Aristotle’s Philosophy: Key Concepts and Principles
Aristotle’s Philosophy: Key Concepts
Cause
A cause is a principle that produces a particular state or may cause an event. It explains why something happens or is in a certain way. It is not a simple list, but something based on another reality, leading to something else. For causation to occur, it is not enough that one phenomenon precedes another. The cause must be necessary and sufficient to produce the effect, making the effect an inevitable consequence of the cause.
Aristotle distinguishes four types of causes:
- Material: That out of which something is made.
- Formal: What an object is.
- Efficient: What has caused this thing.
- Final: That for which something exists, what it tends towards, or what it may become.
These can be divided into intrinsic causes, such as material and formal, which are principles that lie within the entity itself, and extrinsic causes, such as efficient and final, which are outside the body.
Nature
Nature, in physics, is the substance, while in and of itself, it has the ability to change and move. Aristotle defined it as the principle of change or rest for the thing that is in essence and not by accident. This applies to all things, both particular and throughout the cosmos. For Aristotle, the cosmos is a body in which all things work towards an end. This is a teleological conception of the universe.
Aristotle describes movement based on three principles, present in all processes of change: two opposing elements and a subject where change occurs:
- Deprivation: The tendency not to be something.
- Form: What is achieved through change.
- Subject: May be substance in substantial changes or accidents in accidental changes.
Power and Act
Power is the ability to acquire a certain characteristic. Act is the state of already possessing a quality, condition, or attribute that defines perfection. Aristotle defines movement as the transition from power to act. It is the act of a being in power while it is in power. This means that potential is the act of the creature that is passing from power to act, to the extent that power is the same as act.
Each being, at a particular time, has certain characteristics and properties that constitute its act, and at the same time, it has some possibilities that may develop and constitute its power. Change occurs to become actually what was in each being as a possibility. When a possibility is realized, it ceases to be in act and movement.
Substance
Substance is that which is necessarily, or what remains unchanged despite any changes that may occur in its attributes, features, or properties. Thus, substance is the individual, concrete, unique thing. The difference between substance and accidents (which would be amendments to being) is that even if these characteristics or attributes change, the being or substance remains unalterable.
For example, an individual can change hair color or lose it, can grow, can learn French, or can move, but the individual remains the same being. Aristotle makes a distinction between first substance and second substance. The first is the concrete individual, while the second is the species to which the individual belongs, in this case, the human species.
Happiness
Aristotle focused his search on the intended purpose of the concrete human being, as well as pursuing all that ultimately seek, which is why all seek happiness. There is not much agreement on what happiness means. For some, it will be a lifetime of pleasure, and for others, a life of honor and riches. However, for Aristotle, the only thing appropriate to the nature of the human being is to be rational.
Happiness is the full realization of human beings living according to the purpose for which human beings are made, indeed, for their own function. If man is the being who possesses logos, the exercise of this function will be his own. Happiness is the right type of being that possesses that kind of life with logos. It is supreme because it depends on the noblest part of the person (reason) and deals with the noblest and highest (being as being). Rational life should allow overcoming the passions and getting a friendly relationship with the natural and social world, so it must be virtuous. The happy life is to live well and do good.
Social Being
According to Aristotle, man is a social and political being by nature. He has a natural tendency to live with others. In fact, it is in a community, the polis, where he can develop intellectually and morally, and where he can meet his economic needs. Being endowed with speech and language gives him this status, so distinctive and different from animals and gods who can live alone.
This conception is linked to an organismic view of society: “The state is by nature prior to the family and to each human being taken individually. The whole is, in effect, prior to each of the parts…” So, just as an isolated body part is lifeless except in relation to the body, neither can an individual exist alone except in connection with the community.