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Aristotle,
more than any other thinker, determined the orientation and the content of
Western intellectual history. He was the author of a philosophical and
scientific system that through the centuries became the support and vehicle for
both medieval Christian and Islamic scholastic thought: until the end of
the 17th century, Western culture was Aristotelian. And, even after the
intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow, Aristotelian concepts and ideas
remained embedded in Western thinking.
Aristotle's intellectual range was vast,
covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He worked in physics,
chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology, political theory, and
ethics; in logic and metaphysics; in history, literary theory, and rhetoric. His
greatest achievements were in two unrelated areas: he invented the study of
formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as Aristotelian
syllogistic, that for centuries was regarded as the sum of logic; and he
pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which his
work was not surpassed until the 19th century.
Even though Aristotle's zoology is now
out-of-date and his thought in the other natural sciences has long been left
behind, his importance as a scientist is unparalleled. But it is now of purely
historical importance: he, like other scientists of the past, is not read by his
successors. As a philosopher Aristotle is equally outstanding. And here he
remains more than a museum piece. Although his syllogistic is now recognized to
be only a small part of formal logic, his writings in ethical and political
theory as well as in metaphysics and in the philosophy of science are read and
argued over by modern philosophers. Aristotle's historical importance is second
to none, and his work remains a powerful component in current philosophical
debate.
This article deals with the man, his
achievements, and the Aristotelian tradition. For treatment of Aristotelianism
in the full context of Western philosophy, see PHILOSOPHY,
THE HISTORY OF WESTERN , and PHILOSOPHICAL
SCHOOLS AND DOCTRINES, WESTERN: Ancient
and medieval schools .
Aristotle was born in the summer of 384
BC in the small Greek township of Stagira (or Stagirus, or Stageirus), on the
Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece. (For this reason Aristotle
is also known as the "Stagirite.") His father, Nicomachus, was court
physician to Amyntas III, king of Macedonia, father of Philip II, and
grandfather of Alexander the Great. As a doctor's son, Aristotle was heir to a
scientific tradition some 200 years old. The case histories contained in the Epidemics
of Hippocrates, the father of Greek medicine, may have introduced him at an
early age to the concepts and practices of Greek medicine and biology. As a
physician, Nicomachus was a member of the guild of the Asclepiads, the so-called
sons of Asclepius, the legendary founder and god of medicine. (see also Greek philosophy)
Because medicine was a traditional
occupation in certain families, being handed down from father to son, Aristotle
in all likelihood learned at home the fundamentals of that practical skill he
was afterward to display in his biological researches. Had he been a medical
student he would have undergone a rigorous and varied training: he would have
studied the role in therapy of diet, drugs, and exercise; he would have learned
how to check the flow of blood, apply bandages, fit splints to broken limbs,
reset dislocations, and make poultices of flour, oil, and wine. Such, at least,
were the skills of the trained physician of his time. It is not known for
certain that Aristotle actually acquired these skills; it is known that medicine
and its history were later studied in the Lyceum, Aristotle's own institute in
Athens, and that later, in a snobbish vein, he considered a man sufficiently
educated if he knew the theory of medicine without having gained experience
practicing it.
This early connection with medicine and
with the rough-living Macedonian court largely explains both the predominantly
biological cast of Aristotle's philosophical thought and the intense dislike of
princes and courts to which he more than once gave expression.
While Aristotle was still a youth, his
father died, and the young man became a ward of Proxenus, probably a relative of
his father. He was sent to the Academy of Plato
at Athens in 367 and remained there for 20 years. These years formed the first
of three main periods in Aristotle's intellectual development, years dominated
by the formative influence of Plato and his colleagues in the Academy. Aristotle
doubtless interested himself in the whole range of the Academy's activities. It
is known that he devoted some time to the study of rhetoric, and he wrote and
spoke for the Academy in its battles against the rival school of Isocrates.
After Plato's death in 348/347 his
nephew Speusippus was named as head of the
Academy. Aristotle shortly thereafter left Athens--in disgust, it is sometimes
claimed, at not being appointed Plato's successor. This interpretation of his
motive, however, lacks foundation, for evidence suggests that he was ineligible
to be the school's head because of his status as a resident alien who could not
hold property legally. It is more likely that his departure from Athens may have
been linked with an anti-Macedonian feeling that arose in Athens after Philip
had sacked the Greek city-state of Olynthus in 348. Aristotle's 12-year absence
from Athens nevertheless indicates that he valued more the circle of friends who
accompanied him on his travels--chief among them Theophrastus
of Eresus, his pupil, colleague, and eventual successor as head of the
Lyceum--than he did his membership in the Platonic Academy.
With him went another Academy member of
note, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, whose lethargy
became the target of Plato's ridicule. Plato reportedly contrasted it with
Aristotle's more energetic manner: "The one needs a spur, the other a
bridle . . . . See what an ass I am training to compete with what a horse."
The distinctive characters of the two men, however, seem to have integrated well
in establishing a new academy on the Asian side of the Aegean at the newly built
town of Assus.
At Assus, Hermeias of Atarneus, a Greek
soldier of fortune, had first acquired fiscal and then political control of
northwestern Asia Minor, as a vassal of Persian overlords. After a visit to the
Athenian Academy he invited two of Plato's graduates to set up a small branch to
help spread Greek rule as well as Greek philosophy to Asian soil. Aristotle came
to this new intellectual centre. To this period may belong the first 12 chapters
of Book 7 of Aristotle's Politics.
There he sketches the connection between philosophy and politics, namely, that
the highest purpose of a city-state (polis)
is to secure the conditions in which those who are capable of it can live the
philosophical life. Such a life, however, lies only within the capacity of the
Greeks, whose superiority qualifies them to employ the non-Greek tribal peoples
as serfs or slaves for the performance of all menial labour. Thus, citizenship
and service in the armed forces are considered to be the exclusive rights and
duties of the Greeks. Aristotle's espousal of an enlightened oligarchy,
nonetheless, actually constituted an advance over the political concepts
flourishing at the time and it should be viewed in its context as a positive
development in the establishment of the noble civilization created by the
Greeks.
At about the same time, Aristotle
composed the work, now lost, On Kingship,
in which he clearly distinguishes the function of the philosopher from that of
the king. He alters Plato's dictum--for the better, it is said--by teaching that
it is (see also philosopher-king)
. . . not merely unnecessary for a king
to be a philosopher, but even a disadvantage. Rather a king should take the
advice of true philosophers. Then he would fill his reign with good deeds, not
with good words.
Aristotle thus strove to assure the
independent role of the philosopher.
Aristotle was on good terms with his
patron, Hermeias, and married his niece, Pythias. She bore Aristotle a daughter,
whom he called by her mother's name. In the Politics, Aristotle prescribed the ideal ages for marriage--37
for the husband and 18 for the wife. Because Aristotle was himself 37 at this
time, it is tempting to guess that Pythias was 18. It is also possible that
their own marital relations are reflected in his further, somewhat cryptic,
observation: "As for adultery, let it be held disgraceful for any man or
woman to be found in any way unfaithful once they are married and call each
other husband and wife." In his will Aristotle ordered that "Wherever
they bury me, there the bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her
own instructions." Pythias did not live long, however; and after her death
Aristotle chose another companion, Herpyllis (whether concubine or wife is
uncertain), by whom he then had a son, Nicomachus. She outlived Aristotle, and
he made ample and considerate provision for her in his will "in recognition
of the steady affection she has shown me."
After three years at the young Assus
Academy, Aristotle moved to the nearby island of Lesbos and settled in Mytilene,
the capital city. With his friend Theophrastus, a native of that island, he
established a philosophical circle patterned after the Athenian Academy. There
his centre of interest shifted to biology, in
which he undertook pioneering investigations. (The landlocked lagoon of Pyrrha
in the centre of Lesbos has been identified as one of his favourite haunts.) He
appears to have felt it necessary to justify this new attention to biology by
rejecting the arguments that had classed it as an inferior, unattractive study.
In his biological researches he focused on a new type of causation, namely
teleological. Teleological causation has to do with the aim, or end, of nature,
a type that is distinct from mechanical causation but one that is, nonetheless,
operative in the inorganic sphere. According to Aristotle, natural
organisms--plants and animals--have natural ends or goals, and their structure
and development can only be fully explained when these goals are understood. To
admit the existence of such ends, or aims, in nature is to argue teleologically
(Greek telos, "an end") or to admit the idea of a final cause
(Latin finis, "end").
Teleology, and theory in general, is important in Aristotle's biology; but it is
always, in principle at least, subordinate to observation. Thus, confessing his
ignorance of the mode of generation of bees, Aristotle wrote in his treatise On
the Generation of Animals:
The facts have not yet been
sufficiently established. If ever they are, then credit must be given to
observation rather than to theories, and to theories only insofar as they are
confirmed by the observed facts.
Associated with his researches into
plant and animal life were his reflections on the relation of the soul to the
body. As revealed by his tract On
the Soul, Aristotle distanced himself from the Platonic conception of
the soul as an independently existing substance
that is only temporarily resident in the body. With greater emphasis on the
positive value of material existence, he suggested instead that the soul is the
vital principle essentially united with the body to form the individual person.
With some acknowledgment to Plato, he then proceeded to define the soul as the
form of the body and the body as the matter of the soul.
In late 343 or early 342 Aristotle, at
about the age of 42, was invited by Philip II of Macedon to his capital at Pella
to tutor his 13-year-old son, Alexander. As the
leading intellectual figure in Greece, Aristotle was commissioned to prepare
Alexander for his future role as a military leader. As it turned out, Alexander
was to dominate the Greek world and defend it against the Persian Empire. Using
the model of the epic Greek hero, as in Homer's Iliad,
Aristotle attempted to form Alexander as an embodiment of the classical
valour of an Ajax or Achilles enlightened by the latest achievement of Greek
civilization, philosophy. With his firm conviction of the superiority of Greeks
over foreigners, he instructed Alexander to dominate the barbarians--i.e.,
non-Greeks--and to hold them in servility by refraining from any physical
intermixture with them. Despite this advice, however, Alexander later became
committed to intermarriage; he chose a wife from the Persian nobility and forced
his high-ranking officers (and encouraged his troops) to do likewise.
