## 1. Aristotle's Life




 
Born in 384 B.C.E. in the Macedonian region of northeastern Greece in
the small city of Stagira (whence the moniker 'the
Stagirite', which one still occasionally encounters in
Aristotelian scholarship), Aristotle was sent to Athens at about the
age of seventeen to study in Plato's Academy, then a pre-eminent
place of learning in the Greek world. Once in Athens, Aristotle
remained associated with the Academy until Plato's death in 347,
at which time he left for Assos, in Asia Minor, on the northwest coast
of present-day Turkey. There he continued the philosophical activity
he had begun in the Academy, but in all likelihood also began to
expand his researches into marine biology. He remained at Assos for
approximately three years, when, evidently upon the death of his host
Hermeias, a friend and former Academic who had been the ruler of
Assos, Aristotle moved to the nearby coastal island of Lesbos. There
he continued his philosophical and empirical researches for an
additional two years, working in conjunction with Theophrastus, a
native of Lesbos who was also reported in antiquity to have been
associated with Plato's Academy. While in Lesbos, Aristotle
married Pythias, the niece of Hermeias, with whom he had a daughter,
also named Pythias.




In 343, upon the request of Philip, the king of Macedon, Aristotle
left Lesbos for Pella, the Macedonian capital, in order to tutor the
king's thirteen-year-old son, Alexander--the boy who was
eventually to become Alexander the Great. Although speculation
concerning Aristotle's influence upon the developing Alexander has
proven irresistible to historians, in fact little concrete is known
about their interaction. On the balance, it seems reasonable to
conclude that some tuition took place, but that it lasted only two or
three years, when Alexander was aged from thirteen to fifteen. By
fifteen, Alexander was apparently already serving as a deputy military
commander for his father, a circumstance undermining, if
inconclusively, the judgment of those historians who conjecture a
longer period of tuition. Be that as it may, some suppose that their
association lasted as long as eight years.




It is difficult to rule out that possibility decisively, since little
is known about the period of Aristotle's life from
341-335. He evidently remained a further five years in Stagira
or Macedon before returning to Athens for the second and final time,
in 335. In Athens, Aristotle set up his own school in a public
exercise area dedicated to the god Apollo Lykeios, whence its name,
the *Lyceum*. Those affiliated with Aristotle's school
later came to be called *Peripatetics*, probably because of the
existence of an ambulatory (*peripatos*) on the school's
property adjacent to the exercise ground. Members of the Lyceum
conducted research into a wide range of subjects, all of which were of
interest to Aristotle himself: botany, biology, logic, music,
mathematics, astronomy, medicine, cosmology, physics, the history of
philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, theology, rhetoric,
political history, government and political theory, and the arts. In
all these areas, the Lyceum collected manuscripts, thereby, according
to some ancient accounts, assembling the first great library of
antiquity. 




During this period, Aristotle's wife, Pythias, died and he
developed a new relationship with Herpyllis, perhaps like him a native
of Stagira, though her origins are disputed, as is the question of her
exact relationship to Aristotle. Some suppose that she was merely his
slave; others infer from the provisions of Aristotle's will that
she was a freed woman and likely his wife at the time of his
death. In any event, they had children together, including a son,
Nicomachus, named for Aristotle's father and after whom his
*Nicomachean Ethics* is presumably named.




After thirteen years in Athens, Aristotle once again found cause to
retire from the city, in 323. Probably his departure was
occasioned by a resurgence of the always-simmering anti-Macedonian
sentiment in Athens, which was free to come to the boil after Alexander
succumbed to disease in Babylon during that same year. Because of
his connections to Macedon, Aristotle reasonably feared for his safety
and left Athens, remarking, as an oft-repeated ancient tale would tell
it, that he saw no reason to permit Athens to sin twice against
philosophy. He withdrew directly to Chalcis, on Euboea, an island
off the Attic coast, and died there of natural causes the following
year, in
 322.[3]


## 2. The Aristotelian Corpus: Character and Primary Divisions



 
Aristotle's writings tend to present formidable difficulties to
his novice readers. To begin, he makes heavy use of unexplained
technical terminology, and his sentence structure can at times prove
frustrating. Further, on occasion a chapter or even a full
treatise coming down to us under his name appears haphazardly
organized, if organized at all; indeed, in several cases, scholars
dispute whether a continuous treatise currently arranged under a single
title was ever intended by Aristotle to be published in its present
form or was rather stitched together by some later editor employing
whatever principles of organization he deemed
 suitable.[4] 
 This helps explain why
students who turn to Aristotle after first being introduced to the
supple and mellifluous prose on display in Plato's dialogues
often find the experience frustrating. Aristotle's prose
requires some acclimatization.



 
All the more puzzling, then, is Cicero's observation that if
Plato's prose was silver, Aristotle's was a flowing river
of gold (*Ac. Pr.* 38.119, cf. *Top*. 1.3, *De
or.* 1.2.49). Cicero was arguably the greatest prose stylist of
Latin and was also without question an accomplished and fair-minded
critic of the prose styles of others writing in both Latin and
Greek. We must assume, then, that Cicero had before him works of
Aristotle other than those we possess. In fact, we know that
Aristotle wrote dialogues, presumably while still in the Academy, and
in their few surviving remnants we are afforded a glimpse of the style
Cicero describes. In most of what we possess, unfortunately, we
find work of a much less polished character. Rather,
Aristotle's extant works read like what they very probably are:
lecture notes, drafts first written and then reworked, ongoing records
of continuing investigations, and, generally speaking, in-house
compilations intended not for a general audience but for an inner
circle of auditors. These are to be contrasted with the
"exoteric" writings Aristotle sometimes mentions, his more
graceful compositions intended for a wider audience (*Pol.*
1278b30; *EE* 1217b22, 1218b34). Unfortunately, then, we
are left for the most part, though certainly not entirely, with
unfinished works in progress rather than with finished and polished
productions. Still, many of those who persist with Aristotle come
to appreciate the unembellished directness of his style.




 
More importantly, the unvarnished condition of Aristotle's
surviving treatises does not hamper our ability to come to grips with their
philosophical content. His thirty-one surviving works (that is,
those contained in the "Corpus Aristotelicum" of our
medieval manuscripts that are judged to be authentic) all contain
recognizably Aristotelian doctrine; and most of these contain theses
whose basic purport is clear, even where matters of detail and nuance
are subject to exegetical controversy. 




 
These works may be categorized in terms of the intuitive
organizational principles preferred by Aristotle. He refers to the
branches of learning as "sciences"
(*epistemai*), best regarded as organized bodies of
learning completed for presentation rather than as ongoing records of
empirical researches. Moreover, again in his terminology, *natural
sciences* such as physics are but one branch of *theoretical
science*, which comprises both empirical and non-empirical
pursuits. He distinguishes theoretical science from more practically
oriented studies, some of which concern human conduct and others of
which focus on the productive crafts. Thus, the Aristotelian sciences
divide into three: (i) theoretical, (ii) practical, and (iii)
productive. The principles of division are straightforward:
theoretical science seeks knowledge for its own sake; practical
science concerns conduct and goodness in action, both individual and
societal; and productive science aims at the creation of beautiful or
useful objects (*Top*. 145a15-16;
*Phys*. 192b8-12; *DC* 298a27-32,
*DA* 403a27-b2; *Met.* 1025b25, 1026a18-19,
1064a16-19, b1-3; *EN* 1139a26-28,
1141b29-32).




(i) The *theoretical sciences* include prominently what
Aristotle calls *first philosophy*, or metaphysics as we now
call it, but also *mathematics*, and *physics*, or
natural philosophy. Physics studies the natural universe as a
whole, and tends in Aristotle's hands to concentrate on
conceptual puzzles pertaining to nature rather than on empirical research;
but it reaches further, so that it includes also a theory of causal
explanation and finally even a proof of an unmoved mover thought to be
the first and final cause of all motion. Many of the puzzles of primary
concern to Aristotle have proven perennially attractive to
philosophers, mathematicians, and theoretically inclined natural
scientists. They include, as a small sample, Zeno's
paradoxes of motion, puzzles about time, the nature of place, and
difficulties encountered in thought about the infinite. 




Natural philosophy also incorporates the special sciences, including
biology, botany, and astronomical theory. Most contemporary
critics think that Aristotle treats psychology as a sub-branch of
natural philosophy, because he regards the soul (*psuche*)
as the basic principle of life, including all animal and plant
life. In fact, however, the evidence for this conclusion is
inconclusive at best. It is instructive to note that earlier periods of
Aristotelian scholarship thought this controversial, so that, for
instance, even something as innocuous-sounding as the question of the
proper home of psychology in Aristotle's division of the sciences
ignited a multi-decade debate in the
 Renaissance.[5] 




(ii) *Practical sciences* are less contentious, at least as
regards their range. These deal with conduct and action, both
individual and societal. Practical science thus contrasts with
theoretical science, which seeks knowledge for its own sake, and, less
obviously, with the productive sciences, which deal with the creation
of products external to sciences themselves. Both politics and
ethics fall under this branch.




(iii) Finally, then, the *productive sciences* are mainly
crafts aimed at the production of artefacts, or of human productions
more broadly construed. The productive sciences include, among
others, ship-building, agriculture, and medicine, but also the arts of
music, theatre, and dance. Another form of productive science is
rhetoric, which treats the principles of speech-making appropriate to
various forensic and persuasive settings, including centrally political
assemblies.




Significantly, Aristotle's tri-fold division of the sciences
makes no mention of logic. Although he did not use the word
'logic' in our sense of the term, Aristotle in fact
developed the first formalized system of logic and valid
inference. In Aristotle's framework--although he is
nowhere explicit about this--logic belongs to no one science, but
rather formulates the principles of correct argumentation suitable to
all areas of inquiry in common. It systematizes the principles
licensing acceptable inference, and helps to highlight at an abstract
level seductive patterns of incorrect inference to be avoided by anyone
with a primary interest in truth. So, alongside his more
technical work in logic and logical theory, Aristotle investigates
informal styles of argumentation and seeks to expose common patterns of
fallacious reasoning.




Aristotle's investigations into logic and the forms of
argumentation make up part of the group of works coming down to us from
the Middle Ages under the heading the *Organon*
(*organon* = *tool* in Greek). Although not so
characterized in these terms by Aristotle, the name is apt, so long as
it is borne in mind that intellectual inquiry requires a broad range of
tools. Thus, in addition to logic and argumentation (treated
primarily in the *Prior Analytics* and *Topics*), the
works included in the *Organon* deal with category theory, the
doctrine of propositions and terms, the structure of scientific theory,
and to some extent the basic principles of epistemology.




 
When we slot Aristotle's most important surviving authentic works
into this scheme, we end up with the following basic
divisions of his major writings:


* Organon
	+ *Categories* (*Cat*.)
	+ *De Interpretatione* (*DI*) [*On Interpretation*]
	+ *Prior Analytics* (*APr*)
	+ *Posterior Analytics* (*APo*)
	+ *Topics* (*Top*.)
	+ *Sophistical Refutations* (*SE*)
* Theoretical Sciences
	+ *Physics* (*Phys*.)
	+ *Generation and Corruption* (*Gen. et Corr*.)
	+ *De Caelo* (*DC*) [*On the Heavens*]
	+ *Metaphysics* (*Met*.)
	+ *De* *Anima* (*DA*) [*On the Soul*]
	+ *Parva Naturalia* (*PN*) [*Brief Natural Treatises*]
	+ *History of Animals* (*HA*)
	+ *Parts of Animals* (*PA*)
	+ *Movement of Animals* (*MA*)
	+ *Meteorology* (*Meteor*.)
	+ *Progression of Animals* (*IA*)
	+ *Generation of Animals* (*GA*)
* Practical Sciences
	+ *Nicomachean Ethics* (*EN*)
	+ *Eudemian Ethics* (*EE*)
	+ *Magna Moralia* (*MM*) [*Great Ethics*]
	+ *Politics* (*Pol*.)
* Productive Science
	+ *Rhetoric* (*Rhet*.)
	+ *Poetics* (*Poet*.)




The titles in this list are those in most common use today in
English-language scholarship, followed by standard abbreviations in
parentheses. For no discernible reason, Latin titles are
customarily employed in some cases, English in others. Where
Latin titles are in general use, English equivalents are given in
square brackets.


## 3. *Phainomena* and the Endoxic Method




 
Aristotle's basic approach to philosophy is best grasped initially by
way of contrast. Whereas Descartes seeks to place philosophy and
science on firm foundations by subjecting all knowledge claims to a
searing methodological doubt, Aristotle begins with the conviction
that our perceptual and cognitive faculties are basically dependable,
that they for the most part put us into direct contact with the
features and divisions of our world, and that we need not dally with
sceptical postures before engaging in substantive philosophy.
Accordingly, he proceeds in all areas of inquiry in the manner of a
modern-day natural scientist, who takes it for granted that progress
follows the assiduous application of a well-trained mind and so, when
presented with a problem, simply goes to work. When he goes to work,
Aristotle begins by considering how the world appears, reflecting on
the puzzles those appearances throw up, and reviewing what has been
said about those puzzles to date. These methods comprise his twin
appeals to *phainomena* and the endoxic method. 




 
These two methods reflect in different ways Aristotle's deepest
motivations for doing philosophy in the first place. "Human
beings began to do philosophy," he says, "even as they do
now, because of wonder, at first because they wondered about the
strange things right in front of them, and then later, advancing
little by little, because they came to find greater things
puzzling" (*Met.* 982b12). Human beings philosophize,
according to Aristotle, because they find aspects of their experience
puzzling. The sorts of puzzles we encounter in thinking about the
universe and our place within it--*aporiai*, in
Aristotle's terminology--tax our understanding and induce us to
philosophize.




