Aristotle ('Αριστοτέλης)

ARISTOTLE ('Aristotle). — Greatest Greek philosopher and one of the greatest of all time.

SUMMARY: I.

1. LIFE

2. WORKS

3. Historical development of thought

4. Division of philosophy

5. Logic

6. Metaphysics

7. Physics

8. Ethics

9. Politics

10. Rhetoric

11. Poetics

12. Overall assessment

13. The pedagogy of Aristotle.

I. —

13. LIFE

Aristotle was born at Stagira (now Stavro) in Chalcidice, Thrace, in 384–385 BC. His father, Nicomachus, belonged to a family of physicians originally from Messenia and was physician to Amyntas II of Macedon. His mother was descended from colonists from Chalcis in Euboea, where Aristotle owned land and a house. Having lost his parents while still a boy, he was brought up by Proxenus of Atarneus, perhaps a relative, to whose son Nicanor he later repaid the kindness shown by his father by adopting him and giving him his daughter Pithias in marriage (Test. 12). In 367–366 he went to Athens and entered the Academy, where he remained until Plato’s death, a period of about twenty years. The stories of serious disagreements between Aristotle and his master, which stem from a misinterpretation by Aristotle of Tarentum’s disciple Aristoxenus and from the general tendency of later biography to romance, were already refuted in the 2nd century AD by Aristocles of Messene (Eusebius, Praep. ev., XV, 2, 3). Proof of Aristotle’s veneration for Plato is the so-called elegy on the altar, which he composed for Eudemus (it is not known whether the Cyprian or the Rhodian) and which refers to an altar consecrated, as he writes, “to the venerable Friendship of man (Plato), whom the wicked have no right even to praise.” Relations with Speusippus, who succeeded Plato as head of the Academy, must have been different, since in the same year (348–347) Aristotle and Xenocrates left Athens and retired to Assos in the Troad. The city was then under the rule of Hermias, an eunuch who had risen from being a money-changer to become prince of Atarneus, though he had entrusted its administration to the Academicians Erastus and Coriscus of Scepsis, whose advice and teaching he had followed even during Plato’s lifetime. Aristotle quickly won Hermias’s friendship and married his niece and adopted daughter Pithias, by whom he had a daughter also named Pithias, whom he later gave in marriage to Nicanor. He remained at Assos for three years and among his pupils there were Theophrastus of Eresus, in nearby Lesbos, and his nephew Callisthenes. In 345–344 he moved to Mytilene, and from there, accepting an invitation from Philip of Macedon, who chose him as tutor to the thirteen-year-old Alexander, he set out two years later for Pella in the company of his nephew and perhaps also of Theophrastus. It is not unlikely that the choice was suggested by Hermias, who maintained secret and dangerous political relations with Philip, which led to his downfall. Suspected by the Persian court, in 341 he was treacherously seized and taken to Susa, where he was tortured and crucified. On the scaffold he asked that his friends be told that he had done nothing unworthy of philosophy. Aristotle honoured his memory with a cenotaph at Delphi, for which he wrote an epigram, and with the famous hymn to Virtue.

Alexander remained under Aristotle’s tutelage until 340, when Philip, setting out against Byzantium, entrusted him with the regency of the kingdom. During the three years they spent together in the peaceful retreat of Mieza, it is not known what Aristotle taught him, but in addition to philosophy he seems to have given considerable attention to poetry and politics. He appears to have prepared an edition of the Iliad for him, and to this period may be assigned the dialogue On Kingship and the three-book work On Poets. In the years that followed, until 335, Aristotle divided his residence between the court and Stagira. At the court he formed a friendship with Antipater, who was to become regent, and enjoyed his protection even after his death. The letters he wrote to him amounted to nine books, and to him Aristotle entrusted the execution of his last wishes. In 335–334 Aristotle returned to Athens. Pithias had died, and he had brought with him a woman from Stagira, Herpyllis, by whom he had a son, Nicomachus. But he retained a fond memory of the first, and in his will he stipulated that “her bones should be transferred to the place where he would be buried, as was also her wish.” The Academy had been under the direction of Xenocrates, who had succeeded Speusippus (who died in 339), for four years. For Aristotle to re-enter it was impossible: he had already gone too far along his own path and could teach only in his own school. He opened it in the precinct of the Lyceum, giving it, like the Academy, the form of a religious association celebrating the cult of the Muses. Later it acquired a fund and more suitable premises outside the Dipylon Gate. From the use of the covered walkways (περίπατοι) where the pupils gathered, the school of Plato had already received the name Peripatos (Epicurus, Fr. 171; Philodemus, Ind. Acad. 6, 5; 7, 9). Aristotle’s school was to be known pre-eminently by this name, and its members were called Peripatetics because of their habit of walking while discussing (cf. Epicurus, Fr. 423). Continuing the Academic custom, the pupils were called “friends” and gathered for common meals and symposia, for which Aristotle himself laid down the rules. The morning hours were devoted to the more difficult disciplines; in the afternoon he addressed a wider audience on rhetoric and dialectic. In addition to Aristotle, Theophrastus and Eudemus of Rhodes also taught there. Although modelled on the Academy, Aristotle’s school was something entirely new and different. Primarily oriented toward research, it greatly expanded the field of its activity, replacing the place held in the Academy by mathematics with the biological and historical sciences. The work that Aristotle, in collaboration with his pupils, accomplished in the thirteen years he still lived is prodigious and in many respects has defied the centuries. The protection of Antipater and Alexander provided him with the means, and it was only through Alexander’s great Asian campaign that he was able to obtain specimens of the fauna and flora of those distant regions. Almost nothing is known of his relations with the king during this period, to which belongs the Alexander or On Colonization, but he could hardly have approved of Alexander’s policy of gradually equating barbarians with Greeks, which became ever more pronounced in Asia, and the news of the execution of Callisthenes, who had accompanied the expedition as official historian, must have been a bitter blow to him in 327. Aristotle’s position in Athens was, however, dependent on the fortunes of his pupil. When

