore there must be a “first”
Unmoved Mover.
B. N.b. UM
not first in time. It’s causality is simultaneous with
the motion of everything being moved. (p.301)
C. Moves by desire (p.301 and p.281)
D. What it does and is
1. Perfect Act
2. i.e. Thinking
3. Thinking Itself.
IV. (In
Chapter 8 which we skipped) There are no other causal
systems.
A. If there were, each would have to
have its own Unmoved Mover.
B. There can be only one – it is immaterial,
and it is matter which individuates individuals of the same kind. (p.303)
Nicomachean Ethics
Books 1 and
2
I.
Introduction on how Aristotle is NOT going to go about things.
A. Much modern ethics – the big or
only question is, “Should I do act X?”
B. Motive>Act>Consequences
C. Deontological Ethics vs.
Consequentialist Ethics
D. For
Aristotle the question is, “How can you achieve the goal of your existence?”
II. So, what
is the goal of your existence? Happiness!!!
--- Selfish? No.: Consequentialist? Not
really. ---
A. Function of human being –
reasoning
B. Functioning WELL = virtue (Like
the virtuoso performance on the harp!)
C. Throughout life – “One swallow
does not make a spring,…”
D. Virtuous activity
1. Rational Guidance
2. Working on the “raw
materials” of desires and feelings. (Qua human these are given, though we can
mold them through our actions.)
E. Plus some external goods.
III. The
Golden Mean – need to pursue desires, express feelings, engage
in activities not too much and not too little.
A. Some examples – courage, pleasure
B. NOT a mathematical mean (p.313) –
e.g. eating
1. mean
relative to the individual and the situation
2. NOT relativism –
there is an objective good.
C. Some names of actions and
feelings refer to excess and deficiency already and these are bad. (p.316)
D. Easy to miss the mark and hard to
hit it.
--So it’s
hard to learn how to be good and happy, since it’s easier to miss and there’s
no exact mean for everyone --
IV. Virtues are
acquired – they are habits.
A. Don’t have them by nature. (Just like musical ability. May
have some innate tendency, but don’t become the expert without practice.)
B. NOT an academic exercise.
C. Must practice – do the virtuous
acts -- under the guidance of someone who is already an expert.
V. A Puzzle – The loop – To be just we must do
just actions, but to do just actions we must already be just. (p.314)
A. No, it is possible to do a just
action without being just. (By accident, because someone forced you to, do it
in order to benefit somehow…)
B. For the agent to be (for example)
just he must
1. know
that he’s doing a just action.
2. He must have decided
on it for itself.
3. he
must do it from a firm and unchanging state.
--- So your actions collectively are super
important in that they constitute the happy life. Can’t
really separate the actions from that particular consequence. But motive
is important in that you are not really doing the (for example) just actions
unless you know it, have decided on it, and do it from a just condition.
Book 3
I. When is
an action voluntary, such that the agent can receive praise and blame? The
agent is responsible.
A. Done from oneself
B. Not force or non-culpable
ignorance.
C. Should we say that fine or
pleasant objects of desire compel us, so we’re not responsible when we’re led
astray by desire?
1. No because then we’d
have to say EVERY action is compelled, since we ALWAYS aim at what we judge to
be fine or pleasant.
2. We’d have to say that
our praiseworthy actions are compelled as much as our blameworthy actions, and nobody wants to say that!
--
Definition on p.318, “…what is voluntary seems to be what has its origin in the
agent himself when he knows the particulars that the action consists in.”
D. Animals and Children can act
voluntarily.
II.
Distinction between merely acting voluntarily and making a decision.
A. Prior deliberation
B. We do not deliberate about ends,
but about means.
III.
Everyone aims either at the good (the excellent person) or the apparent good
(the base person).
A. How can the base person be
responsible for his actions, if he is aiming at what appears to him to be good?
B. He is responsible for his own
character, since character is created through choices and actions.
Book 7
How can we
explain the incontinent (akratic) person – the one
who knows that it is wrong to do X and still does it?
I. Socrates
– Whenever we do something wrong it is always a matter of ignorance.
A. Doing what’s wrong is bad for us and we’d never deliberately
do what’s bad for us.
B. Manifestly false. (p.330)
II. A number
of ways to analyze cases of akrasia.
Take an example of a practical syllogism –
1. Adultery is wrong – it shouldn’t be done. (Universal
premise)
2. Doing this particular action, Q, would be an instance of
adultery. (Particular premise)
3. Therefore I shouldn’t do Q.
It would be
very puzzling for someone to have both premises clearly and vividly in mind,
yet do Q.
A. You can know something without attending to it.
B. You can fail to recognize the truth of the particular
premise.