 
According to Aristotle, it behooves us to begin philosophizing by
laying out the *phainomena*, the *appearances*, or, more
fully, *things appearing to be the case*, and then also
collecting the *endoxa*, the credible opinions handed down
regarding matters we find puzzling. As a typical example, in a
passage of his *Nicomachean Ethics*, Aristotle confronts a
puzzle of human conduct, the fact that we are apparently sometimes
akratic or weak-willed. When introducing this puzzle, Aristotle pauses
to reflect upon a precept governing his approach to many areas of inquiry:



> 
> 
> As in other cases, we must set out the appearances
> (*phainomena*) and run through all the puzzles regarding
> them. In this way we must prove the credible opinions
> (*endoxa*) about these sorts of experiences--ideally, all
> the credible opinions, but if not all, then most of them, those which
> are the most important. For if the objections are answered and
> the credible opinions remain, we shall have an adequate proof.
> (*EN* 1145b2-7)




Scholars dispute concerning the degree to which Aristotle regards
himself as beholden to the credible opinions (*endoxa*) he
recounts and the basic appearances (*phainomena*) to which
 he
 appeals.[6] 
 Of course, since the *endoxa* will sometimes conflict with one
another, often precisely because the *phainomena* generate
*aporiai*, or puzzles, it is not always possible to respect them
in their entirety. So, as a group they must be re-interpreted and
systematized, and, where that does not suffice, some must be rejected
outright. It is in any case abundantly clear that Aristotle is
willing to abandon some or all of the *endoxa* and
*phainomena* whenever science or philosophy demands that he do
so (*Met.* 1073b36, 1074b6; *PA* 644b5; *EN*
1145b2-30).




Still, his attitude towards *phainomena* does betray a
preference to conserve as many appearances as is practicable in a given
domain--not because the appearances are unassailably accurate, but
rather because, as he supposes, appearances tend to track the
truth. We are outfitted with sense organs and powers of
mind so structured as to put us into contact with the world and
thus to provide us with data regarding its basic constituents and
divisions. While our faculties are not infallible, neither are
they systematically deceptive or misdirecting. Since
philosophy's aim is truth and much of what appears to us proves
upon analysis to be correct, *phainomena* provide both an
impetus to philosophize and a check on some of its more extravagant
impulses. 




Of course, it is not always clear what constitutes a
*phainomenon*; still less is it clear which *phainomenon*
is to be respected in the face of *bona fide*
disagreement. This is in part why Aristotle endorses his second
and related methodological precept, that we ought to begin
philosophical discussions by collecting the most stable and entrenched
opinions regarding the topic of inquiry handed down to us by our
predecessors. Aristotle's term for these privileged views,
*endoxa*, is variously rendered as 'reputable
opinions', 'credible opinions', 'entrenched
beliefs', 'credible beliefs', or 'common
beliefs'. Each of these translations captures at least part of
what Aristotle intends with this word, but it is important to
appreciate that it is a fairly technical term for
him. An *endoxon* is the sort of opinion we spontaneously
regard as reputable or worthy of respect, even if upon reflection we
may come to question its veracity. (Aristotle appropriates this term
from ordinary Greek, in which an *endoxos* is a notable or
honourable man, a man of high repute whom we would spontaneously
respect--though we might, of course, upon closer inspection, find
cause to criticize him.) As he explains his use of the
term, *endoxa* are widely shared opinions, often ultimately
issuing from those we esteem most: '*Endoxa* are those
opinions accepted by everyone, or by the majority, or by the
wise--and among the wise, by all or most of them, or by those who
are the most notable and having the highest reputation'
(*Top.* 100b21-23). *Endoxa* play a special role
in Aristotelian philosophy in part because they form a significant
sub-class of *phainomena* (*EN* 1154b3-8): because they
are the privileged opinions we find ourselves unreflectively endorsing
and reaffirming after some reflection, they themselves come to qualify
as appearances to be preserved where possible.




For this reason, Aristotle's method of beginning with the
*endoxa* is more than a pious platitude to the effect that it
behooves us to mind our superiors. He does think this, as far as
it goes, but he also maintains, more instructively, that we can be led
astray by the terms within which philosophical problems are bequeathed
to us. Very often, the puzzles confronting us were given crisp
formulations by earlier thinkers and we find them puzzling precisely
for that reason. Equally often, however, if we reflect upon the
terms within which the puzzles are cast, we find a way forward; when a
formulation of a puzzle betrays an untenable structuring assumption, a
solution naturally commends itself. This is why in more abstract
domains of inquiry we are likely to find ourselves seeking guidance
from our predecessors even as we call into question their
ways of articulating the problems we are confronting. 




Aristotle applies his method of running through the
*phainomena* and collecting the *endoxa* widely, in
nearly every area of his philosophy. To take a typical
illustration, we find the method clearly deployed in his discussion of
time in *Physics* iv 10-14. We begin with a
*phainomenon*: we feel sure *that* *time exists*
or at least *that time passes*. So much is, inescapably,
how our world appears: we experience time as passing, as
unidirectional, as unrecoverable when lost. Yet when we move to
offer an account of what time might be, we find ourselves
flummoxed. For guidance, we turn to what has been said about time
by those who have reflected upon its nature. It emerges directly
that both philosophers and natural scientists have raised problems
about time. 




As Aristotle sets them out, these problems take the form of puzzles,
or *aporiai*, regarding whether and if so how time exists
(*Phys*. 218a8-30). If we say that time is the totality of the
past, present and future, we immediately find someone objecting that
time exists but that the past and future do not. According to the
objector, only the present exists. If we retort then that time is
what *did* exist, what exists *at present* and
what *will* exist, then we notice first that our account is
insufficient: after all, there are many things which did, do, or will
exist, but these are things that are *in* time and so not the
same as time itself. We further see that our account already threatens
circularity, since to say that something *did* or *will*
exist seems only to say that it existed at an earlier *time* or
will come to exist at a later *time*. Then again we find
someone objecting to our account that even the notion of the
*present* is troubling. After all, either the present is
constantly changing or it remains forever the same. If it remains
forever the same, then the current present is the same as the present
of 10,000 years ago; yet that is absurd. If it is constantly changing,
then no two presents are the same, in which case a past present must
have come into and out of existence before the present present. When?
Either it went out of existence even as it came into existence, which
seems odd to say the least, or it went out of existence at some
instant after it came into existence, in which case, again, two
presents must have existed at the same instant. Now, Aristotle does
not endorse the claims set out in stating these sorts
of *aporiai*; in fact, very often he cannot, because
some *aporiai* qualify as *aporiai* just because they
comprise individually plausible arguments generating incompatible
conclusions. They thus serve as springboards to deeper, more
demanding analysis. 




In general, then, in setting such *aporiai*, Aristotle does not
mean to endorse any given *endoxon* on one side or the
other. Rather, he thinks that such considerations present credible
puzzles, reflection upon which may steer us towards a defensible
understanding of the nature of time. In this way, *aporiai*
bring into sharp relief the issues requiring attention if progress is
to be made. Thus, by reflecting upon the *aporiai* regarding
time, we are led immediately to think about duration and divisibility,
about
*quanta* and *continua*, and about a variety of
categorial questions. That is, if time exists, then what sort of
thing is it? Is it the sort of thing which exists absolutely and
independently? Or is it rather the sort of thing which, like a
surface, depends upon other things for its existence? When we
begin to address these sorts of questions, we also begin to ascertain
the sorts of assumptions at play in the *endoxa* coming down to
us regarding the nature of time. Consequently, when we
collect the *endoxa* and survey them critically, we learn
something about our quarry, in this case about the nature of
time--and crucially also something about the constellation of
concepts which must be refined if we are to make genuine philosophical
progress with respect to it. What holds in the case of time, Aristotle implies, holds generally. This is why he
characteristically begins a philosophical inquiry by presenting the
*phainomena*, collecting the *endoxa*, and running
through the puzzles to which they give rise. 


## 4. Logic, Science, and Dialectic




 
Aristotle's reliance on *endoxa* takes on a still greater
significance given the role such opinions play in *dialectic*,
which he regards as an important form of non-scientific
reasoning. Dialectic, like science
(*episteme*), trades in logical inference; but
science requires premises of a sort beyond the scope of ordinary
dialectical reasoning. Whereas science relies upon premises which
are necessary and known to be so, a dialectical discussion can proceed
by relying on *endoxa*, and so can claim only to be as secure as
the *endoxa* upon which it relies. This is not a problem,
suggests Aristotle, since we often reason fruitfully and well in
circumstances where we cannot claim to have attained scientific
understanding. Minimally, however, all
reasoning--whether scientific or dialectical--must respect
the canons of logic and inference. 


### 4.1 Logic




 
Among the great achievements to which Aristotle can lay claim is the
first systematic treatment of the principles of correct reasoning, the
first logic. Although today we recognize many forms of logic
beyond Aristotle's, it remains true that he not only developed a
theory of deduction, now called syllogistic, but added to it a modal
syllogistic and went a long way towards proving some meta-theorems
pertinent to these systems. Of course, philosophers before
Aristotle reasoned well or reasoned poorly, and the competent among them
had a secure working grasp of the principles of validity and
soundness in argumentation. No-one before Aristotle, however, developed a
systematic treatment of the principles governing correct inference; and
no-one before him attempted to codify the formal and syntactic
principles at play in such inference. Aristotle somewhat
uncharacteristically draws attention to this fact at the end of a
discussion of logic inference and fallacy:



> 
> 
> Once you have surveyed our work, if it seems to you that our system
> has developed adequately in comparison with other treatments arising
> from the tradition to date--bearing in mind how things were at the
> beginning of our inquiry--it falls to you, our students, to be
> indulgent with respect to any omissions in our system, and to feel a
> great debt of gratitude for the discoveries it contains (*Soph.
> Ref.* 184b2-8).




Even if we now regard it as commonplace that his logic is but a
fraction of the logic we know and use, Aristotle's accomplishment
was so encompassing that no less a figure than Kant, writing over two
millennia after the appearance of Aristotle's treatises on logic,
found it easy to offer an appropriately laudatory judgment: 'That
from the earliest times logic has traveled a secure course can be seen
from the fact that since the time of Aristotle it has not had to go a
single step backwards...What is further remarkable about logic is
that until now it has also been unable to take a single step forward,
and therefore seems to all appearance to be finished and
complete' (*Critique of Pure Reason* B vii).




 
In Aristotle's logic, the basic ingredients of reasoning are
given in terms of *inclusion* and *exclusion* relations,
of the sort graphically captured many years later by the device of Venn
diagrams. He begins with the notion of a patently correct sort of
argument, one whose evident and unassailable acceptability induces
Aristotle to refer to is as a 'perfect deduction'
(*APr*. 24b22-25). Generally, a *deduction*
(*sullogismon*), according to Aristotle, is a valid or
acceptable argument. More exactly, a deduction is 'an
argument in which when certain things are laid down something else
follows of necessity in virtue of their being so' (*APr*.
24b18-20). His view of deductions is, then, akin to a notion of
validity, though there are some minor differences. For
example, Aristotle maintains that irrelevant premises will ruin a
deduction, whereas validity is indifferent to irrelevance or indeed to
the addition of premises of any kind to an already valid
argument. Moreover, Aristotle insists that deductions make
progress, whereas every inference from *p* to *p* is
trivially valid. Still, Aristotle's general conception of
deduction is sufficiently close to validity that we may pass into
speaking in terms of valid structures when characterizing his
syllogistic. In general, he contends that a deduction is the sort
of argument whose *structure* guarantees its validity,
irrespective of the truth or falsity of its premises. This holds
intuitively for the following structure:


1. All *A*s are *B*s.
2. All *B*s are *C*s.
3. Hence, all *A*s are *C*s.




Accordingly, anything taking this form will be a deduction in
Aristotle's sense. Let the *A*s,
*B*s, and *C*s be anything at all, and
*if* indeed the *A*s are *B*s, and
the *B*s *C*s, then *of necessity*
the *A*s will be *C*s. This
particular deduction is *perfect* because its validity needs no
proof, and perhaps because it admits of no proof either: any proof
would seem to rely ultimately upon the intuitive validity of this sort
of argument. 




Aristotle seeks to exploit the intuitive validity of perfect
deductions in a surprisingly bold way, given the infancy of his
subject: he thinks he can establish principles of transformation in
terms of which *every* deduction (or, more precisely, every
non-modal deduction) can be translated into a perfect deduction. He
contends that by using such transformations we can place all
deduction on a firm footing.




If we focus on just the simplest kinds of deduction,
Aristotle's procedure comes quickly into view. The
perfect deduction already presented is an instance of universal
affirmation: all *A*s are *B*s; all
*B*s *C*s; and so, all
*A*s are *C*s. Now, contends
Aristotle, it is possible to run through all combinations of simple
premises and display their basic inferential structures and then to
relate them back to this and similarly perfect deductions. Thus,
if we vary the *quantity* of a proposition's subject
(universal *all* versus indeterminate *some*) along with
the *quality* or kind of the predication (*positive*
versus *negative*), we arrive at all the possible combinations
of the most basic kind of arguments.




It turns out that some of these arguments are deductions, or valid
syllogisms, and some are not. Those which are not admit of
counterexamples, whereas those which are, of course, do not. There are
counterexamples to those, for instance, suffering from what came to be
called undistributed middle terms, e.g.: all *A*s
are *B*s; some
*B*s are *C*s; so, all
*A*s are *C*s (all university students are literate;
some literate people read poetry; so, all university students read
poetry). There is no counterexample to the perfect deduction in the
form of a universal affirmation: if all
*A*s are *B*s, and all
*B*s *C*s, then there is no escaping the fact that
all *A*s are *C*s. So, if all the kinds of deductions
possible can be reduced to the intuitively valid sorts, then the
validity of all can be vouchsafed. 