ARISTOTLE — Portrait. Roman copy of a Greek original (4th century BC). Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, the anti-Macedonian faction in Athens brought an indictment of impiety against Aristotle. The principal charge, presented by Demophilus (perhaps son of the historian Ephorus), rested on the hymn to Hermias. Aristotle avoided trial by fleeing, saying that he did not wish to give the Athenians a second chance to sin against philosophy. He retired to Chalcis, to his mother’s house, where he died the following year at the age of sixty-three, leaving Theophrastus as head of the school.

2. WORKS — Andronicus of Rhodes, in the 1st century BC, catalogued Aristotle’s writings as numbering about 1,000 books. Fragments of his πίνακες survive in two Arabic sources (v. A.s. Op., vol. V and A. Baumstark, op. cit. in bibliography, p. 61), yielding about 100 titles. The count rises to 200 when we add the list preserved in the two versions of Diogenes Laertius and in the Vita Menagiana, which probably derives from Hermippus (c. 200 BC) and thence from the Library of Alexandria. With the Constitution of Athens, recovered from two papyri, and including the spurious works, we possess 47 treatises in 162 books. The fragments and testimonia amount to slightly more than sixty. Some of these were in dialogue form and belonged to the works Aristotle published under the title ἐξωτερικοί ἢ ἐκδεδομένοι λόγοι (H. Bonitz, Index, p. 104 b, 44 ff.), which the ancients called “exoteric.” Opposed to these were the writings intended solely for school use, termed by commentators “acroamatic,” all of which, except the Constitution of Athens, are the ones that have come down to us. This explains, in contrast to the “golden stream of eloquence” praised by Cicero (Acad., II, 119; other texts in Zeller, p. 111, 1), their often careless, usually dry, and sometimes extremely concentrated style, together with the web of internal cross-references, not all of them primary (Bonitz, Index, p. 95 b ff.). The continuous process of revision to which these works were subjected as Aristotle’s thought and teaching advanced is evidenced by the additions, multiple editions, interruptions, and fluid state of certain passages. Each student at least had his own copy of the texts relevant to him, and in this way they circulated even beyond the school.
ARISTOTLE — Portrait of Aristotle. Detail from The School of Athens.
Raphael — Vatican Rooms.

After Aristotle’s death, his works must certainly have been traded, a commerce in which the Lyceum itself may not have been uninvolved. A precious document of this is a fragment of a letter by Epicurus, which mentions the Analytics and the works On Nature (v. Epicuri Ethica, ed. C. Diano, Florence 1946, no. 265). Aristotle’s personal manuscripts, bequeathed, according to Strabo (XIII, 1, 54) and Plutarch (Sull., 26), to Theophrastus, passed, upon the latter’s death, to Neleus of Scepsis, son of Coriscus. His heirs, hiding them in a cellar to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Attalids of Pergamum, later sold them, worm-eaten and damaged by damp, to Apellicon of Teos, an officer of Mithridates. When Sulla took Athens in 86 BC, he seized them and brought them to Rome. Andronicus of Rhodes, the tenth scholarch of the Lyceum, obtained copies from Tyrannio, Cicero’s librarian, and used them for his great edition, from which our manuscript tradition ultimately derives. The story is true; false, however, is what the two aforementioned authors add—that apart from these, no other copies existed in the Greek world. The Library of Alexandria possessed them (v. Zeller, p. 145 ff), Eudemus had them in his school at Rhodes (cf. Simplicius, Phys., ed. H. Diels, vol. II, Berlin 1895, p. 923, 10), and the Lyceum could not have been without them, otherwise Andronicus would not have been able to produce the text we possess. Moreover, all later philosophy presupposes direct knowledge of them.

The order of the works that have come down to us largely goes back to Aristotle himself. It begins with the logical works. These are followed by the physical works, which include psychology and biology, then metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics.

