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Archetypes of Wisdom
Douglas J. Soccio
Chapter 6
The Naturalist: Aristotle
Learning Objectives
On completion of this chapter, you should be able to
answer the following questions:
What is naturalism?
How did Plato distinguish between knowledge and opinion?
What is form according to Aristotle?
What is matter according to Aristotle?
What are the four causes?
What is entelechy? What is teleological thinking?
What is Eudaimonia? What is Sophrosyne?
What is character?
What is the Aristotelian mean?
What is virtue according to Aristotle? Vice?
The Life of Aristotle
The son of a court physician, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was
born in Stagira, a Greek community in Thrace.
What little we know of him comes primarily through
Diogenes Laertius’ compilation of the lives of ancient
philosophers.
Aristotle probably learned basic anatomy and dissection
from his father before he was sent to study at Plato’s
Academy at the age of eighteen.
Works of Aristotle
Aristotle is said to have written twenty seven dialogues.
Unfortunately, they were all destroyed when the Visigoths
sacked Rome in 400 C.E.
What we know today as the “writings of Aristotle” are
forty treatises including:
Physics
De Anima (On the Soul)
Metaphysics
Politics
the Nicomachean Ethics
Teaching Alexander the Great
In 343 B.C., King Philip of Macedon invited Aristotle to
tutor his thirteen year-old son Alexander. The boy was
wild and crude, but Aristotle was able to instill in him
respect for knowledge and science.
Aristotle’s famous pupil even ordered his soldiers to
collect specimens of plant, marine, and animal life from far
away for his old teacher.
In 340 B.C., Philip sent Aristotle back to Stagira to write a
code of laws in order to restore the community there,
which had been disrupted by war.
Aristotle did well enough that Stagira celebrated a yearly
holiday in his honor.
The Lyceum
In 334 B.C., Aristotle at last returned to Athens, where he
founded his own school, possibly with money from
Alexander.
He had it built near some of the most elegant buildings in
Athens, and named it the Lyceum, after the god Apollo
Lyceum.
His students were known as the “peripatetic” philosophers,
because he often discussed philosophy with them along the
tree cover walkways called the Peripatos. Socrates used to
visit the same groves, remarking on what a wonderful spot
they made for reflection.
“The Philosopher”
Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C.E. Because of his
favored place under the protection of Philip and Alexander,
Aristotle found himself in an uncomfortable position, with
the Athenians resenting all things Macedonian.
He left Athens and the Lyceum after being legally charged
with not respecting the gods of the state. Rather than stand
trial like Socrates, he fled to Euboea (his mother’s
birthplace) “lest Athens sin twice against philosophy.”
So great was his influence on later thinkers, that in 322
B.C.E., after his death, the man who had created the first
important library, tutored the greatest ruler of the ancient
world, invented logic, and shaped the thinking of an entire
culture, was referred to simply as “the Philosopher.”
The Naturalist
Although Aristotle loved and respected Plato, he saw
dangers in Plato’s rationalistic idealism. Partly in reaction
to Plato, he is sometimes said to have brought philosophy
down to earth.
Aristotle stands alone as an archetype of the philosophical
naturalist. Naturalism is the belief that reality consists of
the natural world, which follows consistent and
discoverable laws.
Philosophical naturalists deny the existence of a separate
supernatural order of reality. They believe that human
beings, although special, are part of the natural order and
behave according to fixed laws and principles.
Natural Changes
Aristotle is sometimes called “the father of science”
because he was the first Western thinker of record to
provide an adequate analysis of a process of change based
on the claim that form is inseparable from matter.
Aristotle was troubled by Platonic dualism, the division of
the universe into two worlds – the realm of becoming and
the realm of being.
Aristotle argued that form can be distinguished from
content only in thought and never in fact. He warned that
we must not mistake “intellectual analysis” for
“ontological status.”
For him, form exists within the natural order and cannot
exist independently.
Form and Matter
According to Aristotle, all substances (things) are
comprised of form and matter, which always occur
together.
From the Greek word for “essence” (ousia), Aristotelian
form is that which gives a thing its shape, structure, order,
making it what it is.
From the Greek hyle, matter is the stuff which is formed in
one way or another.
Change amounts to the movement of matter based on how
it is formed (e.g., an acorn becomes an oak by actualizing
the potential it has because of the way its matter is
formed).
Aristotle’s Hierarchy of
Explanations
Aristotle was the first philosopher to understand that not
all “why” questions can be answered in the same way.
The answer to one “why” question may lead us to another
(e.g.,“Why are you doing this?” “So I can get that.” “Why
do you want that?” “So I can have the other thing?”).
Realizing this relation between means and ends, Aristotle
equated reasons why with causes (for things being the way
they are). The Greek word for cause (aitia) meant “the
reason for something happening.”
So, knowing a reason why something happens means
understanding what caused it. And one reason, or cause,
leads to another in a hierarchy of explanations.
The Four Causes
“Why” questions can be answered in four different but
related ways.