To effect this sort of reduction, Aristotle relies upon a series of
meta-theorems, some of which he proves and others of which he merely
reports (though it turns out that they do all indeed admit of
proofs). His principles are *meta*-theorems in the sense
that no argument can run afoul of them and still qualify as a genuine
deduction. They include such theorems as: (i) no deduction
contains two negative premises; (ii) a deduction with a negative
conclusion must have a negative premise; (iii) a deduction with a
universal conclusion requires two universal premises; and (iv) a
deduction with a negative conclusion requires exactly one negative
premise. He does, in fact, offer proofs for the most significant of his
meta-theorems, so that we can be assured that all deductions in his
system are valid, even when their validity is difficult to grasp
immediately.




In developing and proving these meta-theorems of logic, Aristotle
charts territory left unexplored before him and unimproved for many
centuries after his death. 




For a fuller account of Aristotle's achievements in logic,
 see the entry on 
 Aristotle's Logic.


### 4.2 Science



 
Aristotle approaches the study of logic not as an end in itself, but
with a view to its role in human inquiry and explanation. Logic is a
tool, he thinks, one making an important but incomplete contribution
to science and dialectic. Its contribution is incomplete because
science (*episteme*) employs arguments which are
more than mere deductions. A deduction is minimally a valid syllogism,
and certainly science must employ arguments passing this
threshold. Still, science needs more: a science proceeds
by *organizing* the data in its domain into a series of
arguments which, beyond being deductions, feature premises which are
necessary and, as Aristotle says, "better known by
nature", or "more intelligible by nature"
(*gnorimoteron phusei*)
(*APo*. 71b33-72a25; *Top*. 141b3-14;
*Phys*. 184a16-23). By this he means that they should
reveal the genuine, mind-independent natures of things. 




He further insists that science
(*episteme*)--a comparatively broad term in
his usage, since it extends to fields of inquiry like mathematics and
metaphysics no less than the empirical sciences--not only reports
the facts but also explains them by displaying their priority
relations (*APo*. 78a22-28). That is, science explains what is
less well known by what is better known and more fundamental, and what
is explanatorily anemic by what is explanatorily fruitful. 




We may, for instance, wish to know why trees lose their leaves in the
autumn. We may say, rightly, that this is due to the wind blowing
through them. Still, this is not a deep or general explanation, since
the wind blows equally at other times of year without the same
result. A deeper explanation--one unavailable to Aristotle but
illustrating his view nicely--is more general, and also more
causal in character: trees shed their leaves because diminished
sunlight in the autumn inhibits the production of chlorophyll, which
is required for photosynthesis, and without photosynthesis trees go
dormant. Importantly, science should not only record these facts but
also display them in their correct explanatory order. That is,
although a deciduous tree which fails to photosynthesize is also a
tree lacking in chlorophyll production, its failing to produce
chlorophyll explains its inability to photosynthesize and not the
other way around. This sort of asymmetry must be captured in
scientific explanation. Aristotle's method of scientific exposition is
designed precisely to discharge this requirement.




Science seeks to capture not only the causal priorities in nature,
but also its deep, invariant patterns. Consequently, in addition
to being explanatorily basic, the first premise in a scientific
deduction will be necessary. So, says Aristotle:



> 
> 
> We think we understand a thing without qualification, and not in the
> sophistic, accidental way, whenever we think we know the cause in
> virtue of which something is--that it is the cause of that very
> thing--*and also* know that this cannot be otherwise. 
> Clearly, knowledge (*episteme*) is something of this
> sort. After all, both those with knowledge and those without it
> suppose that this is so--although only those with knowledge are
> actually in this condition. Hence, whatever is known without
> qualification cannot be otherwise. (*APo* 71b9-16; cf.
> *APo* 71b33-72a5; *Top*. 141b3-14, *Phys*.
> 184a10-23; *Met.* 1029b3-13) 




For this reason, science requires more than mere deduction.
Altogether, then, the currency of science is *demonstration*
(*apodeixis*), where a demonstration is a deduction with
premises revealing the causal structures of the world, set forth so as
to capture what is necessary and to reveal what is better known and
more intelligible by nature (*APo*
71b33-72a5, *Phys*. 184a16-23, *EN* 1095b2-4). 



 
Aristotle's approach to the appropriate form of scientific explanation
invites reflection upon a troubling epistemological question: how does
demonstration begin? If we are to lay out demonstrations such that the
less well known is inferred by means of deduction from the better
known, then unless we reach rock-bottom, we will evidently be forced
either to continue ever backwards towards the increasingly better
known, which seems implausibly endless, or lapse into some form of
circularity, which seems undesirable. The alternative seems to be
permanent ignorance. Aristotle contends:



> 
> 
> Some people think that since knowledge obtained via demonstration
> requires the knowledge of primary things, there is no knowledge. 
> Others think that there is knowledge and that all knowledge is
> demonstrable. Neither of these views is either true or
> necessary. The first group, those supposing that there is
> no knowledge at all, contend that we are confronted with an infinite
> regress. They contend that we cannot know posterior things
> because of prior things if none of the prior things is primary. 
> Here what they contend is correct: it is indeed impossible to traverse
> an infinite series. Yet, they maintain, if the regress comes to a
> halt, and there are first principles, they will be unknowable, since
> surely there will be no demonstration of first principles--given,
> as they maintain, that only what is demonstrated can be known. 
> But if it is not possible to know the primary things, then neither can
> we know without qualification or in any proper way the things derived
> from them. Rather, we can know them instead only on the basis of
> a hypothesis, to wit, *if* the primary things obtain, then so
> too do the things derived from them. The other group agrees that
> knowledge results only from demonstration, but believes that nothing
> stands in the way of demonstration, since they admit circular and
> reciprocal demonstration as possible. (*APo.* 72b5-21)




Aristotle's own preferred alternative is clear:



> 
> 
> We contend that not all knowledge is demonstrative: knowledge of the
> immediate premises is indemonstrable. Indeed, the necessity here
> is apparent; for if it is necessary to know the prior things, that is,
> those things from which the demonstration is derived, and if eventually
> the regress comes to a standstill, it is necessary that these immediate
> premises be indemonstrable. (*APo*. 72b21-23)




In sum, if all knowledge requires demonstration, and all
demonstration proceeds from what is more intelligible by nature to what
is less so, then either the process goes on indefinitely or it comes to
a halt in undemonstrated first principles, which are known, and known
securely. Aristotle dismisses the only remaining possibility,
that demonstration might be circular, rather curtly, with the remark
that this amounts to 'simply saying that something is the
case if it is the case,' by which device 'it is easy to
prove anything' (*APo*. 72b32-73a6).




 
Aristotle's own preferred alternative, that there are first
principles of the sciences graspable by those willing to engage in
assiduous study, has caused consternation in many of his readers.
 In *Posterior Analytics* ii 19, he describes the
process by which knowers move from perception to memory, and from memory
to experience (*empeiria*)--which is a fairly technical
term in this connection, reflecting the point at which a single
universal comes to take root in the mind--and finally from
experience to a grasp of first principles. This final
intellectual state Aristotle characterizes as a kind of unmediated
intellectual apprehension (*nous*) of first principles
(*APo*. 100a10-b6).



Scholars have understandably queried what seems a casually asserted
passage from the contingent, given in sense experience, to the
necessary, as required for the first principles of science. Perhaps,
however, Aristotle simply envisages a kind of *a posteriori*
necessity for the sciences, including the natural sciences. In any
event, he thinks that we can and do have knowledge, so that somehow we
begin in sense perception and build up to an understanding of the
necessary and invariant features of the world. This is the knowledge
featured in genuine science (*episteme*). In
reflecting on the sort of progression Aristotle envisages, some
commentators have charged him with an epistemological optimism
bordering on the naive; others contend that it is rather the
charge of naivete which is itself naive, betraying as
it does an unargued and untenable alignment of the necessary and
the *a
 priori*.[7]


### 4.3 Dialectic




 
Not all rigorous reasoning qualifies as scientific. Indeed,
little of Aristotle's extant writing conforms to the demands for
scientific presentation laid down in the *Posterior
Analytics*. As he recognizes, we often find ourselves
reasoning from premises which have the status of *endoxa*,
opinions widely believed or endorsed by the wise, even though they are
not known to be necessary. Still less often do we reason having
first secured the first principles of our domain of inquiry. So,
we need some 'method by which we will be able to reason
deductively about any matter proposed to us on the basis of
*endoxa*, and to give an account of ourselves [when we are under
examination by an interlocutor] without lapsing into
contradiction' (*Top*. 100a18-20). This method
he characterizes as *dialectic*. 




 
The suggestion that we often use dialectic when engaged in
philosophical exchange reflects Aristotle's supposition that
there are two sorts of dialectic: one negative, or destructive, and the
other positive, or constructive. In fact, in his work dedicated
to dialectic, the *Topics*, he identifies three roles for
dialectic in intellectual inquiry, the first of which is mainly
preparatory:



> 
> 
> Dialectic is useful for three purposes: for training, for
> conversational exchange, and for sciences of a philosophical
> sort. That it is useful for training purposes is directly evident
> on the basis of these considerations: once we have a direction for our
> inquiry we will more readily be able to engage a subject proposed to
> us. It is useful for conversational exchange because once we have
> enumerated the beliefs of the many, we shall engage them not on the
> basis of the convictions of others but on the basis of their own; and
> we shall re-orient them whenever they appear to have said something
> incorrect to us. It is useful for philosophical sorts of sciences
> because when we are able to run through the puzzles on both sides of an
> issue we more readily perceive what is true and what is false. 
> Further, it is useful for uncovering what is primary among the
> commitments of a science. For it is impossible to say anything
> regarding the first principles of a science on the basis of the first
> principles proper to the very science under discussion, since among all
> the commitments of a science, the first principles are the primary
> ones. This comes rather, necessarily, from discussion of the
> credible beliefs (*endoxa*) belonging to the science. This
> is peculiar to dialectic, or is at least most proper to it. For
> since it is what cross-examines, dialectic contains the way to the
> first principles of all inquiries. (*Top*. 101a26-b4)




The first two of the three forms of dialectic identified by Aristotle
are rather limited in scope. By contrast, the third is philosophically
significant.




 
In its third guise, dialectic has a role to play in 'science
conducted in a philosophical manner' (*pros tas kata
philosphian epistemas*; *Top*. 101a27-28, 101a34),
where this sort of science includes what we actually find him pursuing
in his major philosophical treatises. In these contexts,
dialectic helps to sort the *endoxa*, relegating some to a
disputed status while elevating others; it submits *endoxa* to
cross-examination in order to test their staying power; and, most
notably, according to Aristotle, dialectic puts us on the road to first
principles (*Top.* 100a18-b4). If that is so, then
dialectic plays a significant role in the order of philosophical
discovery: we come to establish first principles in part by determining
which among our initial *endoxa* withstand sustained
scrutiny. Here, as elsewhere in his philosophy, Aristotle evinces
a noteworthy confidence in the powers of human reason and
investigation.


## 5. Essentialism and Homonymy



 
However we arrive at secure principles in philosophy and science,
whether by some process leading to a rational grasping of necessary
truths, or by sustained dialectical investigation operating over
judiciously selected *endoxa*, it does turn out, according to
Aristotle, that we can uncover and come to know genuinely necessary
features of reality. Such features, suggests Aristotle, are those
captured in the essence-specifying definitions used in science (again
in the broad sense of *episteme*). 




 
Aristotle's commitment to essentialism runs deep. He
relies upon a host of loosely related locutions when discussing the
essences of things, and these give some clue to his general
orientation. Among the locutions one finds rendered as
*essence* in contemporary translations of Aristotle into English
are: (i) *to ti esti* (the what it is); (ii) *to einai*
(being); (iii) *ousia* (being); (iv) *hoper esti* (precisely
what something is) and, most importantly, (v) *to ti en
einai* (the what it was to be) (*APo* 83a7; *Top*.
141b35; *Phys*. 190a17, 201a18-21; *Gen. et Corr*. 319b4;
*DA* 424a25, 429b10; *Met.* 1003b24, 1006a32, 1006b13;
*EN* 1102a30, 1130a12-13). Among these, the last locution
(v) requires explication both because it is the most peculiar and
because it is Aristotle's favored technical term for
essence. It is an abbreviated way of saying 'that which it
was for an instance of kind *K* to be an instance of kind
*K*,' for instance 'that which it was (all along)
for a human being to be a human being'. In speaking this
way, Aristotle supposes that if we wish to know what a human being is,
we cannot identify transient or non-universal features of that kind;
nor indeed can we identify even universal features which do not run
explanatorily deep. Rather, as his preferred locution indicates,
he is interested in what makes a human being human--and he
assumes, first, that there is some feature F which all and only humans
have in common and, second, that F explains the other features which we
find across the range of humans. 




 
Importantly, this second feature of Aristotelian essentialism
differentiates his approach from the now more common modal approach,
according to
 which:[8]



> 
> *F* is an essential property of
> *x* =*df* if *x* loses *F*,
> then *x* ceases to exist.
> 
> 




Aristotle rejects this approach for several reasons, including most
notably that he thinks that certain non-essential features satisfy the
definition. Thus, beyond the categorical and logical features
(everyone is such as to be either identical or not identical with the
number nine), Aristotle recognizes a category of properties which he
calls *idia* (*Cat*. 3a21, 4a10; *Top*. 102a18-30,
134a5-135b6), now usually known by their Medieval Latin rendering
*propria. Propria* are non-essential properties which flow
from the essence of a kind, such that they are necessary to that kind
even without being essential. For instance, if we suppose that
*being rational* is essential to human beings, then it will
follow that every human being is *capable of grammar*. 
Being capable of grammar is not the same property as being rational,
though it follows from it. Aristotle assumes his readers will
appreciate that *being rational* asymmetrically explains
*being capable of grammar*, even though, necessarily, something
is rational if and only if it is also capable of grammar. Thus,
because it is explanatorily prior, *being rational* has a better
claim to being the essence of human beings than does *being capable
of grammar*. Consequently, Aristotle's
essentialism is more fine-grained than mere modal essentialism. 
Aristotelian essentialism holds:



> 
> *F* is an essential property of *x* =*d*f (i) if
> *x* loses *F*, then *x* ceases to exist; and
> (ii) *F* is in an objective sense an explanatorily basic
> feature of *x*.
> 
> 




 In sum, in Aristotle's approach, what it is to be, for
instance, a human being is just what it always has been and always will
be, namely *being rational*. Accordingly, this is
the feature to be captured in an essence-specifying account of human
beings (*APo* 75a42-b2; *Met.* 103b1-2, 1041a25-32).




