Biography (384 B.C.E.-322 B.C.E)

• Philosopher, Logician, and Scientist. The foremost student of Plato
• Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory
• Was the tutor of Alexander the Great
• After the conquest of Alexander, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he wrote and taught. During this time, he wrote his most famous

  Aristotle

  work, The Politics and Nicomachean Ethics
• Founded his own academy, the Lyceum
• The death of Alexander made Aristotle unwelcome in Athens
• Died in exile, stipulating that his slaves should be freed.
• Aristotle's works were lost in the West after the decline of Rome. During the 9th century AD, Arab scholars introduced Aristotle, in Arabic translation, to the Islamic world. The 12th-century Spanish-Arab philosopher Averroes is the best known of the Arabic scholars who studied and commented on Aristotle. In the 13th century, the Latin West renewed its interest in Aristotle's work, and Saint Thomas Aquinas found in it a philosophical foundation for Christian thought.
• According to A.N. Whitehead, all of Western Philosophy is “nothing more than footnotes to Plato and Aristotle.”
• Ever since, Western Philosophers have tended to divide into two camps—Platonic( seeking hidden and mystical truths through reason) or Aristotelian (methodical, sensory based).

Rejection of the Forms

• Rejected Plato’s theory that things in the world were imperfect copies of the forms. Instead, all things are comprised of substances, which have both essential and accidental properties.
• All biological forms have souls. Plants have vegetative souls, animals have senses, and humans have senses and reason. No guarantee of immortal, immutable souls for Aristotle.

Logic

• Deductive Reasoning. Aristotle gets credit for the invention of deductive logic, which can be most easily explained in syllogisms. Two premises that can prove a fact to be true.
  • Premise: All frogs can swin.
  • Premise: This is a frog.
  • Conclusion: This can swim
• If your arguments follows some basic principles (not allowing more in the conclusion than are present in the premises, it will be valid.
• Inductive Reasoning. The big A also gets credit for developing and popularizing inductive reasoning as a tool for science. By observing things in nature, we can generalize. This is the foundation of science.
• These frogs can swim ƒ Therefore, all frogs can swim
• Inductive reasoning (by example) is a critical step in logic and science.

The Doctrine of the Mean

• The Golden Mean or Doctrine of the Mean. Aristotle argued that the temperate virtue was the one that lay between two extremes, or vices. While Aristotle was certainly not the first to avow "moderation in all things," he was certainly one of its major proponents.
  1. JCWT: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
  2. Confucius: "Do not do to others what you would not want done to you."
• To find the Golden Mean, Aristotle points out that two extremes must be identified in order to find the balance between the two
• Choosing the middle road may seem to be the "easy way out," yet Aristotle finds this to be the most difficult way to virtue. For instance, there is no clear answer to right and wrong. The judgment of character depends on the situation one is put in. Once moderation has been acquired, keeping this level ground is easier, according to Aristotle.
• Some actions (killing) have no mean.

Critique of Socrates

• Aristotle did not believe that Socrates’ principle “Virtue is Knowledge” was correct. According to Aristotle, being a moral person involves not just knowing what is right, but choosing it as well.
• Individuals must accept responsibility for their voluntary actions which involve others.

What is the Nature of Virtuous Action?

Requirements for a virtuous act to be done virtuously

• it requires knowledge of the relevant facts of the situation and the knowledge of which acts are virtuous and why these acts are virtuous (practical wisdom);
• one must deliberate, a virtuous person chooses to perform a virtuous act after engaging in a reasoning process which leads to the formation of a desire to perform a certain virtuous action; the act is intrinsically rather than instrumentally choiceworthy.
• a virtuous person has right passions and desires, makes right choices based on the right principles, and reliably performs right acts.

Characteristics of a virtuous person

• a virtuous person’s acts are typical of that person;
• a virtuous person’s acts come from within the person;
• the virtuous person is not conflicted, she is in harmony with herself;
• a virtuous person not only performs virtuous acts, but she also feels the right passions, desires the right objects, enjoys the right things, and holds the right beliefs in each situation;
• a virtuous person has used her reason to develop her passions and desires in cultivating a taste for virtue;
• a virtuous person lives within her means (not just financial, but in all respects including temperament, pride, justice, etc.);
• a virtuous person is aware that the right thing to do, feel, desire depends on the situation and chooses accordingly (the means are relative to the situation);
• the virtuous person uses the principle used by a person with the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom to determine what the right thing to do is.

The Four Causes

• In order to know a thing, anything at all, Aristotle says that one must be able to answer four questions
  • The material cause (the matter from which a thing is made)
  • The formal cause (the pattern, model or structure from which a thing is made)
  • The efficient cause (the means by which a thing comes into existence)
  • The final cause[telos] (the function or potential of a thing)
• Aristotle's thought is consistently teleological: everything is always changing and moving, and has some aim, goal, or purpose (telos ). To borrow from a Newtonian physics, we might say that everything has potential which may be actualized (an acorn is potentially an oak tree; the process of change and motion which the acorn undertakes is directed at realizing this potential).