In other ways too the influence that
Aristotle had on Alexander was negligible. Although later, on his return to
Athens, Aristotle enjoyed considerable political and economic support from the
Macedonians and perhaps received assistance in the organization of his
biological researches, it is not likely--as some have held--that Alexander
collected and dispatched to Aristotle specimens of rare animals from Persia and
India; in fact, Alexander's first penetration of the valley of the Indus did not
occur until 328/327, less than six years before Aristotle's death. Indeed, the
relation between the two was embittered by the execution of Aristotle's nephew,
the historian Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was charged with treason while
accompanying Alexander to Persia early in 328 in order to write a chronicle of
the campaign. It has even been reported that Alexander meditated revenge on
Aristotle himself because he was a blood relative of the victim. But Alexander
was diverted by his preoccupation with the invasion of India. Clearly, in
matters of political ideology, a gulf separated Aristotle and Alexander.
Aristotle showed no awareness of the fundamental changes that Alexander's
conquests were bringing to the Greek world; indeed, he was opposed in principle
to Alexander's imperial policy because it diminished the importance of the
city-state. On the other hand, Alexander gratified his tutor by rebuilding the
town of Stagira, Aristotle's birthplace, which Philip II had destroyed earlier.
After three years at the Macedonian
court, Aristotle withdrew and returned to his paternal property at Stagira (c.
339). There he continued the associations of his philosophical circle, which
still included Theophrastus and other pupils of Plato.
Aristotle remained in Stagira until 335,
when, nearing 50 years of age, he once again returned to Athens. At this time
the presidency of the Academy became vacant by the death of Speusippus, and
Xenocrates of Chalcedon, his old associate in biological research, was elected
to the post. Although Aristotle appears never to have wholly severed his links
with the Academy, he nonetheless opened, in 335, a rival institution in the Lyceum,
a gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceus, situated in a grove just
outside Athens. The place had for some time been frequented by other
teachers--Plato even mentions it as having been one of Socrates' haunts--and the
name of the temple came to be applied to Aristotle's school in particular. But
it was probably only after Aristotle's death that the school, under
Theophrastus, acquired extensive property. From the fact that his instruction
was given in the peripatos, or covered
walkway, of the gymnasium, the school has derived its name of Peripatetic.
Informal as the school may have been under Aristotle, it was very important to
him because, by coordinating the work of a number of scholars, he was able for
the next 12 years to organize it as a centre for speculation and research in
every field of inquiry and to give lectures on a wide range of scientific and
philosophical questions. The chief difference between the new school and the
Academy was that the scientific interests of the Platonists centred on
mathematics whereas the main contributions of the Lyceum lay in biology and
history.
On the death of Alexander the Great in
323 a brief but vigorous anti-Macedonian agitation broke out in Athens.
Aristotle, who had long-standing Macedonian connections and was a friend of
Antipater, the Macedonian regent of Athens, felt himself in danger. He therefore
left Athens and withdrew to his mother's estates in Chalcis on the island of
Euboea. There he died in the following year from a stomach illness at the age of
62 or 63. It was reported that he abandoned Athens in order to save the
Athenians from sinning twice against philosophy (referring to Socrates as the
earlier victim).
The features of Aristotle, familiar from
busts and engravings, appear handsome and refined. An ancient tradition,
possibly from an unfriendly source, says, however, that Aristotle had
spindleshanks and small eyes and that he spoke with a lisp. In compensation for
these physical defects, he was notably well dressed. His cloak and sandals were
of the best quality and he sported rings. Presumably he was rich, with large
family holdings at Stagira. One use that he made of his money was to collect
books. Plato, with a touch of contempt for Aristotle's devotion to reading and
perhaps not without some envy of his affluence, called him "the
reader." Aristotle was an intellectual but not devoid of passion. A story
is told of Plato giving a reading of his Phaedo,
a purported record of Socrates' last day. The dialogue is moving and solemn.
As Plato was reading, however, his audience gradually melted away. In the end,
Aristotle alone was left. Probably fictitious, the anecdote was invented to
express a truth: Aristotle was, in fact, spellbound by the Socratic doctrine of
immortality as expounded by Plato. It not only interested him intellectually but
also absorbed him emotionally. His earliest works, dialogues written when he was
still a member of the Academy (now lost except for some fragments), were in part
concerned with thoughts of the next world and the worthlessness of this one.
The anecdotes related of him reveal him
as a kindly, affectionate character, and they show barely any trace of the
self-importance that some scholars think they can detect in his works. His will,
which has been preserved, exhibits the same kindly traits; he makes references
to his happy family life and takes solicitous care of his children, as well as
his servants.
This personal happiness is reflected in On
Philosophy, perhaps the last of his strictly literary works. After writing
this work, which he completed in around 348, he devoted his energies to
research, teaching, and the writing of more technical treatises. The greatness
of On Philosophy, which survives only
in fragments, is evident in its influence on the thought of later antiquity;
perhaps more than any other single work it established philosophy
as a profession. In the extant part, Aristotle defines the specific role of the
philosopher. Dividing the historical development of civilization into five main
stages, Aristotle sees the emergence of philosophy as its culmination. First,
men are compelled to devote themselves to the creation of the necessities
because without them they could not survive. Next come the arts that refine life
and then the discovery of the art of politics, the prerequisite of the good life
as Aristotle conceived it. To these necessities and refinements of life is added
the knowledge of their proper use in the fourth stage. Only with the emergence
of the well-regulated state comes the leisure for intellectual adventure, used
at first for the study of the material causes of existing things. Finally comes
the shift from natural to divine philosophy, when the mind lifts itself above
the material world and grasps the formal and final causes of things, realizing
the intelligible aspect of reality and the purpose that informs all change.
This divine philosophy gave its
attention to the astral gods. Aristotle had experienced in Athens the long
intellectual struggle to discover perfect order in the heavens. He had learned
that perfection was not to be confined to the mathematical abstractions, to
which Plato had at first directed the attention of his pupils, but had come to
recognize that the visible heavens themselves could be accepted as the
embodiment of the divine. With the declaration of this intimacy between the
deities and the work of their hands in the material universe, Aristotle issued
his manifesto, which is an optimistic affirmation of the values of this world;
simultaneously he rejected the Platonic doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in
the body and in need of struggling free from the bonds of matter. It was by this
stroke that Aristotle established his own identity in the history of thought.
Aristotle's writings fall into two
groups: the first consists of works published by Aristotle but now lost; the
second of works not published by Aristotle and, in fact, not intended for
publication but collected and preserved by others. In the first group are
included (1) the writings that Aristotle himself termed "exoteric," or
popular--that is, those written in dialogue or other current literary forms and
meant for the general reading public--and (2) those that he termed
"hypomnematic," or notes to aid the memory, and collections of
materials for further work. Of these, only fragments are extant. Finally, the
writings that generally have survived, termed "acroamatic," or
treatises (logoi, methodoi, pragmateiai), were meant for use in Aristotle's
school and were written in a concise and individualistic style. In later
antiquity Aristotle's writings filled several hundred rolls; today the surviving
30 works fill some 2,000 printed pages. Three ancient catalogs list a total of
more than 170 separate works by Aristotle, a figure corroborated by references
and lists of titles in the extant treatises as well as by a number of citations
and paraphrases in early commentators. Cicero must have been alluding to
Aristotle's popular dialogues when he described in the Academica
"the suave style of Aristotle . . . . A river of gold." The extant
works contain several passages of polished prose, but for the most part their
style is clipped.
The lost popular works include poetry
and letters as well as essays and dialogues in the Platonic manner. Several
problems have confronted scholars in their attempts to reconstitute these lost
popular works. The lost dialogues, for example, appear to diverge widely from
the doctrines of the surviving treatises. Indeed, they appear to outdo Plato in
his own teaching. Thus, what is known of Aristotle's dialogue Eudemus,
or On the Soul, compares the relation of the soul to the body with an
unnatural union, like that of the torture that the Tyrrhenian pirates inflicted
on their prisoners by binding each of them to a corpse. Inasmuch as Aristotle in
his extant treatises criticized his Platonist friends for making soul and body
enemies, Alexander of Aphrodisias, an
authoritative Aristotelian commentator of the late 2nd century AD, raised the
question whether he expressed "two truths," one "exoteric"
for public consumption, the other "esoteric" and reserved for his
students in the Lyceum. The present consensus of scholars is that Aristotle's
popular writings generally derived from the early stage of his intellectual
development during his time in Plato's Academy: they represent not his
"public" but his juvenile thoughts.
Chief among the lost works are: Eudemus,
in the tradition of Plato's Phaedo; On
Philosophy, a type of philosophical program containing themes to be
developed later in his Metaphysics;
the Protrepticus, or exhortation to the life of philosophy; Gryllus,
or On Rhetoric; On Justice, expressing nascent themes of his Politics;
and On Ideas, which criticizes Plato's theory of Forms.
The works that have been preserved
derive from manuscripts left by Aristotle on his death; many of them were
probably used by him as lecture notes. These are the "esoteric"
writings of a concentrated, academic nature intended for the ears of the
initiates. From classical antiquity romanticized accounts circulated of the way
these manuscripts were preserved; e.g., in
Plutarch's Sulla, chapter 26; and in
Strabo's Geography 13:54. According to
these versions, Aristotle's and Theophrastus' notes had been bequeathed to an
old colleague, Neleus of Scepsis, whose heirs apparently were not interested in
the contents but, in order to prevent them from being confiscated for the
library of the kings of Pergamum, hid them in a cellar in Scepsis. Long
afterward, in the 1st century BC, the descendants sold them to Apellicon of
Teos, a philosopher, who brought them back to Athens. When Athens was conquered
by Sulla in 86 BC, he appropriated the books and sent them to Rome, where they
were purchased by Tyrannion the grammarian. The manuscripts suffered further
maltreatment, first at the hands of copyists, then through subjective
restoration of worm-eaten passages and systematic ordering irrespective of
actual chronology, until Andronicus of Rhodes,
the last head of the Lyceum, acquired the copies and edited and published them
about 60 BC.