Logic, later called the Organon by posterity, comprises five works:
1) Categories, among Aristotle’s earliest works in content; chapters 10–15 (Postpraedicamenta) are spurious;
2) On Interpretation, apparently later than the Prior Analytics, whose authenticity was doubted by Andronicus;
3) Prior Analytics, Books I–II, from the second Athenian period;
4) Posterior Analytics, Books I–II; much of Book I dates from the Academy period;
5) Topics, Books I–IX; Books II–VII go back to the Academy period. Book IX, which also bears the title Sophistical Refutations (i.e., Refutations of Sophistical Arguments) and where the name of Coriscus occurs, was composed in Assos.

The works on nature (τὰ περὶ φύσεως) are:

1) Physics, Books I–VIII, resulting from the union of two works Aristotle cites separately under the titles On Nature (Books I–IV) and On Motion (Books V–VI, VIII); Book VII was already considered by Eudemus not to belong to the work (cf. Simpl., Phys., II, 1036). Jaeger places its elaboration, if not its composition, in the Academy period, while assigning Book VII to the second Athenian period;
2) On the Heavens, Books I–IV;
3) On Generation and Corruption, Books I–II, both composed during Aristotle’s teaching at Assos;
4) Meteorology, Books I–IV;
5) On the World, spurious and later than Posidonius.

The psychological works include:
1) On the Soul, Books I–III (Jaeger assigns the material of Book III to the Academy period, though with little justification), followed by a series of minor treatises included under the title Parva Naturalia:
2) On Sense and Sensibilia;
3) On Memory;
4) On Sleep;
5) On Dreams;
6) On Divination through Sleep;
7) On Length and Shortness of Life;
8) On Life and Death, whose first part also bears the title On Youth and Old Age;
9) On Respiration;
10) On Breath, which contains the distinction between veins and arteries and dates from the 3rd century.

The biological works include:
1) History of Animals (Περὶ τὰ ζῷα ἱστορίαι), Books I–IX, of which Books VII, VIII, 21–30 and IX are to be considered spurious; some manuscripts include a Book X, which is at least a generation later than Aristotle;
2) On the Parts of Animals, Books I–IV;
3) On the Motion of Animals;
4) On the Progression of Animals;
5) On the Generation of Animals, Books I–V.
A group of spurious works follows:
On Colors (possibly by Theophrastus);
On Things Heard (possibly by Strato);
Physiognomonica (perhaps 3rd century BC);
On Plants, Books I–II (a retranslation into Greek from an Arabic version of a text possibly by Nicolaus of Damascus);
On Marvellous Things Heard (a collection of extracts from Theophrastus and Timaeus of Tauromenium);
Mechanics (possibly by Strato);
Physical Problems (in 38 sections, a late compilation based on originally Aristotelian material);
On Indivisible Lines (attributed to Theophrastus by Simplicius);
On the Situation of the Winds (perhaps by Theophrastus);
On Xenophanes, Melissus, and Gorgias (late in form but drawn from Aristotle’s works).

Metaphysics, in 14 books, designated A, α (α ἐλάσσων), B–N, has posed the greatest problem in Aristotelian philology. After the studies of Brandis, Bonitz, and Schwegler, it fell to W. Jaeger to provide the solution. Apart from Books A, α, A, and K, 9–10, it consists of parts of different periods that Aristotle provisionally assembled awaiting a definitive redaction. α (= II), which the ancients attributed to Pasicles, nephew of Eudemus of Rhodes, is the notes of a lecture by the master. Δ, which Aristotle himself cites as a separate work under the title Περὶ τοῦ ποσαχῶς, and which Hesychius catalogues separately, is a philosophical lexicon compiled for the convenience of the School. K, 9–12 is a collection of extracts from Physics II, III, V, by a student. K, 1–8, parallel to B, Γ, E, I, also appears to be by a student but is older. A, in its concise form, is “a whole metaphysical system in embryo” (Jaeger), its composition to be placed in the Assos period. Chapter 8, and within it §13, are later additions after 330 BC. Books A B Γ E serve as an introduction to the following group Z H Θ, which treats of substance and (Θ) of potentiality and actuality. I deals with the one and the system of oppositions. M, 1–9, 1086 a 21 is a critique of the doctrine of Ideas and ideal numbers; the rest of M and N constitute an older redaction on the same subject, which in turn resumes A, 4. Chronologically, the oldest nucleus, arising from the Assos lectures and contemporary with On Ideas and On Philosophy, a three-book dialogue that is the first public exposition of the new system, consists of A B K 1–8, A M 9, 1086 a 21–N. The most recent, from the Lyceum period, is Z H Θ I M 1–9, 1086 a 21. Between these stand Γ and E 1, which, with modifications to B, develops the outline of K 1–8. Chapters 2–4 of E serve as a transition to Z and following.

On ethics, we have four works:
1) Nicomachean Ethics, Books I–X;
2) Eudemian Ethics, Books I–VII (but Books IV, V, and VI are identical to E. N. V, VI, VII);
3) Magna Moralia, Books I–II, which, though based on Aristotle’s lectures, postdate his death;
4) the treatise On Virtues and Vices, entirely spurious.