 
Aristotle believes for a broad range of cases that kinds have essences
discoverable by diligent research. He in fact does not devote
much energy to arguing for this contention; still less is he inclined
to expend energy combating anti-realist challenges to essentialism,
perhaps in part because he is impressed by the deep regularities he
finds, or thinks he finds, underwriting his results in biological
 investigation.[9] 
 Still, he cannot be accused of profligacy regarding the prospects
of essentialism. 




On the contrary, he denies essentialism in many cases where others
are prepared to embrace it. One finds this sort of denial
prominently, though not exclusively, in his criticism of Plato. 
Indeed, it becomes a signature criticism of Plato and Platonists for
Aristotle that many of their preferred examples of sameness and
invariance in the world are actually cases of *multivocity*, or
*homonymy* in his technical terminology. In the opening of the
*Categories*, Aristotle distinguishes between *synonymy*
and *homonymy* (later called *univocity* and
*multivocity*). His preferred phrase for multivocity,
which is extremely common in his writings, is 'being spoken
of in many ways', or, more simply, 'multiply meant'
(*pollachos legomenon*). All these locutions have a
quasi-technical status for him. The least complex is
univocity:



> 
> *a* and *b* are univocally *F* iff (i)
> *a* is *F*, (ii) *b* is *F*, and (iii) the
> accounts of
> *F*-ness in '*a* is *F*' and
> '*b* is *F*' are the same.
> 
> 




Thus, for instance, since the accounts of 'human' in
'Socrates is human' and 'Plato is human' will
be the same, 'human' is univocal or synonymous in these
applications. (Note that Aristotle's notion of the word 'synonymy' is
not the same as the contemporary English usage where it applies to
*different* words with the same meaning.) In cases of
univocity, we expect single, non-disjunctive definitions which capture
and state the essence of the kinds in question. Let us allow once
more for purposes of illustration that the essence-specifying
definition of *human* is *rational animal*. Then,
since *human* means *rational animal* across the range of
its applications, there is some single essence to all members of the
kind.




 
By contrast, when synonymy fails we have homonymy. According to
Aristotle:



> 
> *a* and *b* are homonymously *F* iff (i)
> *a* is *F*, (ii) *b* is *F*, (iii) the
> accounts of *F*-ness in '*a* is *F*'
> and '*b* is *F*' do not completely
> overlap.
> 
> 




To take an easy example without philosophical significance,
*bank* is homonymous in 'Socrates and Alcibiades had a
picnic on the bank' and 'Socrates and Alcibiades opened a
joint account at the bank.' This case is illustrative, if
uninteresting, because the accounts of *bank* in these
occurrences have nothing whatsoever in common. Part of the philosophical 
interest in Aristotle's account of homonymy resides in its
allowing partial overlap. Matters become more interesting if we
examine whether--to use an illustration well suited to
Aristotle's purposes but left largely unexplored by
him--*conscious* is synonymous across 'Charlene was
conscious of some awkwardness created by her remarks' and
'Higher vertebrates, unlike mollusks, are conscious.' 
In these instances, the situation with respect to synonymy or homonymy
is perhaps not immediately clear, and so requires reflection and
philosophical investigation. 




 
Very regularly, according to Aristotle, this sort of reflection leads
to an interesting discovery, namely that we have been presuming a
univocal account where in fact none is forthcoming. This,
according to Aristotle, is where the Platonists go wrong: they presume
univocity where the world delivers homonymy or multivocity. (For
a vivid illustration of Plato's univocity assumption at work, see
*Meno* 71e1-72a5, where Socrates insists that there is but one
kind of *excellence* (*arete*) common to all kinds
of excellent people, not a separate sort for men, women, slaves,
children, and so on.) In one especially important example,
Aristotle parts company with Plato over the univocity of goodness:



> 
> 
> We had perhaps better consider the universal good and run through
> the puzzles concerning what is meant by it--even though this sort
> of investigation is unwelcome to us, because those who introduced the
> Forms are friends of ours. Yet presumably it would be the better
> course to destroy even what is close to us, as something necessary for
> preserving the truth--and all the more so, given that we are
> philosophers. For though we love them both, piety bids us to
> honour the truth before our friends. (*EN*
> 1096a11-16) 




Aristotle counters that Plato is wrong to assume that goodness is
'something universal, common to all good things, and
single' (*EN* 1096a28). Rather, goodness is different in
different cases. If he is right about this, far-reaching consequences
regarding ethical theory and practice follow.




 
To establish non-univocity, Aristotle's appeals to a variety of
tests in his *Topics* where, again, his idiom is linguistic but
his quarry is metaphysical. Consider the following sentences:


* Socrates is good.
* Communism is good.
* After a light meal, creme brulee is good.
* Redoubling one's effort after failure is always good.
* Maria's singing is good, but Renata's is sublime.




Among the tests for non-univocity recommended in the *Topics*
is a simple paraphrase test: if paraphrases yield distinct,
non-interchangeable accounts, then the predicate is
multivocal. So, for example, suitable paraphrases might
be:


* Socrates is *a virtuous
person*.
* Communism is a *just social
system*.
* After a light meal,
creme brulee is *tasty and satisfying*.
* Trying harder after one has
failed is always *edifying*.
* Maria's singing
*reaches a high artistic standard*, but Renata's
*surpasses that standard by any measure*.




Since we cannot interchange these paraphrases--we cannot say,
for instance, that creme brulee is a just social
system--*good* must be non-univocal across this range of
applications. If that is correct, then Platonists are wrong to
assume univocity in this case, since goodness exhibits complexity
ignored by their assumption.




 
So far, then, Aristotle's appeals to homonymy or multivocity are
primarily destructive, in the sense that they attempt to undermine a
Platonic presumption regarded by Aristotle as unsustainable. 
Importantly, just as Aristotle sees a positive as well as a negative
role for dialectic in philosophy, so he envisages in addition to its
destructive applications a philosophically constructive role for
homonymy. To appreciate his basic idea, it serves to reflect upon a
continuum of positions in philosophical analysis ranging from pure
Platonic univocity to disaggregated Wittgensteinean family
resemblance. One might in the face of a successful challenge to
Platonic univocity assume that, for instance, the various cases of
goodness have nothing in common across all cases, so that good things
form at best a motley kind, of the sort championed by Wittgensteineans
enamored of the metaphor of family resemblances: all good things belong
to a kind only in the limited sense that they manifest a tapestry of
partially overlapping properties, as every member of a single family is
unmistakably a member of that family even though there is no one
physical attribute shared by all of those family members. 




 
Aristotle insists that there is a *tertium quid* between family
resemblance and pure univocity: he identifies, and trumpets, a kind of
*core-dependent homonymy* (also referred to in the literature,
with varying degrees of accuracy, as *focal meaning* and
*focal
 connexion*).[10] 
 Core-dependent homonyms exhibit a kind
of order in multiplicity: although shy of univocity, because
homonymous, such concepts do not devolve into patchwork family
resemblances either. To rely upon one of Aristotle's own
favorite illustrations, consider:


* Socrates is healthy.
* Socrates' exercise regimen is healthy.
* Socrates' complexion is healthy.




Aristotle assumes that his readers will immediately appreciate two
features of these three predications of *healthy*. First,
they are non-univocal, since the second is paraphraseable roughly as
*promotes health* and the third as *is indicative of
health*, whereas the first means, rather, something more
fundamental, like *is sound of body* or *is functioning
well*. Hence, *healthy* is non-univocal. Second,
even so, the last two predications rely upon the first for their
elucidations: each appeals to health in its core sense in an
asymmetrical way. That is, any account of each of the latter two
predications *must* allude to the first, whereas an account of
the first makes no reference to the second or third in its
account. So, suggests Aristotle, *health* is not only a
homonym, but a *core-dependent homonym*: while not univocal
neither is it a case of rank multivocity. 




 
Aristotle's illustration does succeed in showing that there is
conceptual space between mere family resemblance and pure
univocity. So, he is right that these are not exhaustive
options. The interest in this sort of result resides in its
exportability to richer, if more abstract philosophical concepts. 
Aristotle appeals to homonymy frequently, across a full range of
philosophical concepts including *justice*, *causation*,
*love*, *life*, *sameness*, *goodness*, and
*body*. His most celebrated appeal to core-dependent homonymy
comes in the case of a concept so highly abstract that it is difficult
to gauge his success without extended metaphysical reflection. This is
his appeal to the core-dependent homonymy of *being*, which has
inspired both philosophical and scholarly
controversy.[11]
Aristotle denies that there could be a science of being, on the
grounds that there is no single genus *being* under which all
and only beings fall (*SE* 11
172a13-15-15; *APr.* 92b14; *Met.* B 3,
998b22; *EE* i 8, 1217b33-35). One motivation for his
reasoning this way may be that he regards the notion of a genus as
 ineliminably taxonomical and contrastive,[12] 
 so that it makes ready sense to speak of
a genus of being only if one can equally well speak of a genus of
non-being--just as among living beings one can speak of the
animals and the non-animals, viz. the plant kingdom. Since there are
no non-beings, there accordingly can be no genus of non-being, and so,
ultimately, no genus of being either. Consequently, since each
science studies one essential kind arrayed under a single genus, there
can be no science of being either.




 
Subsequently, without expressly reversing his judgment about the
existence of a science of being, Aristotle announces that there is
nonetheless a science of being *qua* being (*Met.* iv 4),
first philosophy, which takes as its subject matter beings insofar as
they are beings and thus considers all and only those features
pertaining to beings as such--to beings, that is, not insofar as
they are mathematical or physical or human beings, but insofar as they
are beings, full stop. Although the matter is disputed, his
recognition of this science evidently turns crucially on his commitment
to the core-dependent homonymy of being
 itself.[13] 
 Although the case is not
as clear and uncontroversial as Aristotle's relatively easy
appeal to *health* (which is why, after all, he selected it as
an illustration), we are supposed to be able upon reflection to detect
an analogous core-dependence in the following instances of
*exists*:


* Socrates exists.
* Socrates' location exists.
* Socrates' weighing 73 kilos exists.
* Socrates' being morose today exists.




Of course, the last three items on this list are rather awkward
locutions, but this is because they strive to make explicit that we can
speak of dependent beings as existing if we wish to do so--but
only because of their dependence upon the core instance of being,
namely substance. (Here it is noteworthy that 'primary
substance' is the conventional and not very happy rendering of
Aristotle's *prote* *ousia* in Greek, which
means, more literally, 'primary
 being').[14] 
 According to this
approach, we would not have Socrates' weighing anything at all or
feeling any way today were it not for the prior fact of his
existence. So, *exists* in the first instance serves as
the core instance of being, in terms of which the others are to be
explicated. If this is correct, then, implies Aristotle,
*being* is a core-dependent homonym; further, a science of
being--or, rather, a science of being *qua*
being--becomes possible, even though there is no genus of being,
since it is finally possible to study all beings insofar as they are
related to the core instance of being, and then also to study that
core instance, namely substance, insofar as it serves as the prime
occasion of being.


## 6. Category Theory




 
In speaking of beings which depend upon substance for their existence,
Aristotle implicitly appeals to a foundational philosophical commitment
which appears early in his thought and remains stable throughout his
entire philosophical career: his theory of categories. In what is
usually regarded as an early work, *The Categories*, Aristotle
rather abruptly announces:



> 
> 
> Of things said without combination, each signifies either: (i) a
> substance (*ousia*); (ii) a quantity; (iii) a quality; (iv) a
> relative; (v) where; (vi) when; (vii) being in a position; (viii)
> having; (ix) acting upon; or (x) a being affected. (*Cat*.
> 1b25-27)




Aristotle does little to frame his theory of categories, offering no
explicit derivation of it, nor even specifying overtly what his theory
of categories categorizes. If librarians categorize books and
botanists categorize plants, then what does the philosophical category
theorist categorize? 




 
Aristotle does not say explicitly, but his examples make reasonably
clear that he means to categorize the basic kinds of beings there may
be. If we again take some clues from linguistic data, without
inferring that the ultimate objects of categorization are themselves
linguistic, we can contrast things said "with
combination":


* Man runs.




with things said 'without combination':


* Man
* Runs




'Man runs' is truth-evaluable, whereas neither 
'man' nor 'runs' is. Aristotle says that
things of this sort *signify* entities, evidently
extra-linguistic entities, which are thus, correlatively, in the first
case sufficiently complex to be what makes the sentence 'Man
runs' true, that is a *man running*, and in the second,
items below the level of truth-making, so, e.g., an entity *a man*,
taken by itself, and an action *running*, taken by itself. 
If that is correct, the entities categorized by the categories are the
sorts of basic beings that fall below the level of truth-makers, or
facts. Such beings evidently contribute, so to speak, to the
facticity of facts, just as, in their linguistic analogues, nouns and
verbs, things said 'without combination', contribute to the
truth-evaluability of simple assertions. The constituents of
facts contribute to facts as the semantically relevant parts of a
proposition contribute to its having the truth conditions it has. 
Thus, the items categorized in Aristotle's categories are the
constituents of facts. If it is a fact *that Socrates is
pale*, then the basic beings in view are *Socrates* and
*being pale*. In Aristotle's terms, the first
is a *substance* and the second is a *quality*. 