The story is improbable. It is difficult
to imagine that the Lyceum would have allowed the manuscripts of its founder to
have been so carelessly looked after. And it is now known that the
"esoteric" writings were not wholly ignored in the two centuries after
Theophrastus' death. It is true, nevertheless, that the Andronicus edition is
the first publication of Aristotle's works, even if the story of the edition's
appearance was spread by Andronicus to emphasize its novelty. The form, titles,
and order of Aristotle's texts that are studied today were given to them by
Andronicus almost three centuries after the philosopher's death, and the long
history of commentary upon them began at this stage.
These facts have affected the
interpretation of Aristotle. The books of Aristotle that are known today were,
in effect, never edited by him. Thus, for example, Aristotle is not the author
of the work called Metaphysics;
rather, he wrote a dozen little treatises: on the theory of causes in the
history of philosophy, on the chief philosophical problems, on the multiplicity
of meanings of certain key philosophical terms, on act and potency, on being and
essence, on the philosophy of mathematics, and on God. Those that the editors
thought worth collecting were given the title Metaphysics;
i.e., the tract that is to be read after the Physics. It is not surprising, then, that the Metaphysics and the other works of Aristotle sometimes seem to lack
unity or any clear progression of thought, that they are sometimes repetitious
and at times even contradictory. The texts furthermore suggest that students or
subsequent members of the Lyceum even revised Aristotle's expressions. It is
probable that Aristotle would never have released the work. Andronicus, assisted
by previous editors, imposed a logical and didactic order upon all the writings,
undoubtedly influenced by Aristotle's own emphasis on logic as the propaedeutic
(preparatory study) of all understanding. By ignoring the chronological order of
the treatises and by grouping dissertations from different periods under the
same title, the editors fashioned the Aristotelian corpus into a systematic
whole. It is quite likely that Aristotle himself had never thought of his
writings in this way.
Aristotle's treatises reveal the
philosopher at work. He defines the problem he is to deal with, assesses the
views of his predecessors, formulates his own preliminary opinion, considers
whether there is a need to modify it in the light of difficulties and
objections, rehearses the arguments for different points of view--always
searching, in short, for the most adequate solution or resolution of his
problem. The reader, therefore, sees Aristotle at work, not dogmatically
propounding a doctrine but often laboriously developing a perspective or an
insight that emerges from difficulties, contradictions, and paradoxes. Not
surprisingly, few syllogisms appear in Aristotle's treatises; the reader,
however, should perceive in them a structure that Aristotle himself terms "dialectical";
i.e., in the manner of a dialogue by an exchange of arguments for
and against.
From the conclusions of Alexander of
Aphrodisias in the latter part of the 2nd century, a distinction was established
between the doctrine expressed in Aristotle's treatises (the technical writings
that have come down to the present) and the popular Platonizing dialogues (the
"exoteric" works surviving only in fragments). The orthodox view for
17 centuries was that the treatises were the sources for Aristotle's genuine
thought; Valentin Rose, a 19th-century German scholar, proposed that all of the
lost dialogues are spurious because their doctrine was inconsistent with that of
the treatises. The underlying assumption was that a man of such strict and
systematic mind as Aristotle would maintain strict constancy and never abandon
opinions once formed.
In the first half of the 20th century a
developmental theory of Aristotle's thought was submitted by Thomas Case, an
English scholar, and elaborated in detail by Werner Jaeger, a German historian
of Greek philosophy, in his Studien zur
Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles (1912; "Studies in
the History of the Origin of Aristotle's Metaphysics") and later in his Aristoteles:
Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung (1923; Aristotle:
Fundamentals of the History of His Development). Employing a
historicogenetic methodology, Jaeger announced that the greater part of
Aristotle's lost works represented his thought while he was still at the Academy
and under the immediate influence of Plato: the preponderance of such themes as
the immortality of the soul, disdain for the material world, the doctrine of the
"recollection" of Ideas, the supremacy of wisdom, asceticism, and the
existence of God were recognizably Platonic. These dialogues addressed a wide
audience and were presented in an elegant literary style that fascinated
classical authors. According to Jaeger, Aristotle gradually distanced himself
from Plato's position, even during his time at the Academy--rejecting certain
Platonic arguments, adopting contrary positions, continually evolving from
Platonic Idealism to a marked empiricism.
In response to this evolutionary theory,
critics have noted that the analysis of Aristotle's works generates complex
problems, as observed above in the account of the formation of the text of his
existing writings. The works edited by Andronicus of Rhodes are compilations of
texts from different periods. Thus, the Metaphysics
covers almost the entire career of Aristotle, as does the Politics.
Often within the same chapter, even in a single paragraph, one discerns
elements from different stages of Aristotle's thought: his early phase at the
Academy, his maturity, his period of travel away from Athens, and his Lyceum
experience, which purportedly was divided between morning sessions with his best
students and afternoon meetings with a wider audience from Athens. Given all
this, there are serious obstacles in the way of discussing the chronology of the
treatises: it becomes extremely difficult to put a date on a work that was
revised and modified in various ways during a considerable portion of
Aristotle's intellectual career.
One of Jaeger's main assumptions,
moreover, is questionable. He supposes that Aristotle only agreed with Plato
during his early years at the Academy or, at the latest, until the close of the
first Athenian period (347 BC). This assumption, however, is arbitrary and
cannot be corroborated by the evidence. (see also Platonism)
One could conceivably defend the
converse: that Aristotle, in a self-assured youth, could have strongly
challenged Plato but, having subsequently become conscious of the more profound
significance of his master's philosophical postulates, did not hesitate to
integrate with his own thought one or more Platonic theses. Indeed, in one of
the logical treatises, Topics,
considered one of Aristotle's early works because it reflects discussions at the
Academy, and in the Eudemian Ethics,
the first version of Aristotle's course on ethics, there are strongly
anti-Platonic views expressed.
Jaeger's theory is most plausible with
regard to Aristotle's psychology, as demonstrated by François Nuyens, a
Dutch historian of philosophy, in 1939. He held that in his early period,
represented by the Eudemus and the Protrepticus,
Aristotle began as a Platonist, describing the soul as a separate substance
in an unnatural relationship with the body; next, in an intermediate stage, he
described the body as the instrument of the soul, whose function is analogous to
that of a pilot steering a ship; finally, in the tract On the Soul, he advanced more clearly the concept of a substantial
unity of body and soul by making the soul the form, or actuality, of a natural
body. (see also dualism)
Other authorities on Aristotle have
observed that such a linear transition in his thought occurs rarely among his
writings. Even in the works on psychology, moreover, Aristotle's concern for
metaphysical thought does not end with his intermediate biological phase but
continues and extends even into his empirical stage at the Lyceum. Such a
simultaneous preoccupation with both scientific and philosophical thought is
further manifested in the sequence of books in the Metaphysics.
At the other extreme is the hypothesis
of the German scholar Josef Zürcher, in Aristoteles
Werke und Geist (1952; "The Works and Spirit of Aristotle"), who
asserted that Aristotle's own thought always remained Platonic and that all of
the characteristically Peripatetic philosophy came from his disciple and
successor, Theophrastus, who is the true author of about three-quarters of the
existing Aristotelian treatises. According to this theory, there never existed a
young Aristotle and an elder Aristotle in terms of any development of his
thought: there was simply a Platonic Aristotle and an anti-Platonic
Theophrastus, an empiricist. This eccentric theory has found no followers. In
reaction to it, the Swedish scholar Ingemar Düring suggested in 1966 that
Aristotle never really subscribed to the Platonic theory of transcendent Forms,
or Ideas, but maintained lifelong and coexistent interests in empirical
investigation and metaphysical speculation; for Düring, as for Zürcher,
there is no need to postulate any fundamental change or development in
Aristotle's thought.
Aristotelian scholars have generally
concluded that a basis exists for a theory of evolution in his thought but that
the determination of the chronology and the degree of change presents a
difficult set of problems. It is quite possible to agree with Jaeger that during
Aristotle's first years at the Academy he acknowledged Plato's teaching on
Ideas, and that he later rejected the theory. It is another matter, however, to
suggest that in his later years he renounced such Platonically influenced
doctrines as the immortality of the soul or the conception of a religious
philosophy concluding in an ultimate being termed God. Increased attention to
data of the senses in subsequent phases of his life, moreover, is not a
sufficient argument for the emergence of an empiricist Aristotle, who could not
but oppose a spiritualist and idealist Plato. It is true that Aristotle later
criticized the doctrine of Ideas as inadequate and contradictory. But he
continued, nevertheless, to recognize the effectiveness of metaphysical thought
in arriving at the concept of a transcendent, nonmaterial, and subsistent
intellect as the necessary explanation for the fact that anything exists. The
consensus of modern commentators thus suggests that not every aspect of Platonic
idealism was rejected by Aristotle as his appreciation of empirical knowledge
and of the dynamic aspects of matter grew. Rather, alongside his experimental
work in biology and physics was his continued insistence on the crucial
differences between perception and thought, between accidental characteristics
and the essential natures of things.
The inconsistencies, contrasts, and
varying degrees of emphasis on different modes of thought throughout the
Aristotelian corpus are not adequately explained either by positing intervening
editors and copyists or simply by different stages in Aristotle's thought. He
clearly attempted in all of the treatises to relate his own views to the whole
history of thought before his time. On many occasions he was concerned, at the
same point in the development of his thinking, to state different views seen as
alternative possibilities. Often his method was deliberately aporetic; that is
to say, he raised difficulties that he knew had to be faced but for which he
supplied no immediate or definitive solutions. Left by Plato with a vast body of
problems, Aristotle conscientiously pursued the ideal of correcting and
complementing the intellectual tradition bequeathed to him. To this end he often
followed parallel but distinct paths of investigation. His method was
exploratory, and he used it on whatever fertile soil he was free to work. Only
relatively late in life was he able to unify his results with any degree of
success. The philosophy of Aristotle does not unfold simply by deducing
consequences from assumed principles. Rather, it starts from aporiai,
from puzzles or problems, and it proceeds by piecemeal, tentative, and multiform
attempts at solutions. The end result that Aristotle in his optimistic moments
hoped to achieve was indeed a fixed body of knowledge, systematically ordered
and deductively demonstrated. But his method of inquiry was not deductive, and
the finished system remained an aspiration rather than an accomplishment.
