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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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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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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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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Looking for a reference on Aristotle
I just started reading Mortimer Adler's "Aristotle for everybody". In chapter 1, Adler is discussing Aristotle's distinction between living and non-living bodies and plant and animal bodies. ...
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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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According to Aquinas, what is the relationship between the substantial form of a bodily being and its act of existing, ie. its esse?
Consider, for example, an existing bodily being. Because it is bodily, we know that it is composed of prime matter and substantial form. Also, because the bodily being is existing (not just made up in ...
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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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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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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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Justification for Aristotle's principle of causality?
[W]hen... a potential is actualized.. something already actual must be
what actualizes it. This is sometimes called the principle of
causality. (Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God. ...
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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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How do quantities apply to subjects in Aristotles work?
Quantities like '10 degrees celcius', '5 feet long' and '15 miles per hour' apply to subjects but I can't figure out what the connection is.
For example, we say things like 'that cars speed is 15 ...
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How the third excluded principle in Aristotle's Metaphysics should be understood?
I'm having trouble understanding Aristotle's argument for the Third Excluded Principle (from Book 4, part 7). What I mean, I try to read the two paragraphs of that part but what I can't figure out is: ...
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How could we have defined time, had matter in our universe not been atomic?
A thought occurred reflecting upon SI and its system of units.
The definition of the unit meter (the distance a light beam in a vacuum travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second) is a perfect definition of ...
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According to Aristotle, do all substances have final causes?
I know that in order to know something, in some cases we don't necessarily need to know its final cause, because sometimes the efficient cause might be enough to give a full explanation. But I wonder ...
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Why was Aristotle almost like the only Greek philosopher studied during the Middle Ages?
Reading about scholasticism, medieval natural philosophy, liberal arts, it appears to me that, of all the Ancient Greece philosophers, only Aristotle was studied.
For instance, this passage (Blair ...
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Is there a meaningful difference between Aristotle's reasoning through induction and reasoning through example in chap 23-24 in prior analytics?
Aristotle presents reasoning through induction and reasoning through example as two different methods in chapters 23 and 24 of the Prior Analytics. He claims that induction is valid on the grounds ...
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What is the difference between temporal logic and Dialectical Logic (Hegel)?
I have been reading Hegel's Science of Logic where he critiques its generation understanding of logic known as Formal Logic.
As I have come to understand one of the main differences between Hegel's ...
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What does Aristotle think about the relation between blindness, knowledge and memory?
I’m trying to understand Aristotle’s views on blindness, as given in these passages:
"just as the blind remember better, being released from having their
faculty of memory engaged with objects ...
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How is it that "both a man and a picture are animals"?
I just began reading Aristotle's Categories, and stumbled on the second sentence: a man and a picture are not animals; while a man is an animal, a picture is not, even a picture of a man. In one ...
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The clay theory of the universe
The Aristotelian notion of hylomorphism as popularized by Aquinas and other medieval authors involves the form/matter duality where the matter in question is not the atomist conception we learn in ...
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Aristotle and the Platonic Footnotes Alluded to by Whitehead
In Process and Reality, Alfred North Whitehead famously states:
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do ...
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Which one of Aristotle's four causes is this?
Consider this exchange spoken in a hypothetical dialogue about man choosing his own personality:
Every phlegmatic man is made when he realizes that his original fiery disposition will become his own ...
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How to understand Prime matter?
In the Aristotle-Aquinas tradition prime matter is the thing that underlies all other things in the world. It is described as completely indeterminate-pure potentiality, it was not created and cannot ...
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What is the difference between Aristotelian logic and mathematical logic?
I don't have much prior knowledge on this topic, but I am looking for a fundamental difference/difference between Aristotelian logic and mathematical logic.
The difference, which I read previously ...
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Bertrand Russell describes Aristotle
"The form of a thing, we are told, is its essence and primary substance. Forms are substantial, although universals are not. When a man makes a brazen sphere, both the matter and the form already ...