The four reasons (or causes) – for a thing’s being what or
how it is – are:
The Material Cause – the stuff it’s made of
The Formal Cause – the form it takes
The Efficient Cause – its “proximate” motion
The Final Cause – its purpose or goal
Entelechy
Manmade things have the form or structure they do
because we made them to serve our purposes. Natural
objects get their form “on their own.”
Aristotle used the Greek word entelechy to describe an
object’s “having its end within itself.” Entelechy means
that things do not just happen, but develop according to
natural design.
Using the example of the oak, the acorn must have within
itself the natural design enabling it to become an oak tree.
Its goal or end (telos) is already inside of it – that’s
entelechy.
Psyche as Entelechy
For Aristotle, psyche is the form of the body. Just as we
cannot imagine matter moving around unformed, so we
never encounter bodies and souls moving around apart
from one another.
Aristotle believed that it was impossible to affect the body
without affecting the soul or to affect the soul without
affecting the body. He thinks of them in the same way that
he thinks of wax and its shape: separable only in thought.
Just like the oak, then, humans have a form – a psyche or
soul – that structures their body and the way that body is
able to develop. So, psyche is our entelechy.
The Hierarchy of Souls
Aristotle does not think that humans are the only creatures
that have souls.
Since psyche is the principle of life, or autonomous
motion, all living things have psyches or souls.
Aristotle thinks there are three levels of soul, which form a
hierarchy of complexity. They are:
The nutritive
The sensitive
The rational
Levels of the Hierarchy of the
Souls
The lowest level is the nutritive, or vegetative, soul, which
all forms of animate matter (such as plants) have, enabling
them to absorb food, transform it into tissue, and to
reproduce.
The next is sensitive, or sentient soul, which applies to
those creatures capable of sensation or feeling (animals).
These creatures can sense pleasure and pain, and move to
get or avoid it.
The highest is rational soul, which only humans have. As
rational animals, humans are capable of everything above,
along with the capacity to reason.
Natural Happiness
Because people have this highest level of soul, they cannot
just sit back and let their lives develop in the way an
acorn’s does.
Because they are capable of reasoning, they must make a
project of their lives in order that their lives be good.
A good life is one that provides all the necessary
conditions and opportunities for a person to fully actualize
their potential – and one in which the person has the
character to do so.
So, a good life involves the development of one’s
character.
Teleological Thinking
“Every art and every scientific inquiry, and similarly every
action and purpose, may be said to aim at some good.
Hence, the good may be defined as that at which all things
aim.” – Aristotle
The technical name for this kind of thinking is teleological
– from the Greek root telos, meaning end, purpose, or goal.
Teleological thinking is a way of explaining a thing in
terms of its ultimate goal, or final cause. For example, the
telos of infancy is adulthood.
Both Aristotle’s ethic and conception of virtue are
teleological.
The Science of the Good
In one sense, Aristotle thinks we can study the good the
way we can study anything else. Once we know the four
causes of human nature, we can figure out what is best for
objects of our kind to do.
The work in which Aristotle considers issues of right and
wrong, and what constitutes the good life, is the
Nicomachean Ethics (dedicated to his son, Nicomachus).
However, in the first book of the Ethics, Aristotle says that
“it would be wrong to expect the same degree of accuracy
in all subjects.” Since life has incalculable variables, we
should never expect the same exactitude in ethics as we do
in mathematics.
Eudaimonia
If asked what we want from life, happiness is probably the
answer most of us would give. The Greek word Aristotle
uses is eudaimonia, which implies being really alive,
rather than merely existing.
Aristotle considers whether pleasure or honor are sufficient
for happiness, and finds that something more is required,
something proper to the person, which cannot be taken
away: our ability to reason. Eudaimonia – or well being –
comes from right action in accordance with reason.
So ethics is a practical endeavor, rather than a purely
theoretical study, one that should have practical benefits
and help us to build a better character – by developing
good habits.
Hitting the Mark
When dealing with everyday problems, it is easy to go to
extremes. Aristotle thinks that this destroys our virtues.
He suggests we strive to find the mean between extremes –
not too much or too little, with respect to each virtue.
Doing that requires moderation, which the Greeks referred
to as sophrosyne. Learning to moderate our behavior is
part of developing good habits (so that we fare better in
future situations).
This is no easy task, though, and lasts a lifetime. As
Aristotle says, “to miss the mark is easy, to hit it difficult.”
That makes what is today often referred to as “virtue
ethics” the “study of a lifetime.”
Application of the Mean
Discussion Question
Study and discuss Table 6.1, Aristotelian Virtues and Vices.
How do the concepts in each category compare?
Consider principles from the Nicomachean Ethics and the
concept of the mean. Then add and discuss your own
examples of virtues and vices. What might you add?
Chapter Review:
Key Concepts and Thinkers
Naturalism
Aristotelian Form
Matter
Material cause
Formal cause
Efficient cause
Final cause
Entelechy
Teleological thinking
Eudaimonia
Sophrosyne
Character
Mean
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)