The term logic
was not invented by Aristotle but goes back to Xenocrates of the Academy.
Aristotle, however, attributed extensive significance to language
(logos)
and to the rules of discourse; thus he emphasized that language is distinctive
of the human species, and he defined man as a rational animal, which in the
Greek also means an animal possessing a language or speech or word. (see also formal
logic)
In Aristotle's view, the purpose of
language is to express the feelings and experiences of the soul, and
consequently words are signs, or symbols, of thoughts and other mental
phenomena.
The logical treatises of Aristotle make
up the collection known as the Organon
("tool"). This title was adopted by later commentators, who, in
accordance with the well-established Peripatetic tradition, regarded logic as an
instrument for doing philosophy. In Aristotle's preferred view logic was not
included in the classification of the sciences at all, but it was treated as a
preliminary to the study of each and every branch of knowledge. Aristotle's own
name for logic was "analytics." The term logic, however, is employed
in a somewhat restricted sense in Aristotle's own writings; e.g., in the Topics I, 14.
And there is some evidence that it was beginning to be used as the equivalent of
dialectic or analytics almost immediately after Aristotle's death.
The Organon
contains the following treatises: the Categories,
On Interpretation, Prior
Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics,
and the Sophistical Refutations. The arrangement within the collection is
meant to be systematic rather than chronological. Indeed, the original
chronological order can hardly be determined now with any certainty because
Aristotle, or other editors, apparently used later insertions to supplement the
original treatises. In a possible sequence of their composition, the Categories,
Topics, and the Sophistical
Refutations are listed earlier than On
Interpretation, and this work, in turn, is earlier than the Prior
Analytics and the Posterior Analytics.
The chapters on modal logic in the Prior Analytics are probably the last that Aristotle added to the
body of the Organon. Apart from the Organon,
the fourth book of the Metaphysics could
be described as a logical work inasmuch as it is centrally concerned with
certain general principles of thought (the principle of noncontradiction, the
law of the excluded middle).
In the Categories,
Aristotle distinguished expressions that exhibit propositional unity from
expressions that do not; that is, he distinguished between a simple term and a
composite statement that relates a subject to a predicate. This notion of
propositional unity can be traced back to Plato, but the treatment of simple
expressions was Aristotle's innovation. He considered simple expressions neither
true nor false and held that they may signify things in one or another of the
following categories: substance, quantity,
quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection. It is by
no means clear whether this classification is to be regarded as primarily
ontological (concerning the nature of reality) or as primarily verbal--i.e.,
whether it is about actual things or about words and expressions; the same
ambiguity has been characteristic of practically every other scheme of
categories suggested since Aristotle's time. (see also ontology)
As a part of a theory of reality
Aristotle later used the categories to criticize Plato's theory of Forms. For
Aristotle, Plato was involved in a confusion between the category of substance
and the other categories when, for example, he attributed substantiality, or
concrete existence, to qualities such as beauty or wisdom. In chapter 5 of the Categories,
Aristotle distinguishes within the category of substance between
"primary substance" and "secondary substance." Primary
substances are particular men, particular horses, particular stones, etc., and
secondary substances are the species and genera to which the individuals belong.
There Aristotle treated genus and species as substances of a derived kind. In
the Metaphysics, however, species and forms appear to be substances of a
primary kind. Aristotle's view, it must be said, is far from clear--some
scholars see the Metaphysics as a
return to a more Platonic conception of ontology.
On
Interpretation begins with a brief but influential
discussion of the simple parts of sentences, such as "names" and
"verbs"; it then considers complete sentences of various kinds and
examines the logical relationships (contrariety, contradiction, implication)
holding among them. The work also contains a pioneering account of
"modal" sentences ("It is possible that . . ."; "It is
necessary that . . .") and a celebrated discussion of "future
contingents." (If it is already true that there will be a sea battle
tomorrow, then how can the battle be considered a contingent event? For if the
truth is already determined, surely the battle is fixed and necessary?
Aristotle's answer to this is that certain types of sentences about the future
are neither true nor false.)
The Topics
appears to have been intended as a manual for participants in contests that
involved argumentation. For the most part this treatise consists of suggestions
about how to look for an argument that will either establish or refute a given
thesis; thus it elucidates general logical laws or rules.
The Sophistical
Refutations exposes forms of reasoning that appear valid on the
surface but are in fact fallacious. Examples of fallacious arguments are
"begging the question," or circular argument
(e.g., a "proof" that the soul continues to exist after
death because it is immortal); the "fallacy
of the consequent," or arguing from a consequent to its condition (e.g.,
if a man is a drunkard he becomes destitute; Peter is destitute: therefore
Peter is a drunkard); and the "fallacy of the irrelevant conclusion,"
wherein, instead of proving the fact in dispute, the arguer seeks to gain his
point by diverting attention to some extraneous fact. (see also fallacy
of the consequent, fallacy of irrelevant
conclusion)
The main achievement of the Prior
Analytics is the development of the logical system now known as
Aristotelian syllogistic. A syllogism is a form
of argument consisting of three propositions
(two premises and a conclusion). The stock example of a valid syllogism is the
following:
Every Greek is a man.
Every man is mortal.
Every Greek is mortal.
Both premises are either affirmative or
negative and contain two terms (the subject and the predicate) together with a
sign of "quantity" ("every," "some,"
"no"). In addition, the propositions are either "assertoric"
or "apodeictic" or "problematic"--they express the idea that
something is or must or can be the case. "Every man must be rational"
is apodeictic and affirmative; it is universal in quantity ("every");
its subject term is "man" and its predicate is "being
rational." The Prior Analytics
examines, with astonishing rigour and sophistication, the various possible forms
of syllogistic argument.
In the Posterior
Analytics Aristotle seeks to apply his logical theory to scientific
and epistemological ends. He discusses the proper structure of scientific
knowledge, urging that each science must depend on a set of first principles, or
axioms, that are necessarily true and directly knowable. The truths, or
theorems, that together constitute a science are to be deduced from its axioms,
which both necessitate and explain them. Aristotle came to hope that all these
scientific deductions could be formulated by way of apodeictic syllogisms. For
this reason much of the second book of the Posterior
Analytics is devoted to the theory of "definition," for Aristotle
thought that the most important axioms of any science would be definitions of
its proper subject matter. Among the various axioms of geometry, for example,
there would be a definition of the triangle--an account of what a triangle
really is or of the essence of a triangle.
In his treatise Physics Aristotle deals with natural
bodies in general, or with all that is corporeal; special kinds of material
bodies are discussed in his other physical works, such as On
the Heavens or the Meteorology.
The first book of the Physics is
concerned with the intrinsic, constitutive elements of a natural body, those
that he called "matter" and "form"; i.e.,
the substratum that persists through change and the feature whose acquisition
determines the nature of change. The second book treats mainly the different
types of cause studied by the physicist, the material and the formal causes just
mentioned, and the final and efficient causes,
or the goal for the sake of which and the agent by means of which anything comes
into being. Books 3 through 7 deal with movement, or motion, and the notions
implied in it--such as space, position, and time, their magnitudes and
continuity. The subject of Book 8 is the first mover,
which, though not itself a natural body, is the cause of all movement in natural
bodies; its necessary attributes--such as immovability and eternalness--are also
examined. (see also hylomorphism)
Whatever the virtues or defects, clarity
or obscurity, of Aristotle's physical treatises, they assume that the
distinction between physics and metaphysics (the "first philosophy,"
or the science of being as being) is valid. Although the conception of a
continuous scale of nature from inorganic substances to biological and
psychological phenomena is basic in all of his science, explanation does not
consist in running uniformly up the hierarchy of beings to God nor in reducing
all functioning to some material organ. The sciences of Aristotle are based on a
multiple system of classification, not on a simple scheme of mutually exclusive
and independently existent genera and species. The very distinction of causes in
existing and mutable things permits the differentiation of the subject matters
of the natural sciences. (see also science,
philosophy of)
The general principles discussed in the Physics
are applied to the universe as a whole in On
the Heavens (where Aristotle argues that the world is spatially finite but
temporally eternal) and to the inanimate parts of the universe in On
Generation and Corruption and the Meteorology.
The former treatise discusses, in general terms, the four "elements"
of the Aristotelian system (earth, air, fire, water) and their interrelations;
Aristotle pays particular attention to the question of elemental change, whereby
one element can alter and become another. The Meteorology deals with what, from a modern point of view, is a
miscellany of topics--astronomy (e.g.,
comets), geography (e.g., rivers),
chemistry (e.g., burning), as well as
meteorology (e.g., rainbows). In
addition to the general principles of physics and the theory of the elements,
Aristotle relies on a further postulate: he supposes that
"exhalations," some moist and some dry (steam and smoke), are
constantly given off by the earth, and he attempts to explain the various
phenomena he investigates in terms of the operation of these exhalations.
The principles of the Physics are also evident in Aristotle's biological and zoological
writings. The largest of these, the History
of Animals (a better translation of the Greek title would be Inquiry
into Animals) consists in the main of descriptions of different animal
species. Some of these descriptions--notably those of the crustaceans--are
remarkable for their detail and accuracy. Some scholars regard the History
as no more than a repository of raw data, collected for scientific scrutiny but
not yet ordered or systematized. Others, however, think that Aristotle is
concerned with constructing a biological taxonomy
that divides the animal world into genera and species. The truth probably lies
somewhere between these two views. There is neither a fully fledged Aristotelian
taxonomy nor a fixed system of genera and species, but the material in the History
is not simply an unorganized heap--the subject matter of the work is
intelligently and significantly arranged.