The first two derive their names from having been edited by Nicomachus, Aristotle’s son, and by Eudemus of Rhodes, respectively. The second, long considered spurious and attributed to the latter by many 19th-century critics, was definitively restored to Aristotle by Jaeger (preceded by Kapp and von der Muehl) and placed in the Assos period. It is preceded by the Protrepticus.

The Politics, Books I–VIII, like the Metaphysics, is a composite work. Books IV, V, and VI form a self-contained whole, differing from the rest both in method and conclusions. Composed, according to Jaeger, in Aristotle’s last Athenian period, they were later incorporated by Aristotle himself with Books II–III and VII–VIII, which were elaborated in Assos. The composition of Book I, an introduction to the work, also belongs to this period. Spurious is the Oeconomicus, which in our collection follows the Politics. From two papyri, the Constitution of Athens was restored in 1891; it served as Book I of the Constitutions, in which the constitutions of 158 states were examined.

Le final works in the collection are: the Rhetoric, Books I–III (the authenticity of Book III was demonstrated by Diels), the so-called Rhetoric to Alexander, which is the work of Anaximenes of Lampsacus (c. 340 B.C.), and the Poetics, originally in two books, of which only Book I survives. From Book II, which dealt with comedy and catharsis, we have extracts in the Tractatus Coislinianus.

Of the esoteric works we have fragments of a certain extent only of the Eudemus and the Protrepticus, composed during the Academic period, and of the On Philosophy in three books written at Assos. The Eudemus and the On Philosophy were dialogues of the type known to us through the imitation made by Cicero, who declares that he follows « the manner of A. » (Ad Att., XIII, 19, 4). The former, which bore the subtitle On the Soul, took its name from the Academic Eudemus of Cyprus, who died fighting for Dion in Sicily in 354: it dealt with the immortality of the soul. The Protrepticus, an epideictic discourse in the manner of those of Isocrates, was addressed to Themison, prince of Cyprus. Through the imitation made of it by Cicero in the Hortensius it exercised a decisive influence on St Augustine (cf. Conf., III, 4, 7; VIII, 7, 17). The On Philosophy, contemporary with Metaphysics, Book XII, contained the first public exposition of Aristotle’s system.

Among the lost works should be noted: the three-book dialogue On Poets, the Didascaliae, i.e. the collection of documents of the dramatic performances of Athens, the juridical collections relating to the Greeks and the Barbarians (Δικαιώματα πυλῶν and Νόμιμα βαρβαρικά), and the great work mentioned above on the constitutions. One of the most serious losses is that of the Letters, of which we have scanty and doubtful fragments.

An indispensable complement to the Works is the Corpus of the Commentators, which occupies 26 volumes in the edition produced by the Berlin Academy.

14. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ARISTOTLE’S THOUGHT

The credit for having, by building on the work of his predecessors, fixed for most of Aristotle’s works the chronological terms of their composition and, by reconstructing his early works (the foundations of which had already been laid by Bernays), traced the development of his thought through the three periods—Academic, Assian, and Lyceum—into which his life is divided, belongs to W. Jaeger. In the first period, as revealed to us by the fragments of the Eudemus and the Protrepticus, Aristotle is still entirely under the influence of Plato. The soul, whose immortality he demonstrates with notable rigor of argument, is still conceived as a substance separate from the body. Ethics is placed among the exact sciences, and the highest form of existence is identified with the exercise of φρόνησις understood in a Platonic sense. Although he still considers numbers and geometric magnitudes as εἴδη, Aristotle has already elaborated the doctrine of the categories and, with his theory of demonstration, overturned the logic of the Academy. From here he proceeds in the following period—but the change must already have begun before Plato’s death—to the overturning of ontology. In the fragments of the On Philosophy, of On Ideas, of the oldest parts of the Metaphysics and of the Physics, the new position, which is the historical one, now appears clearly defined. The doctrine of Ideas is subjected to radical criticism and shown to be contradictory. The heavens are cleared of the empty Ideas of the One and of Being, identified with the Good, and in their place is placed an individual entity, God, whose uniqueness Aristotle affirms (Met., XII, 10) and defines as the Unmoved Mover. Yet he still conceives the heavens, in accordance with the later Academy, as ensouled, and for their matter he introduces a fifth element « without a name », already postulated by Plato (Tim., 55 c: cf. Simplicius, Phys., p. 1165, 35) and known in the Epinomis (981 c), which uses, from Homer onwards, to designate it the name of the luminous part of the atmosphere, the aether. Of this he still makes the material of the soul, which, in correspondence with Ἰδέα-χέρεια (Cicero, Tusc., I, 10, 22: cf. R. Hirzel, in Rheinisches Museum, 39 (1884), pp. 169 ff.; E. Bignone, Aristotele perduto, Über Entelechie u. Endelechie, I, p. 227 ff.), he affirms as eternal even a parte ante. In the same period he writes the first Ethics, which has come down to us under the name of Eudemian Ethics, and the first Politics. The Eudemian Ethics already presents the doctrine of the virtues fully elaborated, but the general problematic remains largely that of the Protrepticus, and the supreme end is placed in the contemplation of God (E. E., VII, 3).

