Questions tagged [aristotle]
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, famous for his prolific writings on a vast array of subjects, including logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, politics, and even the natural sciences. He is widely considered a "founding figure" in Western philosophy.
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How does Plato's theory of forms account for change and abstraction?
I have two questions regarding Plato's theory of forms. Take apples for example.
Is there a form Apple of which all the particular apples in the world participate in? An apple is not a being, rather ...
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What is the difference between Epic and Drama in Aristotle's Poetics? [closed]
Aristotle argues that epic narration may have more complicated plot structures or a "multiplicity of plots," since it implies a higher level of action and character. Both drama and epic are ...
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Reference on Nicomachean vs Eudemian
Is there an edition that puts both side by side in two columns, or something like it?
Is it even possible or desirable?
I believe they are both lecture notes of a single course Aristotle repeated a ...
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How does corruption work in the framework of the act-potency divide?
In aristotelean and thomistic philosophy, becoming is explained as a potency being reduced to act. E.g. I have the potency to write this post, I actualise it, now it is here.
This is simple. But how ...
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Aristotelian Syllogisms: Validity by reduction via reductio ad impossibile?
I'm trying to learn Aristotle's Organon but am finding Chapter 7 (volume I) of Prior Analytics difficult to comprehend, i.e., providing validity indirect (reductio ad impossibile) reduction.
Indirect ...
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How 'Aristotelian' is Rawls' 'Aristotelian principle'?
Rawls' Aristotelian Principle, according to Steven Wall, can be summarised as follows:
The Aristotelian Principle purports to be a basic principle of human motivation, one that describes a strong, ...
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What word does Aristotle use to mean logic (translated) in Metaphysics, 1005b?
My copy of the WD Ross translation of Metaphysics includes the paragraph below in 005al9-1005b8.
And the attempts of some who discuss the terms on which truth should be accepted, are due to a want of ...
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Is it truth or not truth that Aristotle might not have written the lecture notes that are so important for philosophers?
Surviving fragments of the many lost works of Aristotle were included
in the fifth volume of Bekker's edition, edited by Valentin Rose.
These are not cited by Bekker numbers, however, but according to
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I am the last living human being on Earth. Does "humanity" remain an Essential Universal or become something else entirely?
In regard to Aristotle's Categories: Chapter 2-
If I die, I take the concept of humanity with me, because "humanity" has no other vessel to inhabit. While I am still human, just like ...
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18th century Reading Aristotle at in latin version and the search for translation biases
Philosophers of the 18th century, mainly those of the scholastic tradition and Kant, used to read Aristotle in its Latin translation, which is clearly clear from the citations. The Latin version of ...
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Aristotle definition of irony
Several internet sources quote Aristotle describing irony as “dissembling toward the inner core of truth.” I wonder if this is an elegantly worded butchery of Nicomachean Ethics 1108a20. But it ...
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How to Study Aristotles Ethics
I know that there have been several posts on where to start reading Aristotle, but I think this one would be a little different approach than usual so I think I should ask.
My aim to study Aristotle ...
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Aristotle and "Every X is every Y" falsity
I am currently reading "On Interpretation" by Aristotle, and in the section 7 there is the following statement:
If, however, both predicate and subject are distributed, the proposition thus ...
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Did Aristotle think that essence and existence were distinct?
Did Aristotle think that essence and existence are the same thing or that they are different things? Are there references that could help me understand how he saw the difference?
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Is the good life a happy one?
I am curious whether the good life is also, somewhat by necessity, a happy one? I am basing this off of the concept that happiness is not merely feeling good all the time, but rather in the sense of ...
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What does "categorical" mean for Kant?
I have always understood the word Category, in "categorical imperative", as a synonym for absolute, universal. It's the usual way we understand the word nowadays.
In some contexts, however, ...
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What kind of things have causes and are causes for Aristotle?
In Aristotle's Categories he tells us there are a certain number of kinds of things for example; quantity, quality and substance. Later in the works he writes about causes of things but I don't know ...
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Did Aristotle believe that the soul influences the body?
In De Anima, Aristotle states that the soul of an animal is realized in its physical form.
Does this mean that he believes souls are like biological blueprints, and that when applied to any sort of ...
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Can Aristotle's non substance categories be present in other non substance categories?
Is it possible to predicate non substance of other non substance in Aristotle's categories?
For example is predicating a quality of a quantity, or quality of an action valid in Aristotle's philosophy?
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Does hylomorphism have anything to do with the extremely broad use of "form" in scholasticism?
Introductions to the Aristotelian concept of form always begin with hylomorphism: everyday objects (like horses) are composed of matter and form. The form is the intelligibility of the thing (e.g., ...
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How are number quantities predicated of substances for Aristotle?
I can see how the quality 'white' is present in a subject since a flower's petal I am looking at is white. But, with number quantities they don't seem to be present in a particular substance like '...
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Aristotle's Golden Balance - bad for the economy?
Matt Haig in this quote: “Happiness is not good for the economy. We
are encouraged, continually, to be a little bit dissatisfied with
ourselves. …To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be
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What does Aristotle mean by "poiein"?
When Aristotle talks about poiein does he mean the accomplishment or the actual undertaking of something?
For e.g. with "the man was cutting a hedge" and "the man cut a hedge", ...
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Do actions (poiein) for Aristotle cause changes?
I'm reading into Aristotles philosophy and how he describes changes and actions. I am trying to find out how actions and changes relate but can't quite find the right parts. Does action cause change (...
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Obvious wrongness of Aristotle
Why did nobody notice the empirical wrongness of Aristotle's physics in the parts where possible in his time? It was held, for example, that a flying spear moves strongly horizontally and then falls ...