However that may be, the Parts
of Animals and the Generation
of Animals, although they too present a quantity of empirical data,
are primarily scientific and explanatory in intention. Aristotle is concerned
with the nature and the function of the various animal organs and other
"parts"; he wants not merely to describe and list them, but to
"explain" them, both by reference to similarities across different
animal species and also--and more strikingly--by reference to their functions
within the animal's bodily system and behaviour. It is here that Aristotle's
insistence on teleological explanation is most apparent: "nature," he
says, "does nothing in vain," and although he does not, strictly
speaking, hold that all features of animate beings have a functional explanation
(the colour of eyes, for example, is accidental), such explanations are
pervasive and are the mark of good science. The Generation of Animals considers specifically the problems of
reproduction and growth. What contributions do male and female parents make to
the embryo? What characteristics are inherited, and from whom, and how? How do
embryos grow and develop, and how in particular do they acquire the different
faculties that together constitute their souls? In this, Aristotle's most mature
scientific work, the virtues and the vices of his method are most plainly to be
seen: he is usually modest, careful, exact; he advances theoretical
explanations, but he does not let theory prejudice observation; he attempts to
produce a genuinely scientific work. On the other hand, the limitations of his
knowledge--and of his means of acquiring new knowledge--are evident; and at
least some of his theoretical concepts are crude and inadequate.
The biological works also include two
short essays discussing animal locomotion entitled the Movement of Animals and the Progression
of Animals. Here Aristotle attempts--not wholly successfully--to combine a
rigorously mechanical account of animal motion, considered in terms of the
physiology of the body and the nature of the medium, with a psychological
discussion of the mental antecedents (perception, thought, desire) that explain
animal behaviour.
The relation between the active
principle and the passive continuum (or between form and matter) that is
operational in sentient and intellectual life is examined in On the Soul. After exploring the
concept and the conditions of life, Aristotle relates the function of matter and
form (body and soul) in human life to all of life's biological and psychological
phenomena while rejecting Platonic transcendentalist and pre-Socratic
materialist theories on the nature of the soul. The soul, as the form of the
organic body, consists of an ordered set of faculties; these are, in
hierarchical order, the nutritive, the perceptual, and the intellectual
faculties. The nutritive faculty is common to all living things and is
responsible for growth and nutrition; the perceptual faculty is common to all
animals and is responsible for, among other things, sight, hearing, smell, and
locomotion; and the intellectual faculty is peculiar to humans. Aristotle gives
detailed accounts of the modes of perception (in addition to the five senses
and their objects he postulates the existence of a "common sense" that
unites their deliverances) and a notoriously difficult account of thought (which
distinguishes an "active" from a "passive" intellect). The
work also contains a discussion of animal movement and of its preconditions--of
imagination and of desire. (see also mind)
In the Parva
Naturalia, the medieval designation for a collection of short treatises on
natural functions, the argument of On the
Soul is supplemented by a sequence of treatises on sense and the sensible,
memory and reminiscence, sleeping and waking, prophecy in sleep, the length and
brevity of life, youth and old age, life and death, and respiration. (see also "On
the Senses and Their Objects," )
The study of metaphysics,
the function and content of which have generated neither conviction nor
consensus of opinion on the scope of its subject matter, is--together with the
syllogism and the differentiation of kinds of premises--an innovation of
Aristotle. In his Metaphysics the
doctrines that Aristotle sometimes refers to as "wisdom" and sometimes
as "first philosophy" or even as "theology" are developed.
Its task is that of describing the most general or abstract features of reality
and the principles that have universal validity. In a famous (and misleading)
phrase, he describes metaphysics as the study of "being qua
being." By that he means that metaphysics studies whatever must be true of
all existent things just insofar as they exist, that it studies the general
conditions which any existing thing must satisfy.
Book 1 of the Metaphysics discusses in a preparatory way the problem of causal
explanation. Aristotle gives a survey of the forms of explanation used or
discussed by his predecessors, and discovers that his own theory of "four
causes" represents the truth toward which they were struggling. This survey
is one of the most important sources for information about the pre-Socratics and
also about certain aspects of Plato's philosophy. Book 2 is a short essay on the
principles of science, and Book 3 sets out a long series of metaphysical
puzzles, or aporiai. The puzzles
receive a preliminary discussion: most, but not all, of them are dealt with at
greater length in later parts of the Metaphysics.
Book 4 explains Aristotle's conception
of "first philosophy" as the general study of the conditions of
existence, and it contains a defense of the principle of noncontradiction
("not both P and not-P")
and the law of the excluded middle ("either P
or not-P"). Book 5, sometimes
called Aristotle's philosophical lexicon, is devoted to ambiguous philosophical
terms: Aristotle analyzes and distinguishes the different usages of some 40 key
words. Book 6 returns to the issues of Book 4.
Books 7-9 form a unit. These central
books are among the most difficult that Aristotle ever wrote, and they defy
summary. The question to which they address themselves is this: What is
substance? What are the fundamental constituents of the world, the things that
enjoy an independent existence and can be known and defined? Aristotle's
discussion is tortuous. It turns on the ideas of matter and form, of substance
and essence, of change and generation, of actuality and potentiality.
Aristotle's conclusion, it seems, is that substances are, in some sense, forms.
They are not abstract Platonic Forms, but concrete, particular forms. They are
the things designated by such phrases as "this man," "that
horse," or "this oak tree."
Book 10 is a self-contained essay on
"oneness"--on unity, continuity, identity, and related concepts. Book
11, which simply summarizes parts of the Physics
and earlier parts of the Metaphysics,
is generally regarded as spurious. Book 12 gives Aristotle's
"theology": he asks how many causes must be posited to explain the
world and arrives eventually at the conception of God, or of the first, or
unmoved, mover. Aristotle's God, however, is not a personal God interested in
the affairs of this world. Instead he is pure intelligence and as such
completely indifferent to the vicissitudes of the world (as is implied in the
concept of unmoved mover). In addition, the concept of first mover is not to be
understood in a temporal sense. The first mover is not the creator of the
world--indeed, Aristotle thought that the world was not created at all but had
been in existence for all eternity--but the fountainhead of all motion. In that
sense he is the ultimate cause of everything that happens in the world. Finally,
Books 13 and 14 contain a long discussion--mostly critical and directed against
Plato--of the nature of mathematical objects.
In emphasizing the crucial differences
in the purposes of the theoretical and practical sciences, Aristotle indicates
that the practical disciplines, unlike the theoretical, are for the sake of
doing or making something and not for the sake of contemplating, defining, or
knowing it. Thus, at the start of his Nicomachean
Ethics he explains how the practical sciences are incapable of the
exactness of the theoretical sciences, for their subject matters are not limited
to things that are amenable to precise definition, but involve habits and
skills, which can be acquired and lost, and associations and institutions, which
in their changes affect the accomplishment of political actions and the
practicability of moral ends. And however precise biological or psychological
definitions may be, man varies as moral agent and as citizen according to
environmental determination, educational background, and the influences of
family, economic position, social class, means of livelihood, and even the
associations of his leisure.
Relating ethics to politics, Aristotle
set out to demonstrate that problems of morality
as they affect the individual cannot be separated from each other or from
problems of political association. The Ethics
and Politics therefore do not develop
separate sciences or independent subject matters but rather supplement each
other by treating a common field according to different aspects.
Although he treated moral problems in
terms of the potentialities of individual men, the ability to practice and
actualize these potentialities is dependent upon political circumstances.
Therefore, in the first chapters of Book 1 of the Ethics,
Aristotle begins by introducing moral considerations into the broad context
of political philosophy, and he ends by returning, in the concluding Book 10,
from the examination of happiness and the contemplative life to a shrewd
statement of the contribution of law to moral questions, which forms the
transition from ethics to politics. (see also law, philosophy of)
Aristotle's approach to ethics is
teleological; that is, he discusses ethics not in terms of moral absolutes but
in terms of what is conducive to man's good.
This approach leads him to examine various kinds of good and to arrive at the
identification of the highest good with the attainment of happiness.
After careful discussion of the problematic concept of happiness, Aristotle
arrives at a definition of happiness as activity of the soul in accordance with
virtue.
Aristotle distinguishes moral virtues
and intellectual virtues, which are determined, respectively, by the irrational
and the rational powers of the soul. Man, however, does not possess these
virtues at birth but comes endowed with the capacity, or disposition, for
developing them in the course of time. For example, a child begins by following
his parents' injunction to tell the truth without initially realizing the moral
excellence of his action; yet eventually the habit of veracity becomes an
ingrained part of his moral character. Aristotle then differentiates virtue from
vice, arriving at the definition of virtue as a "mean," or middle
disposition, between the vicious extremes of excess and deficiency; courage, a
virtue, for example, is the mean between cowardice and rashness.
Aristotle concludes his discussion by
defining the highest happiness open to man. Because happiness is an activity in
accordance with virtue, it follows that the highest happiness should be in
accordance with man's highest virtue. And that, according to Aristotle, is the
activity which distinguishes man from the other animals, namely the activity of
reason or activity in accordance with reason. Thus in its ideal form happiness
turns out to consist in a life of intellectual contemplation.
Aristotle, on the other hand, also concedes that the political life (activity in
accordance with moral virtue) can bring happiness, albeit "in a secondary
degree."
The Politics
takes up the problems of human action and association as they bear on the ends
of communal life encompassed in living well. But the choice of political ends
requires a complex examination of possible criteria capable of application to
the vast diversity of men and human conditions. Grounding his argument on the
premise that man is "naturally" a political animal, Aristotle develops
the theory of the state, distinguishes various
kinds of constitution, and considers the best state for the particular
circumstances, character, and conditions of the citizens. Aristotle also
discusses the nature and causes of political instability and revolution. The
last two books of the Politics--part
of an unfinished description of the ideal state--are largely concerned with
education.