The years of the Lyceum are the years of full maturity. The lines of the system remain those of the preceding period, but investigation renders them more precise, examines their problems with tireless care, and exacerbates their aporias at certain points. Logic finds its definitive form in the Prior Analytics. Metaphysics is enriched by the admirable three books on substance. Psychology is organized on strictly scientific foundations, in which metaphysical speculation is fused with observation of phenomena. Ethics and politics also descend from the abstract to the concrete. This does not mean that Aristotle becomes a positivist: the end is always a universal, the form toward which each thing tends, whose reality is dynamic and not static: the Idea has been transformed into an ideal. The greatest monument of these years is the organization of scientific research. As regards method, chapter 5 of Book I of the De partibus animalium is one of the most beautiful and moving pages that any scientist has ever written.

15. DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY

In accordance with the threefold activity of man, Aristotle divides the sciences into poetic, practical, and theoretical (Top., V, 6, 145 a, 15; Met., VI, 1). The theoretical sciences have as their object the necessary and the end in themselves; the poetic and practical sciences concern the possible and have their end in something else: in production the former, in action the latter; but the end of action is action, and of production the work (Met., I, 1; II, 1; E. N., I, 3; VI, 3; 5). Poetic sciences are the arts (τέχναι) in their manifold variety, but properly philosophical are only those that have as their object spiritual activities, such as poetics and rhetoric. More definite is the scope of the practical sciences, divided into ethics, economics, and politics (E. E., I, 8; E. N., VI, 9). Mathematics, physics (also called « second philosophy »: Met., VII, 11, 1037 a, 14), and theology or « first philosophy » form the complex of the theoretical sciences. Logic, which Aristotle himself calls Analytics (Rhet., I, 3, 1359 b, 10) or Apodeictic (An. Pr., I, 1), has in part a propaedeutic character, in so far as he conceives it as the doctrine of demonstration. The term « logic » is late. The later Peripatetics considered it a « tool »: hence the name Organon.

16. LOGIC

For Aristotle the problem of logic arose as the problem of method within the Academy itself. It was the problem of the School: the task was to arrive at a deduction of all reality from a single principle that would at the same time be the « common principle » of all the sciences. The sciences par excellence were mathematics, a propaedeutic to dialectic, the science of being and of the Ideas, under which, in the eidetic form given to them by Plato, they too fell. There were two « methods » in use: division or dichotomy, which proceeded by opposites and « by successive elimination of the other parts provided the basis for the demonstration of the part in question », and analysis, which consisted in « leading back » (ἀνάγειν = ἀνάδοσις) the object

Aristotle ('Ἀριστοτέλης). - The greatest Greek philosopher and one of the greatest of all time

The "methods" in use were two: division or dieresis, which proceeded dichotomously through opposites and, by successively eliminating the other parts, provided the basis for demonstrating the part in question, and analysis, which consisted in "reducing (ἀνάγειν = ἀνάδοσιν) the object of inquiry to a agreed-upon principle" (Proclus, In Encl., 211, 18). From the earliest parts of the Organon and the Physics, Aristotle’s position is clear: science exists only of the necessary, and necessity is given by the cause (An. Post., I, 2; 4, 6); the method of science is analysis (Phys., II, 7). But analysis is the moment of research; in the moment of science the order is reversed: it descends from principles and from them shows the necessity of the consequence; its ultimate form is demonstration or apodeixis (ἀπόδειξις). The discourse that expresses it is the syllogism, "a discourse in which, certain things being posited, something different from them follows of necessity through them themselves" (Top., I, 1: cf. An. Pr., I, 1). Such necessity can, however, be only formal (An. Post., I, 6): for it to be absolute, the relation that holds between the posited things must be one of universality (καθόλου), and this is so only if it is of totality (κατὰ παντός) and per se (καθ' αὐτό). And since per se is the attribute that either is contained in the essence of the subject or contains it within itself, and whatever cannot be attributed in either of these two ways is an accident (συμβεβηκός) and falls outside demonstration and science (ibid., 4), the principle of demonstration is essence (ibid., 6: cf. Met., VII, 9). The paradigmatic syllogism is given by the normally cited example (Bonitz, Index, 770 b 20) of the isosceles triangle, which, being a triangle, has the sum of its angles equal to 2R. But the task of science is not so much to show that the properties of the genus belong to the species—a demonstration that is not "universal and per se" (An. Post., I, 5, 74 a 1)—as to show that these properties belong "as first" to the genus (ibid., 5). "Every demonstrative science turns indeed on three things": 1°, the genus ("for arithmetic, unity," "for geometry, the point or the line"), of which it "considers the attributes per se"; 2°, these attributes themselves ("even and odd," "straight and broken"); 3°, the axioms "from which demonstration proceeds." Genus and attributes form the "proper principles," the axioms the "common principles" (ibid., 7; 10). Of the axioms Aristotle gives three examples: the principle of non-contradiction, that of the excluded middle, and that by which equal subtractions from equal quantities yield equal remainders (ibid., 10; 11). At the same time he affirms that, whereas for the genus "both definition and existence are posited," for the attributes, instead, only "definition is posited," but "existence is demonstrated either from the common principles (i.e., the axioms) or from other things previously demonstrated" (ibid., 10). Now, since these attributes go by opposites and in Aristotle’s examples are all of mathematical εἴδη, and since, on the other hand, from opposites deduced on the basis of the two ontological principles of non-contradiction and the excluded middle—which the Elements of Euclid ignore—proceeded in the Academy the "dieretic method" of which Proclus speaks, one must, with Solmsen, conclude that in this first phase of Aristotle’s logic the axioms have the true function of premises and that the syllogism that proceeds from them is nothing other than the demonstration on which division provided the basis. An example of this is found in An. Post., I, 4, 73 b 16 (cf. Top., I, 8, 103 b 5; VI, 6, 143 b 14), and, on the basis of Met., V, 30, it is to be inferred that of the same form was that by which the property of the triangle was demonstrated. To the dieretic method this syllogism is, however, connected only as to function, but as demonstration it is itself an analytic operation. And, since the common principles are such only by analogy and each science uses them in the form appropriate to its own genus (An. Post., I, 10; 11), and necessity always derives from essence (ibid., 32, 88 b 3), essence remains the principle of every demonstration.

