Aristotle’s Philosophy: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics
The Problem of Reality: Metaphysics
Aristotle argues that there is only Physis. This is subdivided into a supralunar world (the stars, made of ether and where there is no corruption) and the sublunary world, the land that comprises the four elements and where there is change. This Physis is studied by physics, and their ultimate foundation, through metaphysics.
Physics
Physics studies the Physis. According to hylomorphic theory, humans are composed of matter, what they are made of, and Form, its substance or essence, what makes them who they are. This form, in turn, is divided into first substance and second substance. The first substance is the particular individual (the dog) and the second substance is the universal (being a dog, the species). In addition, people can have accidents (which can be removed from a first substance without it ceasing to be what it is). Also, according to Teleology, people look for change to become as perfect as they can, according to their essence, and fulfill their purpose. This change occurs by the passage of potency (what can become) to the act (what is). Thus, the change would be the passage from potency to act guided by their own essence, that every being seeks to become what should be its own purpose. Finally, to explain nature we use the theory of four causes. These causes are: formal (what is the essence), material (what it is made of), efficient or agent (who or what made it) and end (what it was made for). With these four causes, Aristotle could explain any natural phenomenon.
Metaphysics
The other part of the study of reality is metaphysics. Metaphysics studies reality as such, the universal, that all beings meet. Thus, the subject matter of metaphysics is being, being as being, and not the concrete and particular to each individual. Similarly, Metaphysics investigates the first principles of universal reality, what every real being must meet: the axioms (first principles that govern the real, unprovable) and categories (which can be predicated of living place, time, number, etc.).
The Problem of Knowledge: Epistemology
For Aristotle, our knowledge begins with sense (feeling). It is known through a process of induction from the particular to the universal, which begins with the sensitivity that perceives beings. Through imagination, the mental image is generated and this is picked up by the understanding that makes the process of abstraction. It is divided into two: the intellect (which is universal) and allows us to abstract the essence of beings, and understanding patient (individual) that holds abstractions allowing trials.
The Problem of Man: Anthropology
Following his hylomorphic theory, Aristotle affirms that the body (matter) and soul (Form) form a unique natural substance (first or individual) and their union is essential. The soul is the principle of life and death (although the intellect is immortal, but not personal). The human soul has three functions: vegetative or nutritive power is the ability to feed and develop, the sensitive faculty that allows sensitivity, being of an animal, and the intellectual faculty of rational beings and enables thought. The insight is considered the top human functions, the most characteristic and essential as this is what distinguishes him from other beings.
The Problem of Morality: Ethics
For Aristotle, morality is a teleological scheme, as beings tend to an end. In human beings, this is happiness, and therefore, ethics is called eudemonistic. According to Aristotle, happiness is to develop and comply with what is proper to each being according to its essence. This in humans is the intellectual, contemplative life, as the intellectual faculty is characteristic of human beings, leading to the knowledge of people and especially the supreme being, the unmoved mover. Therefore, the key will be to refine this feature with it rationally and dianoetic or intellectual virtues, which are those that improve the understanding, wisdom or contemplation, reflection, etc. But man is not only a substance with understanding, but having bodily and social needs, it is impossible to complete happiness (which would be constantly thinking and it is only proper to God). Thus, human happiness is limited.
Precisely to meet these social needs are the ethical or practical virtues, the most human (as opposed to dianoetic would be “divine”) and organize our lives so that we can focus on what is proper that we (the faculty development intellectual). Virtue ethics is defined by Aristotle as a habit (acquired disposition by the common practice) to determine wisely (using the intellectual faculty or understanding) the mean between two extremes vicious (one default and one up) personally. The average is personal, not universal.
The Problem of Society: Social Theory
Man is a social being by nature a zoon politikon in its essence is sociability implicit since it has the logos you to communicate rationally. Society, therefore, is not from the convention but which fall within the teleological scheme being the ultimate goal of the polis. Human happiness can only be achieved in a society whose laws allow for the development of practical virtues in all citizens. Thus the legislator or politician should be someone who not only has theoretical knowledge, but must have been accustomed to the practical application of his intellect, be cautious. Social justice is when the government does not seek special interests and allows the realization of virtue in all citizens. Aristotle distinguishes three forms of government just in front of their respective corruption: the monarchy, the government of one, corruption is tyranny, aristocracy, rule by the best, compared to Oligarchy, and Democracy, considered the best by Aristotle, is the people’s government, its corruption is demagoguery.
Historical Context
The intellectual work of Aristotle developed during the fourth century BC. The previous century, the fifth century BC, was the period of Athenian greatness, called the Age of Pericles, with victory in the medical war against the Persians. In 404 BC, Athens had suffered a heavy defeat against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and had to spend a year under the rule imposed by the enemy cops called the Thirty Tyrants. So it was an era of decline that could not overcome the restoration of democracy in 403 BC. In addition, a new power emerged in northern Greece, Macedonia, ruled by Philip II in the second half of the fourth century BC, who would conquer all of Greece and end with the independence of the polis and Greek traditional political model. Philip himself, aware of the prestige of Aristotle, made him tutor his son Alexander the Great. But with his death, the empire split, fractionated among his generals. Also, after Alexander’s death, Aristotle had to leave Athens and with it his intellectual work and school he founded the Lyceum there, dying shortly afterwards. This crisis of the Greek world is represented in all spheres of culture with the transition from classical art which governs the ideal of order, calm and rationality, Hellenism and violent movements that express the human suffering that includes, in addition, the New Oriental influence brought by Alexander’s conquests. In addition, the maximum figure will emerge from the Greek rhetoric with Demosthenes, who in his Philippics criticized the expansionist policy of Philip of Macedonia. In philosophy, the question of Arché characteristic of Presocratic cosmological period had changed with the question of human reality (knowledge, moral and political) of the Sophists and Socrates V century BC. The Sophists, with figures of Protagoras and Gorgias, defended relativism and skepticism, saying it is impossible to obtain objective knowledge, to know the truth of reality. Therefore, the moral relativists are postulating the conventionality of human law and the need for rhetoric. Socrates, Plato’s teacher, on the other hand, defended the possibility of objective knowledge and truth will have a special bearing on the moral level, seeking to establish universal concepts that express what is virtue, justice, goodness, and so on.