Importantly, these beings may be *basic* without being
absolutely *simple*. After all, Socrates is made up of all
manner of parts--arms and legs, organs and bones, molecules and
atoms, and so on down. As a useful linguistic analogue, we may
consider *phonemes*, which are basic, relative to the morphemes
of a linguistic theory, and yet also complex, since they are made up of
simpler sound components, which are irrelevant from the
linguist's point of view because of their lying beneath the level
of semantic relevance. 




 
The theory of categories in total recognizes ten sorts of
extra-linguistic basic beings:




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Category* | *Illustration* |
| Substance | man, horse |
| Quality | white, grammatical |
| Quantity | two-feet long |
| Relative | double, slave |
| Place | in the market |
| Time | yesterday, tomorrow |
| Position | lying, sitting |
| Having | has shoes on |
| Acting Upon | cutting, burning |
| Being Affected | being cut, being burnt |




Although he does not say so overtly in the *Categories*,
Aristotle evidently presumes that these ten categories of being are
both exhaustive and irreducible, so that while there are no other
basic beings, it is not possible to eliminate any one of these
categories in favor of another.




 
Both claims have come in for criticism, and each surely
 requires
 defense.[15]
Aristotle offers neither conviction a defense in his
*Categories*. Nor, indeed, does he offer any principled
grounding for just these categories of being, a circumstance which has
left him open to further criticism from later philosophers, including
famously Kant who, after lauding Aristotle for coming up with the idea
of category theory, proceeds to excoriate him for selecting his
particular categories on no principled basis whatsoever. Kant
alleges that Aristotle picked his categories of being just as he
happened to stumble upon them in his reveries (*Critique of Pure
Reason*, A81/B107). According to Kant, then,
Aristotle's categories are *ungrounded*. 
Philosophers and scholars both before and after Kant have sought to
provide the needed grounding, whereas Aristotle himself mainly tends to
justify the theory of categories by putting it to work in his various
philosophical investigations.




 
We have already implicitly encountered in passing two of
Aristotle's appeals to category theory: (i) in his approach to
time, which he comes to treat as a non-substantial being; and (ii) in his
commitment to the core-dependent homonymy of being, which introduces
some rather more contentious considerations. These may be
revisited briefly to illustrate how Aristotle thinks that his doctrine
of categories provides philosophical guidance where it is most
needed.




Thinking first of time and its various puzzles, or *aporiai*,
we saw that Aristotle poses a simple question: does time exist? 
He answers this question in the affirmative, but only because in the
end he treats it as a categorically circumscribed question. 
He claims that 'time is the measure of motion with respect to the
before and after' (*Phys*. 219b1-2). By
offering this definition, Aristotle is able to advance the judgment
that time does exist, because it is an entity in the category of
quantity: time is to motion or change as length is to a line. 
Time thus exists, but like all items in any non-substance category, it
exists in a dependent sort of way. Just as if there were no lines
there would be no length, so if there were no change there would be no
time. Now, this feature of Aristotle's theory of time has
occasioned both critical and favorable
 reactions.[16] 
 In the present context,
however, it is important only that it serves to demonstrate how
Aristotle handles questions of existence: they are, at root, questions
about category membership. A question as to whether, e.g.,
universals or places or relations exist, is ultimately, for Aristotle,
also a question concerning their category of being, if any.




 
As time is a dependent entity in Aristotle's theory, so too are
all entities in categories outside of substance. This helps
explain why Aristotle thinks it appropriate to deploy his apparatus of
core-dependent homonymy in the case of *being*. If we ask
whether qualities or quantities exist, Aristotle will answer in the
affirmative, but then point out also that as dependent entities they do
not exist in the independent manner of substances. Thus, even in
the relatively rarified case of *being*, the theory of
categories provides a reason for uncovering core-dependent
homonymy. Since all other categories of being depend upon
substance, it should be the case that an analysis of any one of them
will ultimately make asymmetrical reference to substance. Aristotle
contends in his *Categories*, relying on a distinction that
tracks essential (*said-of*) and accidental (*in*)
predication, that:



> 
> 
> All other things are either *said-of* primary
> substances, which are their subjects, or are *in* them as
> subjects. Hence, if there were no primary substances, it would be
> impossible for anything else to exist. (*Cat*. 2b5-6)
>  




If this is so, then, Aristotle infers, all the non-substance
categories rely upon substance as the core of their being. So, he
concludes, being qualifies as a case of core-dependent homonymy.




 
Now, one may challenge Aristotle's contentions here, first by
querying whether he has established the non-univocity of *being*
before proceeding to argue for its core-dependence. Be that as it
may, if we allow its non-univocity, then, according to Aristotle, the
apparatus of the categories provides ample reason to conclude that
*being* qualifies as a philosophically significant instance of
core-dependent homonymy.




 
In this way, Aristotle's philosophy of being and substance, like
much else in his philosophy, relies upon an antecedent commitment to
his theory of categories. Indeed, the theory of categories
spans his entire career and serves as a kind of scaffolding for much of
his philosophical theorizing, ranging from metaphysics and philosophy
of nature to psychology and value theory. 




 
For this reason, questions regarding the ultimate tenability of
Aristotle's doctrine of categories take on a special urgency for
evaluating much of his philosophy. 




For more detail on the theory of categories and its grounding,
 see the entry on 
 Aristotle's Categories.


## 7. The Four Causal Account of Explanatory Adequacy




 
Equally central to Aristotle's thought is his *four-causal
explanatory scheme*. Judged in terms of its influence, this
doctrine is surely one of his most significant philosophical
contributions. Like other philosophers, Aristotle expects the
explanations he seeks in philosophy and science to meet certain
criteria of adequacy. Unlike some other philosophers, however, he
takes care to state his criteria for adequacy explicitly; then, having
done so, he finds frequent fault with his predecessors for failing to
meet its terms. He states his scheme in a methodological passage
in the second book of his *Physics*:



> 
> 
>  One way in which cause is spoken of is that out of which a thing
> comes to be and which persists, e.g. the bronze of the statue, the
> silver of the bowl, and the genera of which the bronze and the silver
> are species.
> 
> 
> 
>  In another way cause is spoken of as the form or the pattern, i.e.
> what is mentioned in the account (*logos*) belonging to the
> essence and its genera, e.g. the cause of an octave is a ratio of 2:1,
> or number more generally, as well as the parts mentioned in the account
> (*logos*).
> 
> 
> 
>  Further, the primary source of the change and rest is spoken of as a
> cause, e.g. the man who deliberated is a cause, the father is the cause
> of the child, and generally the maker is the cause of what is made and
> what brings about change is a cause of what is changed.
> 
> 
> 
>  Further, the end (*telos*) is spoken of as a cause. 
> This is that for the sake of which (*hou* *heneka*) a
> thing is done, e.g. health is the cause of walking about. 
> 'Why is he walking about?' We say: 'To be
> healthy'--and, having said that, we think we have indicated
> the cause.
> 
> 
> (*Phys*. 194b23-35)
> 
> 
> 




Although some of Aristotle's illustrations are not immediately
pellucid, his approach to explanation is reasonably
straightforward.




Aristotle's attitude towards explanation is best understood
first by considering a simple example he proposes in *Physics*
ii 3. A bronze statue admits of various different dimensions of
explanation. If we were to confront a statue without first
recognizing what it was, we would, thinks Aristotle, spontaneously ask
a series of questions about it. We would wish to know *what it
is, what it is made of*, *what brought it about*,
and*what it is for.*  In Aristotle's terms, in
asking these questions we are seeking knowledge of the statue's
four *causes* (*aitia*): the formal, material, efficient,
and final. According to Aristotle, when we have
identified these four causes, we have satisfied a reasonable demand for
explanatory adequacy. 




More fully, the four-causal account of explanatory adequacy requires
an investigator to cite these four causes:




The Four Causes| ***material*** |  that from which
something is generated and out of which it is made, e.g. the bronze of
a statue. |
| ***formal*** |  the structure which the
matter realizes and in terms of which it comes to be something
determinate, e.g., the shape of the president, in virtue of which this
quantity of bronze is said to be a statue of a president. |
| ***efficient*** |  the agent responsible
for a quantity of matter's coming to be informed, e.g. the sculptor who
shaped the quantity of bronze into its current shape, the shape of the
president. |
| ***final*** |  the purpose or goal of
the compound of form and matter, e.g. the statue was created for the
purpose of honoring the president. |




In *Physics* ii 3, Aristotle makes twin claims about this
four-causal schema: (i) that citing all four causes is
*necessary* for adequacy in explanation; and (ii) that these
four causes are *sufficient* for adequacy in explanation. 
Each of these claims requires some elaboration and also some
qualification. 




 
As for the necessity claim, Aristotle does not suppose that all
phenomena admit of all four causes. Thus, for example,
coincidences lack final causes, since they do not occur for the sake of
anything; that is, after all, what makes them coincidences. 
If a debtor is on his way to the market to buy milk and she runs into
her creditor, who is on his way to the same market to buy bread, then
she may agree to pay the money owed immediately. Although
resulting in a wanted outcome, their meeting was not for the sake of
settling the debt; nor indeed was it for the sake of anything at
all. It was a simple co-incidence. Hence, it lacks a final
cause. Similarly, if we think that there are mathematical or
geometrical abstractions, for instance a triangle existing as an object
of thought independent of any material realization, then the triangle
will trivially lack a material
 cause.[17] 
 Still, these significant exceptions
aside, Aristotle expects the vast majority of explanations to conform
to his four-causal schema. In non-exceptional cases, a failure to
specify all four of causes, is, he maintains, a failure in explanatory
adequacy.




 
The sufficiency claim is exceptionless, though it may yet be misleading
if one pertinent issue is left unremarked. In providing his
illustration of the material cause Aristotle first cites the bronze of
a statue and the silver of a bowl, and then mentions also 'the
genera of which the bronze and the silver are species'
(*Phys*. 194b25-27). By this he means the types of metal
to which silver and bronze belong, or more generally still, simply
*metal*. That is, one might specify the material cause of
a statue more or less proximately, by specifying the character of the
matter more or less precisely. Hence, when he implies that citing
all four causes is sufficient for explanation, Aristotle does not
intend to suggest that a citation at any level of generality
suffices. He means to insist rather that there is no fifth kind
of cause, that his preferred four cases subsume all kinds of
cause. He does not argue for this conclusion fully, though he
does challenge his readers to identify a kind of cause which qualifies
as a sort distinct from the four mentioned (*Phys*.
195a4-5). 




 
So far, then, Aristotle's four causal schema has whatever
intuitive plausibility his illustrations may afford it. He does
not rest content there, however. Instead, he thinks he can argue
forcefully for the four causes as real explanatory factors, that is, as
features which must be cited not merely because they make for
satisfying explanations, but because they are genuinely operative
causal factors, the omission of which renders any putative explanation
objectively incomplete and so inadequate. 




 
It should be noted that Aristotle's arguments for the four causes
taken individually all proceed against the backdrop of the general
connection he forges between causal explanation and knowledge. Because
he thinks that the four *aitia* feature in answers to
knowledge-seeking questions (*Phys.* 194b18; *A Po*. 71 b
9-11, 94 a 20), some scholars have come to understand them more as
*becauses* than as *causes*--that is, as
explanations rather than as causes narrowly
 construed.[18] 
 Most such judgments
reflect an antecedent commitment to one or another view of causation
and explanation--that causation relates events rather than
propositions; that explanations are inquiry-relative; that causation is
extensional and explanation intensional; that explanations must adhere
to some manner of nomic-deductive model, whereas causes need not; or
that causes must be prior in time to their effects, while explanations,
especially intentional explanations, may appeal to states of affairs
posterior in time to the actions they explain. 




Generally, Aristotle does not respect these sorts of
commitments. Thus, to the extent that they are defensible, his
approach to *aitia* may be regarded as blurring the canons of
causation and explanation. It should certainly not, however, be
ceded up front that Aristotle is guilty of any such conflation, or even
that scholars who render his account of the four *aitia* in
causal terms have failed to come to grips with developments in causal
theory in the wake of Hume. Rather, because of the lack of
uniformity in contemporary accounts of causation and explanation, and a
persistent and justifiable tendency to regard causal explanations as
foundational relative to other sorts of explanations, we may
legitimately wonder whether Aristotle's conception of the four
*aitia* is in any significant way discontinuous with later,
Humean-inspired approaches, and then again, to the degree that it is,
whether Aristotle's approach suffers for the comparison. Be that
as it may, we will do well when considering Aristotle's defense
of his four *aitia* to bear in mind that controversy surrounds
how best to construe his knowledge-driven approach to causation and
explanation relative to some later approaches. 




For more on the four causes in general, see the entry on
 Aristotle on Causality.


## 8. Hylomorphism




 
Central to Aristotle's four-causal account of explanatory
adequacy are the notions of *matter* (*hule*) and
form (*eidos* or *morphe*). Together, they
constitute one of his most fundamental philosophical commitments, to
*hylomorphism*:


* Hylomorphism =*df*
ordinary objects are composites of matter and form.




The appeal in this definition to 'ordinary objects'
requires reflection, but as a first approximation, it serves to rely on
the sorts of examples Aristotle himself employs when motivating
hylomorphism: statues and houses, horses and humans. In general,
we may focus on artefacts and familiar living beings. 
Hylomorphism holds that no such object is metaphysically simple, but
rather comprises two distinct metaphysical elements, one formal and one
material.




 
Aristotle's hylomorphism was formulated originally to handle
various puzzles about change. Among the *endoxa*
confronting Aristotle in his *Physics* are some striking
challenges to the coherence of the very notion of change, owing to
 Parmenides
 and
 Zeno. 
Aristotle's initial impulse in the face of such challenges, as we
have seen, is to preserve the appearances (*phainomena*), to
explain how change is possible. Key to Aristotle's response
to the challenges bequeathed him is his insistence that all change
involves at least two factors: something persisting and something
gained or lost. Thus, when Socrates goes to the beach and comes
away sun-tanned, something continues to exist, namely Socrates, even
while something is lost, his pallor, and something else gained, his
tan. This is a change in the category of quality, whence the
common locution 'qualitative change'. If he gains
weight, then again something remains, Socrates, and something is gained,
in this case a quantity of matter. Accordingly, in this instance we
have not a qualitative but a quantitative change. 