C. You can have the knowledge, but not use it – you’re drunk,
or obsessed.
D. You can know something in a sort of “thin”, hasn’t taken
root yet, sort of way. (Repeating phrases like actors do.)
E. There can be conflicting universal beliefs. (1* It is good
to relieve stress. 2* Doing Q would relieve stress. 3*. Therefore I should do
Q.)
Book 10
The best
activity is “studying”, preferably studying what is best
I.
Self-sufficient
II. Not
aimed at some further good.
III. Divine.
Politics
Book I
I. How does
the city come into being?
A. Household
1.Natural and necessary for reproduction
2. The natural slave
B. Community
C. City
II. What’s
it for?
A. Self-sufficiency.
B. Living…well!
C. City is a natural institution – someone who could function
well without the City is “either a beast or a god.”
D. City is prior to the household and the individual.
1. Whole and part.
2. But, purpose of the City is the flourishing
of the individual, the family, etc.
3. Can’t make sense of
the activities of the individual without understanding him within the City.
Book II
What’s wrong
with Plato’s Republic
I. We’re
looking at actual and also ideal
constitutions since none of the actual ones is perfect.
II. Three
alternatives – everything in common, nothing in common, some things and not
others.
A. Nothing?
B. Socrates
-- the greatest possible unity?
III.
Everything in common? Women and children?
-- Aristotle
would say that what he’s looking at is the way things actually work. --
A. [General] “Tragedy of the
commons” – each child will be neglected by all.
B. Everybody will claim the one who
is prospering.
C. Impossible not to recognize your
own child sometimes.
D. “Unholy acts”
1. Patricide and
matricide
2. Gay incest
E. “Love will be watery” – what
inspires affection
1. That a thing is your
own.
2. That it is your only
one.
IV. Stuff in
common [Not worrying about the specific ways of doing this.]
A. How to divide it? Those who labor
much and receive little will complain about those who labor little and receive
much.
B. Having everything in common, all
living together, breeds quarrels.
C. More progress if everyone attends
to his own business. – Does not conflict with things being “common” but on the
basis of friendship. Not impossible.
D. Two pleasures made impossible in
the Republic
1.
A pleasure in ownership, “…love of self is a feeling implanted by nature
and not given in vain.”
2. Pleasure in helping
others – can only be done with private property.
E. Two virtues made impossible in
the Republic
1. Temperance towards
women – respect for family relationships.
2. Generosity
-- The
perennial appeal of the thought that we should abolish private property --
V. Communal property solves problems?
A. In “some wonderful manner”
everybody will become everybody’s friend.
B. No – the problem is not private
property but human wickedness.
C. If it worked, it would have been
tried and we’d know it worked.
VI. What
about the “lowest” level, the majority?
A. Plato just doesn’t say anything
about them. But they’re important! They’re the producers! The guardians can’t
live without them!
B. Upshot seems to be two states in
one such that the guardians are “a mere occupying garrison”.
C. Are men and women to do the same
jobs? Well, if everybody’s out in the fields, who’s managing the household? Silly to use analogy of animals.
VII. Same
person always rules (not having different people take turns) Cause jealousy and
dissention.
VIII. Deprives the guardians of happiness in favor of the
happiness of the whole.
A. But the whole cannot be happy unless all, or most, or some
of its parts are.
B. No reason to think the producers are happy…they just do
what they’re told.
Book 3
I. Rule by
the one, the few, or the many.
II. What
justifies the authority of the state? It’s doing its job. (p.342)
III. Three
good forms of state, One --Kingship, Few -- Aristocracy, Many -- Polity.
IV.
Corresponding bad states, Tyranny, Oligarchy, Democracy. (Note that the latter
two are really descriptions of the material possessions of the rulers, and that
it is few or many follows from that.)
-- Ideal
state – later in the Politics – in which all the citizens are educated
sufficiently to be morally virtuous and happy and will all own private property
and will all take turns governing.
Book 4
I. The best
in reality – a mixed constitution – a Polity, but with elements of aristocracy
and kingship.
II. The most
important thing is to have a large middle class that is engaged in governing! The “intermediate system”. The rich and the poor are subject
to disruptive vices which the middle class tend to avoid. (p.345)
A. Rich and favored aggressive and
wicked on a large scale, poor and ill-favored “crooked” and wicked on a small
scale.
B.
Rich have trouble submitting to being ruled, poor have trouble ruling.
Rich despise poor, poor envy rich. So the city settles into a master/slave
relationship, not a community of free citizens.
III. This rule
by the middle class is rare because, at least in recent history, it’s been a
struggle between the rich and the poor, and whoever is on top, rather than
trying to establish a wholesome constitution, tries to enhance its own wealth
and power.