Aristotle analyzes rhetoric
in terms of its end, or final, cause, which is persuasion. Like dialectic it is
not a science, and therefore it has no specific subject matter, no single
method, and no proper set of principles. It is simply the faculty, or power, of
observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.
According to Aristotle, there are three modes of persuasion that a speaker may
exercise: the persuasive power of his own character, the excitation of desired
emotions in the audience, and proof or apparent proof.
In the Poetics
Aristotle's analysis of poetry provides for
careful isolation of the specific character of poetry. In comparing poetry to
history, he states that poetry is more philosophic than history and thus of
greater intrinsic worth. The difference is attributable not to form--history
written in metre is still history--but to the fact that the historian deals with
singulars (i.e., with specific events
and specific personages). The poet, on the other hand, creates types and
situations that, while imitating nature, are, nonetheless, akin to universals;
that is, the poet describes what is possible as though it were both likely and
necessary. Yet Aristotle also permits the analogy of poetry to oratory as well
as the consideration of the moral, political, and educational effects of both. Tragedy,
however, which is the only kind of poetry analyzed in the extant portions of
Aristotle's work, is defined in terms of its form, not in terms of its purpose,
as a kind of imitation rather than as a mode of persuasion or excitation. Thus,
in the famous definition of the sixth chapter, it imitates a serious action of
great magnitude in a dramatic form and accomplishes the purification (katharsis)
of the emotions of pity and fear. (see also Aristotelian
criticism, art, philosophy of, aesthetics)
Using this definition as the basis for
the discussion of poetry, Aristotle considered poetic art in terms of the
characteristics and interrelations of the six parts, or components, of tragedy:
plot, character, and thought (the objects of imitation); diction and melody (the
means of imitation); and spectacle (the manner of imitation).
The last four chapters of the Poetics
return to more general questions of value and to final causes by means of
detailed comparisons of tragedy with comparable poetic works and specifically
with epic.
Aristotle and Aristotelianism
Goethe compared Aristotle's philosophy
to a pyramid rising on high in regular form from a broad base on the Earth.
Because each part of Aristotle's philosophy contributes to the understanding of
other parts, it is generally true of his works--even more than those of most
philosophers--that they cannot be read initially with a sure and well-grounded
understanding but they must be reread for the sake of perceiving the primary
conceptual and methodological relationships. Faced with the mass of materials
that constitute the imposing body of his works, the reader might best start with
the treatment of those problems that are relevant, interesting, or important to
him. Aristotle himself often reiterated the suggestion that the inquirer
concentrate first on sense experience as something that is better known to him
and attend only afterward to the essential concepts of things in the effort to
organize knowledge and constitute the principles of the particular sciences.
Indeed, he frequently distinguished the process of inquiry and discovery from
that of demonstration and proof.
Aristotle's thought can be said to be
known in two ways: (1) as remnants of his doctrines constituting the speech of
Western culture, in the tradition of Western thought, and in the history of its
sciences; and (2) as it is known from the attentive study of his writings. What
Aristotle discovered in his intellectual inquiries and what he said can be most
readily intelligible to someone of Western culture in the modified form in which
it still constitutes part of that thought and conviction. It may be suggested,
therefore, that Aristotle be read for the first time in an order the reverse of
that in which his works have traditionally been arranged and that his
conclusions and analyses be examined before inquiring about his principles. It
is true, for example, that what Aristotle said concerning the poetic and
rhetorical arts is more complex in manner of analysis and more difficult in
systematic construction than what modern writers might say on such subjects; but
it, nonetheless, still approximates more nearly to contemporary thought in this
area than do his works on physics and metaphysics. And, for the same reason, his
moral and political theory led him, in the course of its development, to many
distinctions and statements that a modern reader would be disposed to accept or
to reject without too lengthy critical discussion.
Once the manner of Aristotle's analysis
is more firmly grasped and better appreciated, the reader can proceed to take up
his logical works in the Organon and
his investigations of space, time, and motion in the Physics. Through later consultation with the more complex thought in
the Metaphysics and in On
the Soul, he can review the earlier tentative conclusions made in the study
of ethics and literary theory in the light of the deeper insights, acute
distinctions, and strength of argument thus acquired.
When a student approaches Aristotle's
conclusions in the light of his principles, allowing the text to illuminate his
own experiences, Aristotle can then be appreciated not only for his expression
of a philosophy but also as a help in the cultivation of the mind. And this is a
task to which Aristotle himself thought all men should devote themselves and to
which his philosophy remains a unique contribution. ( A.H.Ao./Ed.)
The extent to which Aristotelian thought
has become a component of civilization can hardly be overestimated. To begin,
there are certain words that have become indispensable for the articulate
communication of thoughts, experiences, and problems. Some words still carry
their Greek form, whereas others have become established in their more important
meanings as Latin equivalents of Aristotle's own words. The centuries-long
impact of Aristotelian schooling lies at the root of the establishment of the
following vocabulary: "subject" and "predicate" in grammar
and logic; "form" (information, transform) and "matter" as
expressing the two correlative aspects of something that has acquired or
acquires something else that is possibly essential to it; "energy" as
the active power inherent in a thing; "potential" for what is latent
but can be released; "substance" and "essence,"
"quantity" and "quality," "accidental,"
"relation," "cause" (and the many meanings of
"because" corresponding to the four causes), "genus" and
"species" (general, special), "individual,"
"indivisible" (atomic)--these constitute only a small sample of terms
that still carry the mark of Aristotle's philosophy.
Beyond language, features that
cumulatively or severally characterize Aristotelianism include, in philosophical
methodology, a critical approach to previous, contemporary, or hypothetical
doctrines; the raising and discussing of doctrinal difficulties; the use of deductive
reasoning proceeding from self-evident principles or discovered general
truths; and syllogistic forms of demonstrative
or persuasive arguments.
In epistemology,
or the theory of knowledge, Aristotelianism includes a concentration on
knowledge either accessible by natural means or accountable for by reason; an
inductive, analytical empiricism, or stress on
experience, in the study of nature--including the study of men, their behaviour
and organizations--leading from the perception of contingent individual
occurrences to the discovery of permanent, universal patterns; and the primacy
of the universal, that which is expressed by common or general terms.
In metaphysics,
or the theory of Being, Aristotelianism involves belief in the primacy of the
individual in the realm of existence; in the applicability to reality of a
certain set of explanatory concepts (e.g.,
10 categories; genus-species-individual, matter-form,
potentiality-actuality, essential-accidental; the four material elements and
their basic qualities; and the four causes--formal, material, efficient, and
final); in the soul as the inseparable form of each living body in the vegetable
and animal kingdoms; in activity as the essence of things; and in the primacy of
speculative over practical activity.
In the philosophy
of nature, Aristotelianism denotes an optimistic position concerning
nature's aims and its economy; believing in the perfection and in the eternity
of the heavenly, geocentric spheres, perceiving them as driven by intelligent
movers, as carrying in their circular movements the stars, the Sun, the planets,
and the Moon, and as also influencing the sublunary world; and holding that
light bodies rise naturally away from the centre of the Earth, while heavy
bodies move naturally toward it with a speed related to their weight.
In aesthetics,
ethics, and politics, Aristotelian thought holds that poetry
is an imitation of what is possible in real life; that tragedy, by imitation of
a serious action cast in dramatic form, achieves purification (katharsis)
through fear and pity; that virtue is a middle between extremes; that man's
happiness consists primarily in intellectual activity and secondarily in the
exercise of the virtues; and that the state is a self-sufficient society,
necessary for men to achieve happiness.
Since Aristotle's death there have been,
without interruption until the present, schools and individuals who have
cultivated the study of his works and fully or partly adopted and expounded his
doctrines and methods. They have interpreted or misinterpreted, approved or
condemned, and reshaped or utterly transformed them. The languages in which this
interest was most forcibly expressed have changed in turn and over time from
Greek to Latin; to Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew; to Italian, French, English, and
German. The main centres in which it appeared have been as far apart as Greece,
North Africa, and Rome in the ancient world; Persia and Spain, Sicily and the
British Isles in the Middle Ages; and Germany and North America in more recent
times.
The main strand of the Aristotelian
tradition has been the Greek line, which lasted 2,000 years, mainly in the area
along the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and branched off at various stages between
the 4th and 15th centuries, giving rise to (or strengthening) other traditions.
The Latin branch originated in Rome in the 4th century and acquired a new
impulse, probably from Athens, in the early 6th century. From these beginnings
it was revived in the 9th century and again in the 12th, at which time a second
and even stronger Aristotelian wave emerged from Constantinople, to be followed
by a third, via the western Arabic schools, from Spain; and both branches spread
to Italy, France, and the British Isles. The final direct contribution from the
Greek to the Latin tradition came to Italy, once more from or through
Constantinople, in the 15th century.
Shortly after the beginning of Latin
Aristotelianism certain Armenian and Syrian members of the Greek schools of
Athens and Alexandria in Egypt introduced Aristotelian teachings into their
schools. The Armenian tradition was still alive in the 19th century in such
places as Madras and Venice; and the Syrian tradition, which never completely
disappeared, was still powerful in the 14th century, after having given birth,
in the 9th and 10th centuries, to an Arabic tradition. Arabic Aristotelianism
was the product of Syrians, Persians, Turks, Jews, and Arabs who wrote and
taught in their own countries as well as in Africa and Spain until the 12th
century. Much of it and of what the Jews produced in Hebrew in the following two
centuries passed into the Latin tradition between 1130 and 1550. Thus, all of
the varied heritage that had derived ultimately from the Greek line and had been
vastly enriched by other cultures came to be collected, through the Latin
branch, by modern Western philosophical movements.
For some decades after his death
Aristotle's own school, the Peripatos or Lyceum,
remained, in a truly Aristotelian spirit, a centre for critical research--not
for the dogmatic acceptance of a closed system. Aristotle's immediate successor,
Theophrastus, independently elaborated his
master's metaphysics and psychology and added to his study of nature (botany and
mineralogy) and logic (theory of propositions
and hypothetical syllogisms). Various members of the Lyceum coordinated
Aristotelian thought with other current schools of philosophy. Thus Aristoxenus
joined Aristotelian and Pythagorean doctrines; Critolaus
united Aristotle's theory of the influence of the heavens on the world with the
Stoic theory of providence; and Clearchus of Soli combined Plato's views on the
human soul with Aristotle's.