In general, argues Aristotle, in whatever category a change occurs,
something is lost and something gained *within* that category,
even while something else, a substance, remains in existence, as the
subject of that change. Of course, substances can come into or go out of
existence, in cases of
generation or destruction; and these are changes in the category of
substance. Evidently even in cases of change in this category, however,
something persists. To take an example favourable to Aristotle,
in the case of the generation of a statue, the bronze persists, but it
comes to acquire a new form, a substantial rather than accidental
form. In all cases, whether substantial or accidental, the
two-factor analysis obtains: something remains the same and something
is gained or lost. 




 
In its most rudimentary formulation, hylomorphism simply labels each of
the two factors: what persists is *matter* and what is gained is
*form*. Aristotle's hylomorphism quickly becomes
much more complex, however, as the notions of matter and form are
pressed into philosophical service. Importantly, matter and form
come to be paired with another fundamental distinction, that between
*potentiality* and *actuality*. Again in the case
of the generation of a statue, we may say that the bronze is
*potentially* a statue, but that it is an *actual* statue
when and only when it is informed with the form of a
statue. Of course, before being made into a statue, the
bronze was also in potentiality a fair number of other
artefacts--a cannon, a steam-engine, or a goal on a football
pitch. Still, it was not in potentiality butter or a beach
ball. This shows that potentiality is not the same as
possibility: to say that *x* is potentially F is to say that
*x* already has actual features in virtue of which it might be
made to be F by the imposition of a F form upon it. So, given
these various connections, it becomes possible to define form and
matter generically as


* form =*df* that which makes some matter which is
potentially *F* actually *F*
* matter =*df* that which persists and which is, for some
range of *F*s, potentially *F*




Of course, these definitions are circular, but that is not in itself
a problem: actuality and potentiality are, for Aristotle, fundamental
concepts which admit of explication and description but do not admit of
reductive analyses.




 
Encapsulating Aristotle's discussions of change in
*Physics* i 7 and 8, and putting the matter more crisply than he
himself does, we have the following simple argument for matter and
form: (1) a necessary condition of there being change is the existence
of matter and form; (2) there is change; hence (3) there are matter and
form. The second premise is a *phainomenon*; so, if that
is accepted without further defense, only the first requires
justification. The first premise is justified by the thought that since
there is no generation *ex nihilo*, in every instance of change
something persists while something else is gained or lost. In
substantial generation or destruction, a substantial form is gained or
lost; in mere accidental change, the form gained or lost is itself
accidental. Since these two ways of changing exhaust the kinds of
change there are, in *every* instance of change there are two
factors present. These are matter and form.




 
For these reasons, Aristotle intends his hylomorphism to be much more
than a simple explanatory heuristic. On the contrary, he maintains,
matter and form are mind-independent features of the world and must,
therefore, be mentioned in any full explanation of its workings.


## 9. Aristotelian Teleology




 
We may mainly pass over as uncontroversial the suggestion that there
are efficient causes in favor of the most controversial and difficult
of Aristotle four causes, the final
 cause.[19] 
 We should note before doing so, however, that Aristotle's commitment
to efficient causation does receive a defense in Aristotle's preferred
terminology; he thus does more than many other philosophers who take
it as given that causes of an efficient sort are operative. Partly by
way of criticizing Plato's theory of Forms, which he regards as
inadequate because of its inability to account for change and
generation, Aristotle observes that nothing potential can bring itself
into actuality without the agency of an actually operative efficient
cause. Since what is potential is always in potentiality relative to
some range of actualities, and nothing becomes actual of its own
accord--no pile of bricks, for instance, spontaneously organizes
itself into a house or a wall--an actually operative agent is
required for every instance of change. This is the efficient
cause. These sorts of considerations also incline Aristotle to speak
of the priority of actuality over potentiality: potentialities are
made actual by actualities, and indeed are always potentialities for
some actuality or other. The operation of some actuality upon some
potentiality is an instance of efficient causation.



That said, most of Aristotle's readers do not find themselves in need
of a defense of the existence of efficient causation. By contrast,
most think that Aristotle does need to provide a defense of final
causation. It is natural and easy for us to recognize final causal
activity in the products of human craft: computers and can-openers are
devices dedicated to the execution of certain tasks, and both their
formal and material features will be explained by appeal to their
functions. Nor is it a mystery where artefacts obtain their functions:
we give artefacts their functions. The ends of artefacts are the results of
the designing activities of intentional agents. Aristotle recognizes
these kinds of final causation, but also, and more problematically,
envisages a much greater role for teleology in natural explanation:
nature exhibits teleology without design. He thinks, for instance,
that living organisms not only have parts which require teleological
explanation--that, for instance, kidneys are *for*
purifying the blood and teeth are *for* tearing and chewing
food--but that whole organisms, human beings and other animals,
also have final causes. 




Crucially, Aristotle denies overtly that the causes operative in
nature are intention-dependent. He thinks, that is, that
organisms have final causes, but that they did not come to have them by
dint of the designing activities of some intentional agent or
other. He thus denies that a necessary condition of
*x*'s having a final cause is *x*'s being
designed. 




Although he has been persistently criticized for his commitment to
such natural ends, Aristotle is not susceptible to a fair number of
the objections standardly made to his view. Indeed, it is evident
that whatever the merits of the most penetrating of such criticisms,
much of the contumely directed at Aristotle is stunningly
 illiterate.[20] 
 To take but one of any number of mind-numbing examples, the famous
American psychologist B. F. Skinner reveals that 'Aristotle
argued that a falling body accelerated because it grew more jubilant
as it found itself nearer its home' (1971, 6). To anyone who has
actually read Aristotle, it is unsurprising that this ascription comes
without an accompanying textual citation. For Aristotle, as Skinner
would portray him, rocks are conscious beings having end states which
they so delight in procuring that they accelerate themselves in
exaltation as they grow ever closer to attaining them. There is no
excuse for this sort of intellectual slovenliness, when already by the
late-nineteenth century, the German scholar Zeller was able to say
with perfect accuracy that 'The most important feature of the
Aristotelian teleology is the fact that it is neither anthropocentric
nor is it due to the actions of a creator existing outside the world
or even of a mere arranger of the world, but is always thought of as
immanent in nature' (1883, SS48).




 
Indeed, it is hardly necessary to caricature Aristotle's
teleological commitments in order to bring them into critical
focus. In fact, Aristotle offers two sorts of defenses of
non-intentional teleology in nature, the first of which is replete with
difficulty. He claims in *Physics* ii 8:



> For these [viz. teeth and all other parts of natural
> beings] and all other natural things come about as they do either
> always or for the most part, whereas nothing which comes about due to
> chance or spontaneity comes about always or for the most part. 
> ... If, then, these are either the result of coincidence or for the
> sake of something, and they cannot be the result of coincidence or
> spontaneity, it follows that they must be for the sake of
> something. Moreover, even those making these sorts of claims
> [viz. that everything comes to be by necessity] will agree that such
> things are natural. Therefore, that for the sake of which is
> present among things which come to be and exist by nature.
> (*Phys*. 198b32-199a8)




The argument here, which has been variously formulated
 by
 scholars,[21]
seems doubly problematic. 




 
In this argument Aristotle seems to introduce as a *phainomenon*
that nature exhibits regularity, so that the parts of nature come about
in patterned and regular ways. Thus, for instance, humans
tend to have teeth arranged in a predictable sort of way, with incisors
in the front and molars in the back. He then seems to contend, as
an exhaustive and exclusive disjunction, that things happen either by
chance or for the sake of something, only to suggest, finally, that
what is 'always or for the most part'--what happens in
a patterned and predictable way--is not plausibly thought to be
due to chance. Hence, he concludes, whatever happens always or
for the most part must happen for the sake of something, and so must
admit of a teleological cause. Thus, teeth show up always or for
the most part with incisors in the front and molars in the back; since
this is a regular and predictable occurrence, it cannot be due to
chance. Given that whatever is not due to chance has a final
cause, teeth have a final cause.




 
If so much captures Aristotle's dominant argument for teleology, then
his view is unmotivated. The argument is problematic in the first
instance because it assumes an exhaustive and exclusive disjunction
between what is by chance and what is for the sake of something. But
there are obviously other possibilities. Hearts beat not in order to
make noise, but they do so always and not by chance. Second, and this
is perplexing if we have represented him correctly, Aristotle is
himself aware of one sort of counterexample to this view and is indeed
keen to point it out himself: although, he insists, bile is regularly
and predictably yellow, its being yellow is neither due simply to
chance nor for the sake of anything. Aristotle in fact mentions many
such counterexamples (*Part. An.* 676b16-677b10,
*Gen. An.* 778a29-b6). It seems to follow, then, short of
ascribing a straight contradiction to him, either that he is not
correctly represented as we have interpreted this argument or that he
simply changed his mind about the grounds of teleology. Taking up
the first alternative, one possibility is that Aristotle is not really
trying to *argue* for teleology from the ground up in
*Physics* ii 8, but is taking it as already established that
there are teleological causes, and restricting himself to observing
that many natural phenomena, namely those which occur always or for the
most part, are good candidates for admitting of teleological
explanation.




 
That would leave open the possibility of a broader sort of motivation
for teleology, perhaps of the sort Aristotle offers elsewhere in the
*Physics*, when speaking about the impulse to find
non-intention-dependent teleological causes at work in nature:



> This is most obvious in the case of animals other than man:
> they make things using neither craft nor on the basis of inquiry nor by
> deliberation. This is in fact a source of puzzlement for those
> who wonder whether it is by reason or by some other faculty that these
> creatures work--spiders, ants and the like. Advancing bit by
> bit in this same direction it becomes apparent that even in plants
> features conducive to an end occur--leaves, for example, grow in
> order to provide shade for the fruit. If then it is both by
> nature and for an end that the swallow makes its nest and the spider
> its web, and plants grow leaves for the sake of the fruit and send
> their roots down rather than up for the sake of nourishment, it is
> plain that this kind of cause is operative in things which come to be
> and are by nature. And since nature is twofold, as matter and as
> form, the form is the end, and since all other things are for sake of
> the end, the form must be the cause in the sense of that for the sake
> of which. (*Phys*. 199a20-32)




As Aristotle quite rightly observes in this passage, we find
ourselves regularly and easily speaking in teleological terms when
characterizing non-human animals and plants. It is consistent
with our so speaking, of course, that all of our easy language in these
contexts is rather too easy: it is in fact lax and careless, because unwarrantedly
anthropocentric. We might yet demand that all such language be
assiduously reduced to some non-teleological idiom when we are being
scientifically strict and empirically serious, though we would first
need to survey the explanatory costs and benefits of our attempting to
do so. Aristotle considers and rejects some views hostile to
teleology in *Physics* ii 8 and *Generation and
Corruption*
 i.[22] 


## 10. Substance




 
Once Aristotle has his four-causal explanatory schema fully on the
scene, he relies upon it in virtually all of his most advanced
philosophical investigation. As he deploys it in various
frameworks, we find him augmenting and refining the schema even as he
applies it, sometimes with surprising results. One important
question concerns how his hylomorphism intersects with the theory of
substance advanced in the context of his theory of categories. 





As we have seen, Aristotle insists upon the primacy of primary
substance in his *Categories*. According to that work, however,
star instances of primary substance are familiar living beings like
Socrates or an individual horse (*Cat*. 2a11014). Yet with the
advent of hylomorphism, these primary substances are revealed to be
metaphysical complexes: Socrates is a compound of matter and form. So,
now we have not one but three potential candidates for primary
substance: form, matter, and the compound of matter and form. The
question thus arises: which among them is the primary substance? Is
it the matter, the form, or the compound? The compound corresponds to
a basic object of experience and seems to be a basic subject of
predication: we say that Socrates lives in Athens, not that his matter
lives in Athens. Still, matter underlies the compound and in this way
seems a more basic subject than the compound, at least in the sense
that it can exist before and after it does. On the other hand, the
matter is nothing definite at all until enformed; so, perhaps form, as
determining what the compound is, has the best claim on
substantiality. 




 
In the middle books of his *Metaphysics*, which contain some of
his most complex and engaging investigations into basic being,
Aristotle settles on *form* (*Met*. vii 17). A
question thus arises as to how form satisfies Aristotle's final
criteria for substantiality. He expects a substance to be, as he says,
some particular thing (*tode ti*), but also to be something
knowable, some essence or other. These criteria seem to pull in
different directions, the first in favor of particular substances, as
the primary substances of the *Categories* had been particulars,
and the second in favor of universals as substances, because they alone
are knowable. In the lively controversy surrounding these
matters, many scholars have concluded that Aristotle adopts a third way
forward: form is both knowable *and* particular. This matter,
however, remains very acutely
 disputed.[23]





 
Very briefly, and not engaging these controversies, it becomes clear
that Aristotle prefers form in virtue of its role in generation and
diachronic persistence. When a statue is generated, or when a new
animal comes into being, something persists, namely the matter, which
comes to realize the substantial form in question. Even so,
insists Aristotle, the matter does not by itself provide the identity
conditions for the new substance. First, as we have seen, the
matter is merely potentially some *F* until such time as it is made
actually *F* by the presence of an *F* form. Further, the matter can
be replenished, and *is* replenished in the case of all
organisms, and so seems to be form-dependent for its own diachronic
identity conditions. For these reasons, Aristotle thinks of the
form as prior to the matter, and thus more fundamental than the
matter. This sort of matter, the form-dependent matter, Aristotle
regards as *proximate matter* (*Met.* 1038b6, 1042b10),
thus extending the notion of matter beyond its original role as
metaphysical substrate. 




