Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy
Aristotle’s Philosophy
Aristotle: In *physis* are squarely the fundamental issue of philosophy: the diversity and multiplicity of being, through the phenomena of change and movement. So, we have to constantly expand the set of expressions with which we describe and analyze the *physis*. Understanding and explaining these processes occurring in the being of things is the specific task of a new discipline: physics.
Hylomorphism: Matter and Form
Find the *arche*, that which remains in substrate change and becoming. *Substance* is what exists by itself. All things are inseparably composed of matter and form; that is called hylomorphism.
- Matter is the physical substrate of beings, what they are made of. Matter identifies the object; it is concrete.
- Form is the ordering, structure, and shape of matter, thereby enabling us not only to recognize the object but to define it universally.
Three Principles of Movement
- Substrate: That which remains, matter.
- Form: That which the substrate had not possessed and appears due to change. It is the path that leads the way because it is change. We say, in turn, beginning and end, origin and goal.
- Privation: The destruction of the previous form, which enables the substrate to acquire this new form.
Theory of Four Causes
Aristotle considers that there are four types of causes to explain phenomena, and they can be classified as follows:
- Intrinsic Causes:
- Material Cause: The substrate where change takes place, and without which it would not be possible.
- Formal Cause: That which explains what the change tends towards.
- Extrinsic Causes:
- Efficient Cause: The agent or initiator of change.
- Final Cause: The ultimate sense of change.
Potency and Act
Being in potency is what may become a thing, and a being in act is what that same thing ends up being. The act may take two forms: *energeia*, the action that has an active power, or as an update of a reality that is the ideal way of improving what was in power.
First Philosophy
Describes the science that reflects on the most universal and general, that which is common to all that exists: being. It is knowledge about the being that would apply to all existing things. Without this knowledge, no other would be possible; this is a basic knowledge and first philosophy, ontology, and metaphysics.
Intellection and Abstraction
For Aristotle, knowledge begins with sensation, since reality is primarily sensitive, unlike Plato, for whom intellectual knowledge is primary, and sensitive knowledge secondary. Knowledge is not limited to sensation; it is primarily intellectual insight or *intellection*. Intellection always begins with sensation; this makes it particularly sensitive, from which the understanding, through abstraction, comes to the knowledge of the universal.
Theory of Knowledge
Through insight, the agent understanding of the individual extracts from matter the universal that is in the object. The result is the universal concept, necessary and immutable, which will be the proper object of science. The universal application of this concept for the patient understanding allows us to reach the last level of scientific knowledge, that which is universal and necessary.