Outside the Lyceum, the Stoic school was
partly following Aristotle in its interest in formal logic, the theory of
meaning, and use of the categories (e.g., substance,
quality, relation). It was Aristotelian also in its empiricism, as well as in
its concentration on nature, in several aspects of natural science, and in its
belief that man is intrinsically a social being. The Skeptics
sometimes relied on Aristotelian forms of argument to prove their systematic
doubts. Even Epicurus, who may have fought
against Aristotle's early theology and psychology and ignored his mature
philosophy, was, nonetheless, near him in his doctrine of the will and in his
conception of friendship and the pursuit of knowledge as the high aims that give
satisfaction and pleasure to man. (see also Stoicism)
Although relatively little was known of
Aristotle's "esoteric" works until the 1st century BC, his more
popular, literary, and Platonizing writings influenced eclectics such as
Panaetius and his pupil Poseidonius; and this influence continued, helped by the
Roman philosopher and lawyer Cicero, well into
the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Upon it was based the tendency to establish a
harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle--a feature that recurred
through the whole history of Aristotelianism--and perhaps the ascription to
Aristotle of the De mundo ("On
the Universe"), a cosmological treatise of the 1st century BC, which found
favour with all of the different traditions until the 16th century.
In the 1st century BC Aristotle's
"esoteric" writings were organized into a corpus and critically edited
by Andronicus of Rhodes and other scholars. The
edition was used by Nicholas of Damascus, a
historian and philosopher, in an attempt to expound Aristotle's system. This may
be viewed as the beginning of a new era of a scholarly and scholastic
Aristotelianism in which Aristotle had to be taken as the basis for the
acquisition of true knowledge in a number of fields. Individual works began to
be commented and lectured upon; organized philosophical studies began to have as
their introduction Aristotle's works on logic, especially the Categories.
Thus the pattern was set for the next 17 centuries. Almost pure
Aristotelianism, based on the "esoteric" works, lived on until the 4th
century. Many scholars--the most eminent of them being Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who from AD 195 held the Athenian chair of Aristotelian
studies created by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius--provided the works on
logic, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and psychology with detailed and
penetrating commentaries meant for the specialist. The interpretation of
Aristotle was for many generations molded by these scholars. Others--the
greatest being Themistius, a professor in
Constantinople in about AD 350--practically rewrote many of Aristotle's
treatises in a more modern language and more readable style.
This new, scholarly Aristotelianism had
established itself sufficiently as the philosophical and methodological frame of
learning for it to be adopted, at least in part, by most men of
culture--including Ptolemy, the greatest astronomer of antiquity, and Galen, the
most eminent medical scientist.
Aristotle's works were adopted by the
systematic builders of Neoplatonism in the 3rd
century AD. Plotinus, the school's chief
representative, followed Aristotle wherever he found a possibility of agreement
or development, as he did in Aristotle's theory of the intellect. And Plotinus'
pupil Porphyry, the first great harmonizer of
Plato and Aristotle, provided the field of logic with a short introduction (Isagoge).
The Isagoge, in fact, is only
concerned with a simple and rather mechanical treatment of five concepts that
had been much used by Aristotle. These were the concepts of genus, or kind (as
animal is the genus, or kind, under which Socrates falls); species, or sort
(Socrates is a man); differentia, or distinguishing characteristic (rationality
distinguishes men from other members of the genus animal); property (being
capable of laughter was said to be a "property" of men inasmuch as all
and only men are capable of laughter); and accident, or characteristic in
general (as it might be an accident of Socrates to be pale). This introduction
soon became an integral part of the Organon
(the logical works of Aristotle) and thus acquired undeserved Aristotelian
authority in all schools for more than 1,500 years. From that time on,
Aristotelianism became indissolubly tied up with Neoplatonism. (see also definition
by genus and differentia)
Neoplatonism dominated the school of
Athens, where, apart from logic, Aristotle's writings were destined to be
studied mainly as a basis for philosophical disputations--disputations in which
the Platonic view was usually victorious. Scholars like Ammonius--a pupil of Proclus, the most accomplished systematizer of
Neoplatonism, head of the Athenian school in the mid-5th century, and himself
extremely well-versed in Aristotle--found Alexandria a considerably more
attractive place for Aristotelian studies, in that it was tolerant of many
views. There pagans and Christians coexisted and cooperated, and from there they
carried Aristotelian learning to a number of other schools: Simplicius,
a pupil of Ammonius who was inclined to Platonism, took it back to Athens
and--when Justinian closed that pagan school in 529--to Persia; Sergius, a
physician and Nestorian priest, carried it to the Christian schools of Syria;
and Stephanus of Alexandria took it to Constantinople. The schools of Alexandria
and Athens produced from about AD 475 to 545 the most intensive collection of
Aristotelian commentaries, by scholars like Ammonius, philosophers of science
like Simplicius, and philosopher-theologians like Philoponus (see also PLATONISM
).
Before the 5th century, Christian theology
had been affected only marginally and indirectly by Aristotle. The elementary
study of Aristotelian logic had proved indispensable for a disciplined training
of theologians, and some of the concepts from Aristotle's Physics
and Metaphysics
that entered into the elaboration of this logic became equally essential for
the rational formulation of points of dogma. The aforementioned five terms of
Porphyry and the 10 categories of Aristotle were used or implied in the mystical
theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (an unidentified
5th-century Christian Neoplatonist), which was to become one of the principal
components of Christian speculation in the Greek, Oriental, and Latin schools.
Descriptions of God and distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity
came to include, in an increasingly technical sense, the Aristotelian terms
substance, essence, accident, form and matter, species and nature, quality,
quantity, and property; these terms were not always used in a purely
Aristotelian sense, however. In this way, as well as through the purely
philosophical schools, Aristotelianism entered the first Greek Scholasticism of
St. John of Damascus, an 8th-century doctor of the church. (see also Christianity)
The Byzantine scholarly renaissance in
the 9th century included a revival of interest in Aristotle: the old books were
rediscovered and reedited (the oldest manuscripts still existing today belong to
this time). Photius, patriarch of Constantinople
and a leading figure in that renaissance, included in his encyclopaedic works
summaries of the elements of Aristotelian logic. More extensive scholarly
activity resulted from the reestablishment of the Academy in Constantinople in
the 11th and 12th centuries under the successive leadership of such men as
Michael Psellus, an encyclopaedic philosopher; his student John Italus; Michael,
the archbishop of Ephesus; and Eustratius, the metropolitan of Nicaea. At the
Academy teaching and exegetical work went hand in hand; debates on the
superiority of Plato or Aristotle and attacks on philosophy by the religious
schools did not seriously weaken these activities. There was perhaps not much
that was new in the understanding or the development of Aristotle's doctrine;
but logic was no longer the only focal point of Aristotelian studies. Indeed,
they covered, more widely than had been done in Alexandria, practically the
whole corpus, including some work on Aristotle's political theory, on his
ethics, and on his biology. In addition, there were philosophical debates
similar to those taking place in the Latin schools; they were based on texts of
Aristotle and treated such issues as the theory of universals and the logical
structure of language. (see also Byzantine
Empire)
In the 13th and 14th centuries
popularization and systematization--in an encyclopaedic or philosophical
form--took the upper hand in the work of Nicephorus Blemmydes, George
Pachymeres, and Theodore Metochites. At a time when Greek thought was being
strongly influenced by the Latin tradition, especially by the work of Thomas
Aquinas, the traditional debate on Plato and Aristotle took new forms.
Aristotelianism appeared in the teaching of Barlaam the Calabrian, who sought to
champion rationalism in faith; this was combated from a Platonic point of view
by Nicephorus Gregoras. In the 15th century, when Greeks were becoming part of
the Italian philosophical scene, Aristotelian rationalism was strongly defended
by the upholders of Christian theology against such men as George Gemistus
Plethon, who proposed a new universal religiosity tinged with an admiration for
Plato and paganism. The victory in this intellectual battle went to the
moderates like John Bessarion, Plethon's
influential pupil, who, though he preferred Plato, admired Aristotle, translated
his Metaphysics, and collected
manuscripts of his works; he converted from the Greek (i.e.,
the Greek Orthodox) church to the Latin (i.e.,
what is now called the Roman Catholic) church, in which latter communion he
became a cardinal.
The echoes of Aristotle's early writings
in Cicero, a few signs of his indirect influence on other writers, and a more
considerable contribution to post-Aristotelian logic in Apuleius, a Platonic philosopher who flourished in the 2nd century
AD, are indications of the general cultural intercourse in this area between
Latins and Greeks. The presence of Plotinus and Porphyry in Rome in the 3rd and
early 4th centuries probably started the more serious interest in Aristotle
there, of which the first results were, perhaps, Victorinus' adaptations in
Latin of Porphyry's Isagoge and
Aristotle's Categories. Logic was
still the only part of Aristotle that had entered Latin culture when Themistius'
teaching attracted the attention of Roman pagan circles in the 4th century.
Again, only the logical works of
Aristotle, together with some extracts from Greek commentaries on them, seem to
have reached the hands of Boethius, a Roman
scholar and statesman of the early 6th century, when he was attempting to
transmit to the Latins as much as he could of Greek learning. He translated
these works and elaborated on the commentaries and on some other later texts of
logic that are partly based on Aristotle. He acted primarily as a conduit, and
some scholars are not prepared to ascribe to him interpretations and plans
contained in the Latin works that bear his name. Even the plan of commenting on
"as much of Aristotle as would come into his hands" and showing that
Aristotle and Plato agreed was the traditional approach going back at least to
Porphyry. Nothing remains to show where Boethius himself stood in judging
Aristotle and the several parts of his philosophy. The same observations
probably hold true with regard to Boethius' various theological treatises, in
which the Aristotelian concepts that helped to organize the theology of the
Trinity were unmistakably taken over from similar Greek treatises. A
disproportionate value, however, was later attached to Boethius' own original
contribution in both logic and theology; simply the fact that his name was
connected with these texts made people in the Middle Ages ascribe to him the
primary responsibility for their contents.