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Can something have multiple functions according to Aristotle?
I was reading Aristotle’s function argument and I’m having trouble figuring out if things could have multiple functions. It seems like he implies that things cannot have multiple functions but this is ...
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In Aristotelian virtue ethics, what is the virtue-vice-vice pattern for obtuseness?
From Albert Einstein:
All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.
(Source: "The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein")
In Aristotelian virtue ...
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What are the key challenges or limitations of Nicomachean Ethics when applied to the complexities and values of modern life?
Among the obvious ones I have come across are Aristotel's views on slavery and gender bias. I think Bernard Russel was unsatisfied with too much focus on rationality and overlooking emotions.
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Predication for Aristotle
According to Aristotle’s predication, in saying “Socrates is a philosopher” would the philosopher be a predication? If so, would referring to a philosopher alone (for example “the philosopher is wise”)...
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What does it mean to be a principle?
I would be grateful if you could direct me to relevant passages in Aristotle where I can read more about the nature of "principle." Not exacty about the principle of non-contradiction but ...
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Aristotle's Happiness Argument [closed]
In Aristotle's view and Nicomachean Ethics, why does a person always have happiness if he once has happiness?
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Aristotle's virtue
In NE 1.7 1098a15, Aristotle claims that "human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete."...
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Aristotle's function argument
My question lies in the reconstruction of Aristotle's argument that "The human good turns out to be activity of the soul exhibiting virtues, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance ...
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How to express an is/too-much gap?
Phrases like "too much" and "not enough" can be morally charged fairly easily, so how would we express the fact/value distinction in these terms? I was thinking of using special ...
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When is mental illness a meaningful failure of wisdom?
Some philosophers think mental illness is a failure of function, to act rationally, others a failure of doing, but it can also at least involve failures of self appraisal, to accurately judge what is ...
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In what sense is the polis/city self-sufficient for St. Thomas Aquinas?
De Regno cap. 2 n. 14:
Now since man must live in a group, because he is not sufficient unto himself to procure the necessities of life were he to remain solitary, it follows that a society will be ...
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Correspondence between chapters and Bekker numbers in Metaphysics
Where can I find a table of correspondences such that if one work cites Aristotle's metaphysics by book and chapter, I can find the passage in an edition with Bekker numbers but no chapter divisions?
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Under what conditions can we say that two things are ontological distinct?
I am curious as to under what conditions we say that two things are ontologically distinct. My hunch is that we say two things are ontologically distinct if they differ in their essential properties. ...
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When the soul is with the body, does the soul change the body, or does it make the body as perfect as possible?
I would be grateful if you could answer the question above. When the soul is with the body, does the soul change the body or does it make the body perfect [or should I say that as perfect as the body ...
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Seeking Guidance for Reading Aristotle's Metaphysics
I've recently embarked on a journey to explore Aristotle's Metaphysics, but I must admit, I'm finding it quite challenging to grasp. As a newcomer to Aristotle's works, I wonder if there's a guide or ...
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Does Aristotle provide a mean for Phronesis? And if so, what is it?
From what I've tried to understand, Aristotle believed that practical wisdom (phronesis) is an intellectual virtue. And also, virtues are found at the mean between excess and deficiency. It seems to ...
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The priority of locomotion in Aristotelian physics - what are qualities then?
Reading through the Physics I came across a passage whose significance I had not adequately appreciated, in VIII.7 260b7-14, when he's arguing for the causal and temporal priority of locomotion to ...
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Did Socrates say: "Strong minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; weak minds discuss people."?
Where did Socrates say or did Aristotle quote Socrates saying:
Strong minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; weak minds discuss people.
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Early Modern Science vs Aristotelianism
Peter Thiel said in a podcast:
Early Modern Science wanted to resist the aristotelianism of the Catholic church
This confused me because I thought that aristotelianism was the precursor to science.
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