Here is the point at which Aristotle answers the problem of the Academy and overturns the Platonic position. Every proposition being an interval (διδάτημα) that the middle term fills by giving form to a new proposition and a new interval, the process neither goes to infinity nor terminates in a single principle to which all genera and all demonstrations can refer. Essence is finite, therefore the number of middle terms is also finite. Not only that; it has also an order, which is that of predication. Now, every thing has an essence and a definition, but, absolutely speaking, only what is subject per se and not per accidens. And here is the doctrine of the categories. In every proposition something is predicated (κατηγορεῖτα) of something. Considered in themselves, the terms distribute themselves into ten forms (σχήματα) of predication or categories, which are the ten genera under which being presents itself (τὰ γένη τοῦ ὄντος): substance (οὐσία), quantity, quality, relation, where, when, position (e.g., seated), condition (e.g., shod), doing, and being affected (An. Post., I, 22; Cat., 4, seq.). Substance is being in the primary and absolute sense, distinguished into primary and secondary substance. Primary substance is being determined individually (τόδε τι), the subject of all inherence and predication. Secondary substance is the species from which the primary has its form, and above it, the genus. The other categories form the accidents or affections of substance, and exist only for it (Cat., 4-5). As supreme genera at which analysis stops (Met., V, 28), no category can be resolved into another: the only common element is the analogy of oppositions; at the center of all is substance, which, having no contrary, receives all in itself (Cat., 5; 10-11; Met., IV, 2; X, 4). Consequences: every science has its own proper genus and proper principles: the definitions, which, having no middle term, are no longer demonstrable. Demonstrations not proper to each genus, and every passage from one genus to another (μετάβασις ἐκ ἄλλο γένος) is excluded. What they have in common are only the axioms, in which the system of oppositions is expressed, but it is a commonality of analogy. Being and the one, to which Plato wished to reduce all others as to a supreme genus, are not genera; they have as many senses as there are categories: converging on the term to which all tend is the individual reality of substance (An. Post., I, 3; 7; 9; 22-23; 32). And it is from reality that the principles are drawn, through a process inverse to demonstration, induction (ἐπαγωγή). Sense provides the intellect with the matter of the universal, but this was already in it potentially and is brought to act by a second intellect that is the active intellect (ibid., I, 19; cf. 18; 23; V. sotto).

The universal is, by this path, of immediate apprehension, but the definition in which essence unfolds must be constructed (ibid., II, 7, 92 b 2). The method of the Academy was division, and in reality there is no other (ibid., II, 13). It presupposes, however, induction (ibid.; Top., I, 14, 105 b 27), which can no longer be reduced to an immediate intuition; it is a process, a search that is like a hunt (An. Post., II, 13) and must be integrated by the syllogism. For at every step there is a problem, a question in which is proposed (πρότασις) a choice between two contraries (ibid., 5; An. Pr., I, 31)—the dialogue that gives its name to dialectic (An. Post., I, 2; 10; Top., I, 4; 10)—and a choice entails a reason. This, however, can only be formal, one of the relations of the oppositions through which division proceeds, the syllogism has at its disposal

But only the empty generality of common principles is at its disposal: it is a syllogism precisely “logical” or dialectical, not apodeictic (An. Post., II, 8, 93 a 15): apodeixis presupposing essence, definition is not demonstrable (ibid., 3-9). And since matter lacks that unity which only essence can give, the forms of argumentation are many (ibid., I, 22). Hence the “method” furnished by the Topics, where these forms are catalogued and studied. These are the “elements” of dialectic and, borrowing a term from sophistic mnemonics, they are called “places (τόποι)”, i.e. quasi sedes e quibus argumenta promuntur (Cicero, Top., 8). Division, logical syllogism and inductive discourse are the “organs” of dialectic, which, being below essence, has no ground other than the probable (τό ἔνδοξον), and while tending toward one of two contraries always fears the other (St Thomas, In An. Post., I, 1). Remove this fear and you have sophistry (Rhet., I, 1; Soph. El., 11). The reversal of Plato’s position is complete: dialectic is not only not the queen of the sciences, it is not even a science; it is an art of discussion pro and con (Top., I, 1; 2), and though indispensable as a path to principles, it can be employed for any end. Will the sciences then remain isolated in the irreducibility of their principles? In the terms in which the Academy posed the problem, yes; but as all categories have their centre in substance, it is the science of substance that must serve as principle for all the others: the place of dialectic is taken by first philosophy.