 
Further, in *Metaphysics* vii 17 Aristotle offers a suggestive
argument to the effect that matter alone cannot be substance. Let the
various bits of matter belonging to Socrates be labeled as *a*,
*b*, *c*, ..., *n*. Consistent with the
non-existence of Socrates is the existence
of *a*, *b*, *c*, ..., *n*, since
these elements exist when they are spread from here to Alpha Centauri,
but if that happens, of course, Socrates no longer exists. Heading in the
other direction, Socrates can exist without just these elements, since
he may exist when some one of *a*, *b*, *c*,
..., *n* is replaced or goes out of existence. So, in
addition to his material elements, insists Aristotle, Socrates is also
something else, something more (*heteron ti*; *Met.*
1041b19-20). This something more is *form*, which is 'not
an element...but a primary cause of a thing's being what it
is' (*Met.* 1041b28-30). The cause of a thing's being
the actual thing it is, as we have seen, is form. Hence, concludes
Aristotle, as the source of being and unity, form is substance. 




Even if this much is granted--and to repeat, much of what has
just been said is unavoidably controversial--many questions
remain. For example, is form best understood as universal or
particular? However that issue is to be resolved, what is the
relation of form to the compound and to matter? If form is
substance, then what is the fate of these other two candidates? 
Are they also substances, if to a lesser degree? It seems odd to
conclude that they are nothing at all, or that the compound in
particular is nothing in actuality; yet it is difficult to contend that
they might belong to some category other than substance. 




For an approach to some of these questions, see the entry on
 Aristotle's Metaphysics.
 


## 11. Living Beings




However these and like issues are to be resolved, given the primacy of
form as substance, it is unsurprising to find Aristotle identifying
the soul, which he introduces as a principle or source
(*arche*) of all life, as the form of a living
compound. For Aristotle, in fact, all living things, and not only
human beings, have souls: 'what is ensouled is distinguished
from what is unensouled by living' (*DA* 431a20-22;
cf. *DA* 412a13, 423a20-6; *De Part. An.*
687a24-690a10; *Met.* 1075a16-25). It is
appropriate, then, to treat all ensouled bodies in hylomorphic
terms: 



> 
> 
> The soul is the cause and source of the living body. But
> *cause* and *source* are meant in many ways [or are
> homonymous]. Similarly, the soul is a cause in accordance
> with the ways delineated, which are three: it is (i) the cause as the
> source of motion [=the efficient cause], (ii) that for the sake of
> which [=the final cause], and (iii) as the substance of ensouled
> bodies. That it is a cause as substance is clear, for substance
> is the cause of being for all things, and for living things, being is
> life, and the soul is also the cause and source of life. (*DA*
> 415b8-14; cf. *PN* 467b12-25, *Phys*. 255a56-10) 
> 
> 




So, the soul and body are simply special cases of form and
matter:



> 
> 
> soul : body :: form : matter ::
> actuality : potentiality
> 
> 




Further, the soul, as the end of the compound organism, is also the
final cause of the body. Minimally, this is to be understood as the
view that any given body is the body that it is because it is
organized around a function which serves to unify the entire
organism. In this sense, the body's unity derives from the fact it has
a single end, or single life directionality, a state of affairs that
Aristotle captures by characterizing the body as the sort of matter
which is *organic* (*organikon*; *DA* 412a28). By
this he means that the body serves as a tool for implementing the
characteristic life activities of the kind to which the organism
belongs (*organon* = *tool* in Greek). Taking all this
together, Aristotle offers the view that the soul is the 'first
actuality of a natural organic body' (*DA*
412b5-6), that it is a 'substance as form of a natural
body which has life in potentiality' (*DA* 
412a20-1) and, again, that it 'is a first actuality of a
natural body which has life in potentiality' (*DA* 
412a27-8).




Aristotle contends that his hylomorphism provides an attractive middle
way between what he sees as the mirroring excesses of his
predecessors. In one direction, he means to reject Presocratic kinds
of materialism; in the other, he opposes Platonic dualism. He gives
the Presocratics credit for identifying the material causes of life,
but then faults them for failing to grasp its formal cause. By
contrast, Plato earns praise for grasping the formal cause of life;
unfortunately, as Aristotle sees things, he then proceeds to neglect
the material cause, and comes to believe that the soul can exist
without its material basis. Hylomorphism, in Aristotle's view,
captures what is right in both camps while eschewing the unwarranted
mono-dimensionality of each. To account for living organisms,
Aristotle contends, the natural scientist must attend to both matter
and form.




Aristotle deploys hylomorphic analyses not only to the whole organism,
but to the individual faculties of the soul as well. Perception
involves the reception of sensible forms without matter, and thinking,
by analogy, consists in the mind's being enformed by intelligible
forms. With each of these extensions, Aristotle both expands and
taxes his basic hylomorphism, sometimes straining its basic framework
almost beyond recognition. 




 
For more detail on Aristotle's hylomorphism in psychological
explanation, see the entry on 
 Aristotle's Psychology.


## 12. Happiness and Political Association




 
Aristotle's basic teleological framework extends to his ethical
and political theories, which he regards as complementing one
another. He takes it as given that most people wish to lead
good lives; the question then becomes what the best life for human
beings consists in. Because he believes that the best life for a
human being is not a matter of subjective preference, he also believes
that people can (and, sadly, often do) choose to lead sub-optimal
lives. In order to avoid such unhappy eventualities, Aristotle
recommends reflection on the criteria any successful candidate for the
best life must satisfy. He proceeds to propose one kind of life
as meeting those criteria uniquely and therefore promotes it as the
superior form of human life. This is a life lived in accordance with
reason. 




When stating the general criteria for the final good for human beings,
Aristotle invites his readers to review them (*EN*
1094a22-27). This is advisable, since much of the work of
sorting through candidate lives is in fact accomplished during the
higher-order task of determining the criteria appropriate to this
task. Once these are set, it becomes relatively straightforward for
Aristotle to dismiss some contenders, including for instance hedonism,
the perennially popular view that pleasure is the highest good for
human beings. 




According to the criteria advanced, the final good for human beings
must: (i) be pursued for its own sake (*EN* 1094a1); (ii) be
such that we wish for other things for its sake (*EN* 1094a19);
(iii) be such that we do not wish for it on account of other things
(*EN* 1094a21); (iv) be complete (*teleion*), in the
sense that it is always choiceworthy and always chosen for itself
(*EN* 1097a26-33); and finally (v) be self-sufficient
(*autarkes*), in the sense that its presence suffices to
make a life lacking in nothing (*EN* 1097b6-16). Plainly
some candidates for the best life fall down in the face of these
criteria. According to Aristotle, neither the life of pleasure nor the
life of honour satisfies them all.




 
What does satisfy them all is happiness *eudaimonia*. Scholars in fact
dispute whether *eudaimonia* is best rendered as
'happiness' or 'flourishing' or 'living
well' or simply transliterated and left an untranslated
 technical
 term.[24] 
 If we have already determined that *happiness* is some sort of
subjective state, perhaps simple desire fulfillment, then
'happiness' will indeed be an inappropriate translation:
*eudaimonia* is achieved, according to Aristotle, by fully
realizing our natures, by actualizing to the highest degree our human
capacities, and neither our nature nor our endowment of human
capacities is a matter of choice for us. Still, as Aristotle frankly
acknowledges, people will consent without hesitation to the suggestion
that happiness is our best good--even while differing materially
about how they understand what happiness is. So, while seeming to
agree, people in fact disagree about the human good. Consequently, it
is necessary to reflect on the nature of happiness
(*eudaimonia*): 



> 
> 
> But perhaps saying that the highest good is happiness
> (*eudaimonia*) will appear to be a platitude and what is wanted
> is a much clearer expression of what this is. Perhaps this would come
> about if the function (*ergon*) of a human being were
> identified. For just as the good, and doing well, for a flute player,
> a sculptor, and every sort of craftsman--and in general, for
> whatever has a function and a characteristic action--seems to
> depend upon function, so the same seems true for a human being, if
> indeed a human being has a function. Or do the carpenter and cobbler
> have their functions, while a human being has none and is rather
> naturally without a function (*argon*)? Or rather, just as
> there seems to be some particular function for the eye and the hand
> and in general for each of the parts of a human being, should one in
> the same way posit a particular function for the human being in
> addition to all these? Whatever might this be? For living is common
> even to plants, whereas something characteristic (*idion*) is
> wanted; so, one should set aside the life of nutrition and
> growth. Following that would be some sort of life of perception, yet
> this is also common, to the horse and the bull and to every
> animal. What remains, therefore, is a life of action belonging to the
> kind of soul that has reason. (*EN*
> 1097b22-1098a4)




In determining what *eudaimonia* consists in, Aristotle makes a crucial
appeal to the human function (*ergon*), and thus to his
overarching teleological framework. 




He thinks that he can identify the human function in terms of
reason, which then provides ample grounds for characterizing the happy
life as involving centrally the exercise of reason, whether practical
or theoretical. Happiness turns out to be an activity of the
rational soul, conducted in accordance with virtue or excellence, or,
in what comes to the same thing, in rational activity executed
excellently (*EN* 1098a161-17). It bears noting in
this regard that Aristotle's word for virtue,
*arete*, is broader than the dominant sense of the English
word 'virtue', since it comprises all manner of
excellences, thus including but extending beyond the moral virtues.
Thus when he says that happiness consists in an activity in
'accordance with virtue' (*kat' areten*;
*EN* 1098a18), Aristotle means that it is a kind of excellent
activity, and not merely morally virtuous activity.




 
The suggestion that only *excellently* executed or
*virtuously* performed rational activity constitutes human
happiness provides the impetus for Aristotle's virtue
ethics. Strikingly, first, he insists that the good life is a life of
activity; no *state* suffices, since we are commended and
praised for living good lives, and we are rightly commended or praised
only for things we (*do*) (*EN* 1105b20-1106a13).
Further, given that we must not only act, but act excellently or
virtuously, it falls to the ethical theorist to determine what virtue
or excellence consists in with respect to the individual human
virtues, including, for instance, courage and practical
intelligence. This is why so much of Aristotle's ethical writing
is given over to an investigation of virtue, both in general and in
particular, and extending to both practical and theoretical forms.




 For more on Aristotle's virtue-based ethics, see the entry on 
 Aristotle's Ethics.




Aristotle concludes his discussion of human happiness in his
*Nicomachean Ethics* by introducing political theory as a
continuation and completion of ethical theory. Ethical
theory characterizes the best form of human life; political theory
characterizes the forms of social organization best suited to its
realization (*EN* 1181b12-23). 




 
The basic political unit for Aristotle is the *polis*, which is
both a *state* in the sense of being an authority-wielding
monopoly and a *civil society* in the sense of being a series of
organized communities with varying degrees of converging
interest. Aristotle's political theory is markedly
unlike some later, liberal theories, in that he does not think that the
*polis* requires justification as a body threatening to infringe
on antecedently existing human rights. Rather, he advances a form
of political naturalism which treats human beings as by nature
political animals, not only in the weak sense of being gregariously
disposed, nor even in the sense of their merely benefiting from mutual
commercial exchange, but in the strong sense of their flourishing as
human beings at all *only* within the framework of an organized
*polis*. The *polis* 'comes into being for the sake
of living, but it remains in existence for the sake of living
well' (*Pol*. 1252b29-30; cf. 1253a31-37). 




The *polis* is thus to be judged against the goal of
promoting human happiness. A superior form of political organization
enhances human life; an inferior form hampers and hinders
it. One major question pursued in Aristotle's
*Politics* is thus structured by just this question: what sort
of political arrangement best meets the goal of developing and
augmenting human flourishing? Aristotle considers a fair
number of differing forms of political organization, and sets most
aside as inimical to the goal human happiness. For example, given
his overarching framework, he has no difficulty rejecting
contractarianism on the grounds that it treats as merely instrumental
those forms of political activity which are in fact partially
constitutive of human flourishing (*Pol*. iii 9). 




In thinking about the possible kinds of political organization,
Aristotle relies on the structural observations that rulers may be one, few,
or many, and that their forms of rule may be legitimate or
illegitimate, as measured against the goal of promoting human
flourishing (*Pol*. 1279a26-31). Taken together, these factors
yield six possible forms of government, three correct and three
deviant:




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | *Correct* | *Deviant* |
| *One Ruler* | Kingship | Tyranny |
| *Few Rulers* | Aristocracy | Oligarchy |
| *Many Rulers* | Polity | Democracy |




The correct are differentiated from the deviant by their relative
abilities to realize the basic function of the *polis*: living
well. Given that we prize human happiness, we should, insists
Aristotle, prefer forms of political association best suited to this
goal. 




Necessary to the end of enhancing human flourishing, maintains
Aristotle, is the maintenance of a suitable level of distributive
justice. Accordingly, he arrives at his classification of better
and worse governments partly by considerations of distributive
justice. He contends, in a manner directly analogous to his
attitude towards *eudaimonia*, that everyone will find it easy
to agree to the proposition that we should prefer a just state to an
unjust state, and even to the formal proposal that the distribution of
justice requires treating equal claims similarly and unequal claims
dissimilarly. Still, here too people will differ about what
constitutes an equal or an unequal claim or, more generally, an equal
or an unequal person. A democrat will presume that all citizens
are equal, whereas an aristocrat will maintain that the best citizens
are, quite obviously, superior to the inferior. Accordingly, the
democrat will expect the formal constraint of justice to yield equal
distribution to all, whereas the aristocrat will take for granted that
the best citizens are entitled to more than the worst. 




When sorting through these claims, Aristotle relies upon his own
account of distributive justice, as advanced in *Nicomachean
Ethics* v 3. That account is deeply meritocratic. He
accordingly disparages oligarchs, who suppose that justice requires
preferential claims for the rich, but also democrats, who contend that
the state must boost liberty across all citizens irrespective of
merit. The best *polis* has neither function: its goal is
to enhance human flourishing, an end to which liberty is at best
instrumental, and not something to be pursued for its own sake.




