Monday, September 26, 2016

Essential Thinkers #6 Aristotle the Philosopher also Scientist, Astronomer and Political Theorist


Aristotle’s achievements in the history and development of western thought are both stunning and unrivaled. More than just a philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a scientist, astronomer, political theorist and the inventor of what is now called symbolic or formal logic. He wrote extensively on biology, psychology, ethics, physics, metaphysics and politics and set the terms of debate in all these areas right up to modern times. Indeed, his writings on justice are still required reading for undergraduates reading Law.

After his death his works were lost for some 200 years or so but fortunately rediscovered in Crete. Later translated into Latin by Boethius around 500 AD, Aristotle’s influence spread throughout Syria and Islam whilst Christian Europe ignored him in favour of Plato. Not until Thomas Aquinas reconciled Aristotle’s work with Christian doctrine in the 13th century did he become influential in Western Europe. Aristotle received his education from age seventeen in Plato’s ‘Academy’, where he stayed for some 20 years until Plato’s death. Later he founded his own institution, ‘The Lyceum’, where he would expound a philosophy altogether different both in method and content from that of his former teacher.

More than any other philosopher before him, Aristotle made much of observation and strict classification of data in his studies. For this reason he is often considered as the father of empirical science and scientific method. Unlike his predecessor Plato, Aristotle always undertook his investigations by considering the regarded opinions of both experts and lay people, before detailing his own arguments, assuming that some grain of truth is likely to be found in commonly held ideas. Aristotle’s method was nothing if not rigorous and lacked the proselytising tone of many of his predecessors.

In contradistinction to both Plato and the Pre-Socratic, Aristotle rejected the idea that the many diverse branches of human inquiry could, in principle, be subsumed under one discipline based on some universal philosophic principle. Different sciences require different axioms and admit of varying degrees of precision according to their subject. Thus Aristotle denied there could be exact law of human nature, whilst maintaining that certain metaphysical categories – such as quantity, quality, substance and relation – were applicable to the description of all phenomena.

If there is one common thread to much of Aristotle’s work it lies in his conception of teleology, or purpose. Perhaps as a result of his preoccupation with biological studies, Aristotle was impressed by the idea that both animate and inanimate behaviour is directed toward some final purpose (‘telos’) or goal. It is common to explain the behaviour of people, institutions and nations in terms of purposes and goals: for example, John is sitting the bar exam to become a barrister; the school is holding a fete to raise funds for the roof; the country is going to war to protect its territory. Similarly, modern evolutionary biology makes use of purposive explanation to account for the behaviour of, for instance, genes and genetic imperatives.

However, Aristotle thought the concept of purpose could be invoked to explain the behaviour of everything in the universe. His reasoning lay in the idea that everything has a natural function and strives towards fulfilling or exhibiting that function, which is its best and more natural state. It is by means of the concept of function that Aristotle then ties his ethics to his physics, claiming that the natural function of man is to reason, and to reason will is to reason in accordance with virtue.

Unlike the opposing ethical theories of Kant and Mill, both of which view actions as the subject of ethical judgements, Aristotle’s ethics focuses on the character of the agent as that which is morally good or morally bad. This is so-called ‘virtue ethics’ was revived with much critical success by Alistair Macintyre in late 20th century.
[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012]

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