Such, in broad outline, is the picture of Aristotle’s first logic. Researches in the field of natural and human reality, broadening his scientific horizon, obliged him in his last period to recast the problem of demonstration. Hence the Prior Analytics, which by unifying the methods of apodeixis and dialectic transform what had been a methodology into a genuine formal logic. To grasp this transformation we must return to the doctrine of the necessary and the accidental. In apodeixis the necessary is defined as “what does not admit (μὴ ἐνδεχόμενον) of being otherwise” and is reduced to the universal, understood as a relation of totality and essence or per se. Consequently the accidental is the ἐνδεχόμενον, “what admits of being otherwise” and does not belong to the essence. In the Prior Analytics (I, 13) the ἐνδεχόμενον is specified into two classes of events: those that happen “for the most part (ὡς ἐπὶ πολύ)” and those “due to chance (ἀπὸ τύχης)”. Parallel to this historical and quantitative conception of necessity and contingency is that of the universal reduced to the sole κατὰ παντός, whose explicit specification in a “all” or “none” the Analytics demand. Hence, by contrast, the “some”. Once the concept is reduced to a mere class designation, the principle of the syllogism could only be an inclusion relation. The κατὰ παντός ἢ μηδενός (whence the “dictum de omni et nullo”) is defined as ἐν ἦλῳ εἶναι ἢ μὴ εἶναι (An. Pr., I, 1, 24 b 26). This permitted: first, the complete formal unification of logical and apodeictic syllogism; second, the determination and classification of figures and moods, with their respective conversions.

Taken in isolation the theory of the Prior Analytics, while representing a formal perfection and may be called definitive, can yet appear inadequate and mechanical in relation to science. But if it is considered within the whole Organon and against the background of the Metaphysics, and if we bear in mind that the “all” is by Aristotle intended only as an index
ARISTOTLE - Ethics, in the interpretation of G. Argiròpulo, Rome 1492.

The formalism of the Prior Analytics has only functional value. For Aristotle, the principle of every demonstration remains always the essence, and it is for this reason that only the first of the three figures is perfect, while the others must be reduced to II. As for the inductive syllogism of the Prior Analytics (II, 23), which, starting from what in the apodictic syllogism is the conclusion, ascends through the minor premise to the major, the complete enumeration it requires for the reciprocation of the minor term and the middle term is possible only because it concerns species and not individuals, and these presuppose a system of the universe that should allow their deduction.

17. METAPHYSICS

The object of metaphysics, or what Aristotle calls first philosophy, is "being as being" (Met., IV, 1; cf. I, 2; VI, 1), and since the absolutely real being is God, it is also the science of God or theology (ibid., VI, 1). Being is spoken of in many senses, according to the different categories, but being in the primary sense is substance, of which all others are affections (πᾶθη) or accidents, and being par excellence is the individual, the only one that exists separately and in itself, the "this something" (τόδε τι). When we ask what this or that individual presented to us by the senses is in itself, and we remove the proper accidents, we have, on the one hand, the complex of determinations by which it is in itself what it is, the essence, that is, the substance itself as it is the object of thought, which Aristotle calls precisely "the what it is" (τό τι ἔστιν) and, with a formula that, uniting past and present, highlights its permanence and identity, "the being that it was to be" (τό τι ἦν εἶναι); on the other hand, the substratum (ὑποκείμενον) which has its form in that and constitutes its matter (ὕλη). To speak of matter and form is to speak of becoming. For what comes to be comes to be something (τό τι), and it is the form, from something (τό ἔξ οὔ), and it is the matter (ibid., VII, 7). Fixed terms of every becoming, for the four categories of being, quantity, quality, and place, under which it is understood (Phys., III, 1), are the contraries. But it is not they that come to be, rather it is the substratum that has the capacity to receive them (τό δεκτικὸν) and that remains, and this substratum is matter with respect to the contrary of which it is deprived and in whose possession (ἔξις) that determined reality will be whose definition is the form. The principles of becoming are therefore matter, privation, and form, but the first two make numerically one (ibid., I, 7; Met., XII, 1-2). Since privation and possession are understood only in relation to the same subject (ibid., X, 4), it follows that becoming is not from absolute non-being, but from being in potency (δυνάμει) to being in act (ἐνεργεία), from what can become what it is not yet to what it is in fact (κατὰ τὸ ἔργον, i.e., Met., IX, 8, 1050 a 21), and which, as the final term (τέλος) of motion, is the complete realization or entelechy (ἐντελέχεια from τὸ ἐντελὲς ἔχειν, ibid., XII, 5; IX, 6-8; Phys., I, 8).