Still, we should also proceed with a sober eye on what is in fact
possible for human beings, given our deep and abiding acquisitional
propensities. Given these tendencies, it turns out that although
deviant, democracy may yet play a central role in the sort of mixed
constitution which emerges as the best form of political organization
available to us. Inferior though it is to polity (that is, rule
by the many serving the goal of human flourishing), and especially to
aristocracy (government by the best humans, the *aristoi*, also
dedicated to the goal of human flourishing), democracy, as the best
amongst the deviant forms of government, may also be the most we can
realistically hope to achieve. 




For an in-depth discussion of Aristotle's political theory,
including his political naturalism, see the entry on 
 Aristotle's Politics.


## 13. Rhetoric and the Arts




 
Aristotle regards rhetoric and the arts as belonging to the productive
sciences. As a family, these differ from the practical sciences
of ethics and politics, which concern human conduct, and from the
theoretical sciences, which aim at truth for its own sake. 
Because they are concerned with the creation of human products broadly
conceived, the productive sciences include activities with obvious,
artefactual products like ships and buildings, but also agriculture and
medicine, and even, more nebulously, rhetoric, which aims at the
production of persuasive speech (*Rhet*. 1355b26; cf.
*Top.* 149b5), and tragedy, which aims at
the production of edifying drama (*Poet*.
1448b16-17). If we bear in mind that Aristotle
approaches all these activities within the broader context of his
teleological explanatory framework, then at least some of the highly
polemicized interpretative difficulties which have grown up around his
works in this area, particularly the *Poetics*, may be sharply
delimited. 




 
One such controversy centers on the question of whether
Aristotle's *Rhetoric* and *Poetics* are primarily
descriptive or prescriptive
 works.[25] 
 To the degree that they are indeed
prescriptive, one may wonder whether Aristotle has presumed in these
treatises to dictate to figures of the stature of Sophocles and
Euripides how best to pursue their crafts. To some
extent--but only to some extent--it may seem that he
does. There are, at any rate, clearly prescriptive elements in
both these texts. Still, he does not arrive at these
recommendations *a priori*. Rather, it is plain that
Aristotle has collected the best works of forensic speech and tragedy
available to him, and has studied them to discern their more and less
successful features. In proceeding in this way, he aims to
capture and codify what is best in both rhetorical practice and
tragedy, in each case relative to its appropriate productive goal.




The general goal of rhetoric is clear. Rhetoric, says Aristotle,
'is the power to see, in each case, the possible ways to
persuade' (*Rhet*. 1355b26). Different contexts, however,
require different techniques. Thus, suggests Aristotle, speakers will
usually find themselves in one of three contexts where persuasion is
paramount: deliberative (*Rhet*. i 4-8), epideictic
(*Rhet*. i 9), and judicial (*Rhet*. i 10-14). In each
of these contexts, speakers will have at their disposal three main
avenues of persuasion: the character of the speaker, the emotional
constitution of the audience, and the general argument
(*logos*) of the speech itself (*Rhet*. i 3). Rhetoric
thus examines techniques of persuasion pursuant to each of these
areas. 




When discussing these techniques, Aristotle draws heavily upon topics
treated in his logical, ethical, and psychological writings. In this
way, the *Rhetoric* illuminates Aristotle's writings in these
comparatively theoretical areas by developing in concrete ways topics
treated more abstractly elsewhere. For example, because a successful
persuasive speech proceeds alert to the emotional state of the
audience on the occasion of its delivery, Aristotle's
*Rhetoric* contains some of his most nuanced and specific
treatments of the emotions. Heading in another
direction, a close reading of the *Rhetoric* reveals that
Aristotle treats the art of persuasion as closely akin to dialectic
(see SS4.3 above). Like dialectic, rhetoric trades in
techniques that are not scientific in the strict sense (see SS4.2
above), and though its goal is persuasion, it reaches its end best if
it recognizes that people naturally find proofs and well-turned
arguments persuasive (*Rhet*. 1354a1, 1356a25,
1356a30). Accordingly, rhetoric, again like dialectic,
begins with credible opinions (*endoxa*), though mainly of the
popular variety rather than those endorsed most readily by the wise
(*Top*. 100a29-35; 104a8-20; *Rhet*.
1356b34). Finally, rhetoric proceeds from such opinions to
conclusions which the audience will understand to follow by cogent
patterns of inference (*Rhet*. 1354a12-18,
1355a5-21). For this reason, too, the rhetorician will do
well understand the patterns of human reasoning. 




For more on Aristotle's rhetoric, see the entry on 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric.




By highlighting and refining techniques for successful speech, the
*Rhetoric* is plainly prescriptive--but only relative to
the goal of persuasion. It does not, however, select its
own goal or in any way dictate the end of persuasive speech: rather,
the end of rhetoric is given by the nature of the craft itself. 
In this sense, the *Rhetoric* is like both the *Nicomachean
Ethics* and the *Politics* in bearing the stamp of
Aristotle's broad and encompassing teleology. 




The same holds true of the *Poetics*, but in this case the
end is not easily or uncontroversially articulated. It is often
assumed that the goal of tragedy is *catharsis*--the
purification or purgation of the emotions aroused in a tragic
performance. Despite its prevalence, as an interpretation of what
Aristotle actually says in the *Poetics* this understanding is
underdetermined at best. When defining tragedy in a general way,
Aristotle claims:



> 
> 
> Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious and
> complete, and which has some greatness about it. It imitates in words
> with pleasant accompaniments, each type belonging separately to the
> different parts of the work. It imitates people performing actions and
> does not rely on narration. It achieves, through pity and fear, the
> catharsis of these sorts of feelings. (*Poet*.
> 1449b21-29)
> 
> 




Although he has been represented in countless works of scholarship
as contending that tragedy *is for the sake of catharsis*,
Aristotle is in fact far more circumspect. While he does contend
that tragedy will effect or accomplish catharsis, in so speaking he
does not use language which clearly implies that catharsis is in itself
the function of tragedy. Although a good blender will achieve a
blade speed of 36,000 rotations per minute, this is not its function;
rather, it achieves this speed in service of its function, namely
blending. Similarly, then, on one approach, tragedy achieves
catharsis, though not because it is its function to do so. 
This remains so, even if it is integral to realizing its function that
tragedy achieve catharsis--as it is equally integral that it makes
us of imitation (*mimesis*), and does so by using words
along with pleasant accompaniments (namely, rhythm, harmony, and song;
*Poet*. 1447b27). 




 
Unfortunately, Aristotle is not completely forthcoming on the question
of the function of tragedy. One clue towards his attitude
comes from a passage in which he differentiates tragedy from historical
writing:



> 
> 
> The poet and the historian differ not in that one writes in meter and
> the other not; for one could put the writings of Herodotus into verse
> and they would be history none the less, with or without meter. The
> difference resides in this: the one speaks of what has happened, and
> the other of what might be. Accordingly, poetry is more philosophical
> and more momentous than history. The poet speaks more of the
> universal, while the historian speaks of particulars. It is universal
> that when certain things turn out a certain way someone will in all
> likelihood or of necessity act or speak in a certain way--which
> is what the poet, though attaching particular names to the situation,
> strives for (*Poet*. 1451a38-1451b10).
> 
>  




In characterizing poetry as more philosophical, universal, and
momentous than history, Aristotle praises poets for their ability to
assay deep features of human character, to dissect the ways in which
human fortune engages and tests character, and to display how human
foibles may be amplified in uncommon circumstances. We do not,
however, reflect on character primarily for entertainment value. 
Rather, and in general, Aristotle thinks of the goal of tragedy in
broadly intellectualist terms: the function of tragedy is
'learning, that is, figuring out what each thing is'
(*Poet*. 1448b16-17). In Aristotle's view,
tragedy teaches us about ourselves. 




 
That said, catharsis is undoubtedly a key concept in Aristotle's
*Poetics*, one which, along with imitation
(*mimesis*), has generated enormous
 controversy.[26] 
 These
controversies center around three poles of interpretation: the
*subject* of catharsis, the *matter* of the catharsis,
and the *nature* of catharsis. To illustrate what is
meant: on a naive understanding of catharsis--which may
be correct despite its naivete--the *audience*
(the subject) undergoes catharsis by having the *emotions* (the
matter) of pity and fear it experiences *purged* (the
nature). By varying just these three possibilities, scholars have
produced a variety of interpretations--that it is the actors or
even the plot of the tragedy which are the subjects of catharsis, that
the purification is cognitive or structural rather than emotional, and
that catharsis is purification rather than purgation. On this
last contrast, just as we might purify blood by filtering it, rather
than purging the body of blood by letting it, so we might refine our
emotions, by cleansing them of their more unhealthy elements, rather
than ridding ourselves of the emotions by purging them
altogether. The difference is considerable, since on one view the
emotions are regarded as in themselves destructive and so to be purged,
while on the other, the emotions may be perfectly healthy, even though,
like other psychological states, they may be improved by
refinement. The immediate context of the *Poetics* does
not by itself settle these disputes conclusively. 




 
Aristotle says comparatively more about the second main concept of the
*Poetics*, imitation (*mimesis*). Although
less controversial than catharsis, Aristotle's conception of
*mimesis* has also been
 debated.[27] 
 Aristotle thinks that
imitation is a deeply ingrained human proclivity. Like political
association, he contends, *mimesis* is
*natural*. We engage in imitation from an early age,
already in language learning by aping competent speakers as we learn,
and then also later, in the acquisition of character by treating others
as role models. In both these ways, we imitate because we learn
and grow by imitation, and for humans, learning is both natural and a
delight (*Poet*. 1148b4-24). This same tendency, in
more sophisticated and complex ways, leads us into the practice of
drama. As we engage in more advanced forms of
*mimesis*, imitation gives way to *representation*
and *depiction*, where we need not be regarded as attempting to
*copy* anyone or anything in any narrow sense of the term. 
For tragedy does not set out merely to copy what is the case, but
rather, as we have seen in Aristotle's differentiation of tragedy
from history, to speak of what might be, to engage universal themes in
a philosophical manner, and to enlighten an audience by their
depiction. So, although *mimesis* is at root simple
imitation, as it comes to serve the goals of tragedy, it grows more
sophisticated and powerful, especially in the hands of those poets able
to deploy it to good effect. 


## 14. Aristotle's Legacy




 
Aristotle's influence is difficult to overestimate. After
his death, his school, the Lyceum, carried on for some period of time,
though precisely how long is unclear. In the century immediately
after his death, Aristotle's works seem to have fallen out of
circulation; they reappear in the first century B.C.E., after which time
they began to be disseminated, at first narrowly, but then much more
broadly. They eventually came to form the backbone of some seven
centuries of philosophy, in the form of the
 commentary tradition,
 much of it original philosophy carried on in
a broadly Aristotelian framework. They also played a very
significant, if subordinate role, in the Neoplatonic philosophy of
 Plotinus
 and
 Porphyry. 
Thereafter, from the sixth through the twelfth centuries, although the
bulk of Aristotle's writings were lost to the West, they received
extensive consideration in
 Byzantine Philosophy,
 and in Arabic Philosophy, where Aristotle was so
prominent that be became known simply as The First Teacher (see
the entry on the
 influence of Arabic and Islamic philosophy on the Latin West).
 In this tradition, the notably rigorous and illuminating commentaries of
Avicenna and Averroes interpreted and developed Aristotle's views
in striking ways. These commentaries in turn proved exceedingly
influential in the earliest reception of the Aristotelian corpus into
the Latin West in the twelfth century.



 
Among Aristotle's greatest exponents during the early period of
his reintroduction to the West,
 Albertus Magnus,
 and above all his student
 Thomas Aquinas,
 sought to reconcile Aristotle's philosophy with Christian
thought. Some Aristotelians disdain Aquinas as bastardizing Aristotle,
while some Christians disown Aquinas as pandering to pagan
philosophy. Many others in both camps take a much more positive view,
seeing Thomism as a brilliant synthesis of two towering traditions;
arguably, the incisive commentaries written by Aquinas towards the end
of his life aim not so much at synthesis as straightforward exegesis
and exposition, and in these respects they have few equals in any
period of philosophy. Partly due to the attention of Aquinas, but for
many other reasons as well, Aristotelian philosophy set the framework
for the Christian philosophy of the twelfth through the sixteenth
centuries, though, of course, that rich period contains a broad range
of philosophical activity, some more and some less in sympathy with
Aristotelian themes. To see the extent of Aristotle's influence, however,
it is necessary only to recall that the two concepts forming the
so-called
 *binarium famosissimum*
 ("the most famous pair") of that
period, namely universal hylomorphism and the doctrine of the plurality
of forms, found their first formulations in Aristotle's
texts.




 
Interest in Aristotle continued unabated throughout the renaissance in
the form of
 Renaissance Aristotelianism.
 The dominant figures of this period overlap
with the last flowerings of Medieval Aristotelian Scholasticism, which
reached a rich and highly influential close in the figure of
Suarez, whose life in turn overlaps with Descartes. From
the end of late Scholasticism, the study of Aristotle has undergone
various periods of relative neglect and intense interest, but has been
carried forward unabated down to the present day. 




Today, philosophers of various stripes continue to look to Aristotle
for guidance and inspiration in many different areas, ranging from the
philosophy of mind to theories of the infinite, though perhaps
Aristotle's influence is seen most overtly and avowedly in the
resurgence of
 virtue ethics
 which began in the last half of the twentieth century. 
It seems safe at this stage to predict that Aristotle's stature
is unlikely to diminish anytime in the foreseeable future. If it is any
indication of the direction of things to come, a quick search of the
present Encyclopedia turns up more citations to 'Aristotle' and
'Aristotelianism' than to any other philosopher or
philosophical movement. Only Plato comes close.