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Is it true that "What is supreme in a genus is cause of everything in the genus"?
Among the more popular scholastic axioms is the following:
What is supreme in a genus is cause of everything in the genus.
But what is the justification for this principle? Aquinas tends to justify ...
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What do we mean when we talk about Aristotelianism?
Let's say that "Aristotelianism" is a philosophical "view" based on Aristotle's thought. Let's say that the contents of this "view" are those presented in the Corpus ...
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Is Aquinas's "act is the principle of action" a tautology?
In Summa Contra Gentiles II.6.7, Aquinas suddenly claims that "act is the principle of action" (actus autem actionis principium est).
Is this phrase supposed to be a definition of act? Or a ...
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How do numbers and quantities relate in Aristotle's philosophy?
I'm trying to find out how numbers (and other mathematical objects) and quantities relate in Aristotles philosophy. For example if the distance between point A and point B is "287 miles", ...
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Where in Aristotle's Metaphysics is Aquinas citing his claim about "two sorts of operations"?
In the beginning of book II of Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas writes
Now the operation of a thing is twofold, as the Philosopher teaches in
9 Metaphysics ...
A footnote is provided which ...
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How should I pronounce words from Ancient Greek philosophy?
A somewhat unusual question here. Naturally, while reading through Ancient Greek philosophy, I've encountered many Ancient Greek words like παιδεία, οὐσία, as well as sentences like 'πάντες ἄνθρωποι ...
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How is the logos of a well-functioning entity related to that entity's telos?
The question I'm asking is essentially how the formal cause of an entity is related to its final cause, though I'd also appreciate feedback on whether these questions are the same. From what I know, ...
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Any consensus on Łukasiewicz' idea that Aristotle's syllogisms were systematically misrepresented in the academic literature?
Is there a consensus today on Jan Łukasiewicz' 1957 assertion that Aristotle's syllogisms were systematically misrepresented in the academic literature?
Łukasiewicz, in Aristotle's Syllogistic from ...
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How do complex propositions and Aristotle's logic work?
Is it allowed to create a syllogism with complex propositions?
Here is my example where P is a sequence of actions and M is a final cause.
S = "Cake maker"
P = "Finding of ingredients, ...
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Is this Barbara syllogism of a final cause right?
Hi i'm trying to learn how to make an explanation of a final cause in the form of a Barbara syllogism but I don't know if I have the terms in the right order.
The Barbara definition I'm using is from ...
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The square of opposition and Boolean algebra
I know that Aristotle was the first to create 'The square of opposition' by expressing a syllogism as a 'The square of opposition'. And George Boole discovered the problem with Aristotle's 'The square ...
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All syllogism is addressed to that within the soul: Did Aristotle really said that?
All syllogism and therefore a fortiori demonstration, is addressed not to outward speech but to that within the soul.
Did Aristotle really said that, and if so, where?
The claim that he did is in I. ...
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Which author(s) first talked of Aristotle's syllogistic as a logic of terms?
Which author(s) first talked of Aristotle's syllogistic as a logic of terms?
Thank you for any scholarly references.
Aristotle does defines the notion of "term" in Prior Analytics:
I call a ...
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Distinction between classical essential (primary) and non-essential (secondary) properties of matter vs. modern primary-secondary qualities?
Primary qualities according to modernity (Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes) are qualities that are quantitative/mathematical. Everything else cannot be reduced to mathematics—e.g., a sensible is a secondary ...
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How does mathematical atomism do away with the classical conception of man?
I've been reading E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. I keep going back to Galileo and his idea of motion, space, and time. I still can't internalize what he means by man ...
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How can immaterial soul exist without matter but immaterial redness can't?
So as the title says Aristotle and Aquinas held that soul which is substantial form of living things can exist even after separation from body. This is because soul is taken as immaterial substantial ...
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Why is self-sufficiency considered by Aristotle to be an important characteristic of a city-state?
In Politics, Book I, Aristotle wrote
A complete community constituted out of several villages, once it
reaches the limit of total SELF-SUFFICIENCY, practically speaking, is a city-state.
Why does he ...
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Did Aristotle’s philosophy hold back the discovery of calculus?
In this question on HSM I asked about the obstacles that made the discovery of calculus very late ? I mean that calculus is not that difficult or hard and yet took more than 1000 year to be ...
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Synthesis of Aristotle and Plato
I would like to know if there are any systematic and comprehensive texts on synthesising Aristotle and Plato (mainly that come from a Neoplatonism stand point since I know this joining of the two ...
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Converting a Euclidian proposition to a syllogism format
I am attempting to analyze Euclid's proof demonstrating that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles (book 1, prop 32). In particular, I'm looking for a way to convert the ...
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Has anyone recast Aristotle's Law of Noncontradiction as a law of recontextualization?
Aristotle's Law of Noncontradiction (LNC) is translated in a variety of ways:
Let us next state what this principle is."It is impossible for the
same attribute at once to belong and not to ...
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According to Aristotle are actions substances?
Actions can have qualities and be subjects, like when we say "walking is good for health". Would Aristotle say that actions are substances?
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How would an existentialist like Sartre respond to Aristotles function argument?
I have been reading Aristotle's NE and a bit of Existentialism is a Humanism and was wondering how Sartre (or another existentialist) might defend his position that humans do not have some function ...
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Whats the point of the human function in the Nicomachean Ethics?
Is "the good" Aristotle mentions for a human just the same as saying the eudaimonia for a human (since that would seem to connect the two)? Otherwise, I do not see how he arrives at a ...
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Aristotle's soul: is it an abstraction?
I have been reading Aristotle's Politics book and I struggle to understand what is his idea behind soul. From what I found on the internet the "soul" seems to be not spiritual but rather ...
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