Matter, which cannot be defined except by analogy (Phys., II, 2, 194 b 9; I, 7), is not as privation, it is as substratum (ibid., XII, 2): it is always a "this," with respect to which form is a "such" (ibid., VII, 8), and thus, outside that relation, a "this something." We pose the same question of the "what is it?" for it, and we have another substratum and another form. But the process does not go to infinity: the ultimate real substratum is the elements. Beyond them is being without further determinations, pure potency of the contraries by which they are understood, the "prime matter," the common substratum of all, but which as such has no knowable form of existence (Phys., III, 5). If we repeat the same questions for form, we dissolve into a genus, which, as the possibility of differences, acts as matter, and a difference that acts as form (Met., V, 28). Ascending from genus to genus, we arrive at being which, in the irreducible multiplicity of the categories, is no longer the form of anything and is the intelligible matter of all forms. Substance, therefore, is matter, substance is form or species, and in it the genus, but substance in the absolute sense is the whole constituted by matter and form or the composite (σύνολον, ibid., VII, 3): the universe is constituted of individuals (Phys., I, 3, 186 b 35).

Matter is potency; it can receive form and it can fail to receive it: for the passage from potency to act to be accomplished, the action of a cause in act is necessary (Met., IX, 8), and since the passage is motion, the cause must be motive. The ultimate term (τέλος) of motion and the end for the sake of which (τό οὔ ἔνεκα) it is accomplished is the actuality of form. But the end is a posterior and motion an anterior, so the form must be present in the motive cause. This is what experience shows us: every substance is generated from a synonymous substance: man generates man, and the house, present as an idea in the architect, generates the house (ibid., VII, 7). There are therefore four causes: material, motive or efficient, formal, and final (cf. Zeller, p. 327 et seq.). The formal and the final make one; the motive sometimes goes with form, in events according to nature and art, sometimes with matter, in those attributed to fortune and chance, or accidental (Phys., II, 6-9). The causes of the latter are themselves accidental (Met., VI, 2; Phys., II, 8). Hence two kinds of necessity: one formal and absolute, which goes from antecedent to consequent and governs demonstration (Gen. et Corr., II, 11), the other material and hypothetical (ἐξ ὑποθέσεως), which, ascending from consequent to antecedent, is not such except when the event is completed, and admits both being and non-being (ibid.; cf. Met., VI, 3).

Every individual, with respect to form, is identical to all others of the same species. What differentiates it? Matter (ibid., V, 6, 1016 b 32; XII, 8, 1074 a 33), not however as the abstract condition of form, which is also an universal (ibid., VII, 10, 1035 b 27), but insofar as it is this or that matter (ibid., 8, 1034 a 5) localized in space and time (An. Post., I, 31). This individuality, however, is not the concrete individuality of the composite, in which essence and existence make one, and which has its reality only from form (ibid., VIII, 2, 1043 a 2), but the abstract individuality of existence. From this point of view, the individual can only be contingent: full individuality belongs to eternal substances, to the intellect and to God.

Contingent in individuals are the substances subject to generation and corruption, but necessary in species, which are eternal (Gen. et corr., II, 11). Indeed, the form is eternal, the matter is eternal, and the movement is eternal (Met., VII, 8; Phys., I, 9). Movement could neither begin nor cease unless it were produced by another movement, and since time cannot be separated from it and, existing in the instant which “embraces beginning and end,” is eternal, movement too must be eternal (ibid., VIII, 1; Met., XII, 6). This presupposes the eternity of the cause, and this cause must be one and immobile: one, because movement, to be eternal, must be continuous, and it is continuous only if it is one (Phys., VIII, 6). As for immobility, since the series of causes cannot go on to infinity and must terminate in a first mover, this mover either is immobile or moves itself. Now what moves itself implies a movable and a mover, and the mover, to be first, must be immobile; but if it is immobile in itself, it is movable by accident as part of the whole of which it is a part. Therefore the absolutely first mover must be separate from every moved thing and absolutely immobile (ibid., 5–6; Met. XII, 6–7). This first immobile mover, “from which depend heaven and nature,” is God. He is the essence par excellence, first (τό τι ἦν εἶναι τὸ πρῶτον), absolutely simple, pure form, pure act, necessary of a necessity that admits no other possibility, and in His necessity perfect (ibid., 7; V, 5). Outside of time, which He comprehends in His eternity (αἰών) (ibid.; De caelo, I, 9), He is also unextended and outside of space (Met., XII, 7; but in Phys., VIII, 10, He is placed at the periphery of the universe). As pure form and in act, He is not only intelligible but also intelligent: intellect (Νοῦς) always in act: thought. As such He has life, and since every activity is pleasure, He is supremely blessed (Met., XII, 7; 9; E. N., X, 7; 9). His object is Himself, so that “His thought is thought of thought” (νόησις νόησεως), which,