The increased sense of linguistic and
national identity and the religious movements of the 5th and 6th centuries such
as Nestorianism (a heterodox doctrine that so
stressed the distinction between the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ as
to suggest that they belonged to two persons) and Monophysitism
(a heterodox doctrine asserting that there is only one nature in Jesus Christ)
led to the foundation of Syriac centres of studies in the Persian and Byzantine
empires, especially at Edessa (now Urfa, Tur.) and Antioch. Proba and Sergius of
Resaina were among those who contributed, through translations of the basic
logical texts and commentaries on them, to the establishment of Aristotelian
studies in these centres. At the time of the Arabic invasion of the Byzantine
and Sasanian empires around 640, and for several generations
afterward, these centres continued to grow in importance. Most notable was the
great school of Kinnesrin, which was represented by such men as Severus Sebokht,
who wrote on Aristotle's syllogisms; Jacob, bishop of Edessa, a theologian,
grammarian, and translator; and Georgius, bishop of the Arabs, author of a
commentary on the Organon. Interest
remained, however, mainly confined to logic and its application to theology.
The Syrian Christians formed the
philosophical and scientific intelligentsia when in the 9th century al-
Ma`mun, the seventh 'Abbasid caliph, organized the Arabic centre
of learning of the new Islamic empire in Baghdad. By then the Syrian
scholars had acquired and translated most of Aristotle's works. They also then
translated them into Arabic, both from the Syriac and directly from the Greek,
and added many texts of commentators on Aristotle. In this way Hunayn
ibn Ishaq, his son Ishaq, Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus,
Yahya ibn 'Adi, and many other Syrians provided the basis
for a brilliant philosophical activity in Arabic. The Syrians retained their own
independent culture; as late as the 13th century their language was used by the
converted Jew Bar Hebraeus, "Son of the
Hebrew" (also known as Gregorius or Abu al-Faraj), an
encyclopaedist, philosopher, and theologian, who expounded all the works of
Aristotle in his Kethabha dhe-hewath
hekhmetha (Book of the Cream of Wisdom),
elaborating many sections on the basis of the Greek and Arabic Aristotelians.
(see also Islamic
philosophy)
In the 9th century the Arab al-
Kindi was the first notable scholar to use the Arabic language in a
general introduction of mainly Aristotelian philosophy. In the following century
the Turkish Muslim al- Farabi produced a more
specialized study in which he commented upon and expounded the books of logic
and attempted to establish the relationship between philosophy and Islam.
It was through the writings of Avicenna and Averroës,
however, that Aristotle's thought became an integral part of lay Arabic culture.
Early in the 11th century, the Arab
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) made Aristotle's philosophy the foundation of
an original system of his own. For this he also found inspiration in a group of
Plotinian texts that had been translated into Arabic under the title
"Theology of Aristotle." Aristotle became, in Avicenna's hands, a much
more systematic and coherent thinker than he really had intended to be; problems
and solutions that were, at best, hinted at by Aristotle (e.g.,
the distinction between essence and existence or the relation between
possible and necessary existence) were among the distinctive marks of Avicenna's
own work.
For the Spanish Arab Averroës (Ibn
Rushd) in the 12th century, Aristotle was "the measure and model offered by
nature to show the ultimate perfection of man." He held that philosophy,
specifically Aristotelian philosophy, was and taught truth; revelation or
revealed religion was a debased philosophy for the simple. Averroës
dissected Aristotle's works, analyzing and reconstructing them with a fine
scholarly and philosophical sense and an incredible wealth of information
derived from previous Greek and Arabic philosophers. He elicited doctrines that
are not easily apparent and made them in some cases more compelling than the
texts themselves might allow, but he rarely forced his own views onto Aristotle
without at least finding some support in the texts themselves. The doctrines
concerning the mortality of the individual soul, the eternity of the world, and
the existence of a single Mind for the whole human race to the exclusion of
individual minds were key doctrines for Averroës; they had some basis--but
not much--in the thought of Aristotle.
Until the 13th century, Jewish
Aristotelianism developed within the Arabic culture of North Africa,
Mesopotamia, and Spain. This work was carried out in the Arabic language and
distinguished itself for its almost constant concern with the relation between
philosophy and Judaism. Many Aristotelian
concepts were considered and discussed by Isaac ben
Solomon Israeli, a 10th-century Neoplatonist, in his Kitab
al-hudud ("Book of Definitions") and Kitab
al-ustuqusat ("Book of the Elements"). Form and matter were the
basis of the metaphysical structure of the Neoplatonic system of Solomon
ibn Gabirol, an 11th-century poet and philosopher known as Avicebron. A
fully conscious plan of inserting Aristotle--or at least the Aristotle of al-Farabi
and Avicenna--into the intellectual and spiritual life of Judaism was carried
out by Abraham ibn Daud of Toledo in the
mid-12th century. Moses Maimonides of Córdoba
found a way of reconciling the claims of empirical knowledge with those of
revelation, which places him into clear contrast with his contemporary Spaniard
Averroës, and in so doing he provided a Jewish anticipation of Thomas
Aquinas' Christian compromise. His proofs for the existence of God and his
acceptance of a theory of creation from eternity were typical of his approach.
From the 13th century onward philosophical works, particularly those of Averroës
on Aristotle, were being translated into Hebrew; a vast Hebrew literature of
"super-commentaries" (those on the works of Aristotle as commented on
by Averroës) appeared, and independent works were also produced, notably by
Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides), who was faithful
to both Maimonides and Averroës. Soon after, however, the more orthodox
tradition based upon the Bible and the Talmud prevailed. Aristotelian works by
Jews and Hebrew versions of Averroës, translated into Latin, contributed
their share to the Italian philosophical movement of the 16th century (see also
JUDAISM: Jewish philosophy).
Before 1115 only the very short Categories
and On Interpretation were known
in Latin, and these two works circulated, from about 800, in a version by
Boethius. By 1278 practically the whole of the Aristotelian corpus existed in
translations from the Greek, and much of it had a wide circulation. Apart from
three other works of logic in translations done by Boethius, which reappeared in
about 1115, this wholesale discovery was the result of cultural contacts with
Constantinople and a few other Greek centres and the personal initiative of a
few scholars. Most notable and first of these was James
of Venice, who was in Constantinople and translated the Posterior
Analytics, Physics, On the Soul, Metaphysics, and several minor texts before
or around 1150; other scholars translated anew or for the first time works on
ethics, natural philosophy, and logic before 1200. With higher standards of
linguistic scholarship, Robert Grosseteste,
about 1240, revised and completed the translation of the Nicomachean
Ethics and translated On the Heavens
for the first time from the Greek. (see also Middle
Ages)
The Flemish translator William
of Moerbeke, active between about 1255 and 1278, completed the Latin
Aristotelian corpus; he was the first to translate the Politics
and Poetics and to give a full and reliable translation of the books on
animals; he also translated anew some books of natural philosophy, and he
revised several of the older translations. About half of the works were also
translated from the Arabic, mainly in Toledo by Gerard of Cremona and Michael
Scot, between 1165 and 1230. With two or three exceptions, these translations
came after those from the Greek; all had a much more limited circulation and
influence. A considerable contribution to the knowledge of Aristotle came from
the translations of the ancient commentaries; nearly all of these were made from
the Greek.
The view that Aristotle came to be known
in Latin by way of the Arabic scholars must be understood as true only in the
sense that a number of Aristotelian doctrines--partly transformed in the
process--spread in Latin circles from the works of such men as al-Farabi,
Avicenna, and Albumazar before the texts of Aristotle were accessible or had
been properly interpreted. Further, there is little truth in a view that in the
Latin world in the Middle Ages Aristotle was seen in a Neoplatonic light because
Plotinian and Proclan texts translated from the Arabic--namely the Theologia
Aristotelis ("Theology of Aristotle") and the Liber
de causis ("Book of
Causes")--were ascribed to him.
The study of Porphyry's
Isagoge, of
Aristotle's Categories and On
Interpretation, and of theological texts containing Aristotelian elements
formed the basis, from the 9th century onward, of logical methodology (dialectic)
in a wide number of fields. When applied to problems concerning the Trinity or
the Eucharist, or in general to problems concerning individuality and
universality of concepts and things, dialectic was perceived as a powerful
instrument for clarifying faith or--on the opposite side--for endangering it.
For Abelard, the first great Aristotelian of the
Middle Ages, dialectic was an essential method for analysis and the discovery of
truth. As part of his study, he produced an illuminating account of the
linguistic, mental, and objective aspects of universals on the basis of
Aristotelian doctrines. Soon thereafter, new developments of Aristotle's theory
of language and logic took place, partly as a result of the recently acquired
knowledge of his Sophistical
Refutations.
At the same time, in the later 12th
century and during the beginning of the 13th century, Aristotle's physics,
cosmology, and metaphysics began to attract attention through the Latin texts
both of Arabic works on science and philosophy and of Aristotle's own works, and
did so mainly among scientists of the famous medical school at Salerno and among
the English philosophers. Around 1190 Alfred of Sareshel used the new texts in
his treatise De motu cordis ("On
the Movement of the Heart"). Between 1210 and 1235 Robert Grosseteste
commented on Aristotle's Physics and
drew on various aspects of Aristotle's natural philosophy for his own scientific
and philosophical treatises, and around 1245 Roger Bacon commented on the Physics
and part of the Metaphysics. It
would be wrong, however, to try to find in this scholarship the origin of modern
experimental science, which is rather to be found in the study of ancient and
more recent mechanics, medicine, and technology or in original inventiveness.
(see also nature,
philosophy of, scholasticism)
The introduction of the new Aristotle
met with difficulties in Paris. The impact of non-Christian Aristotelian and
Arabic philosophy engendered fears, doubts, and suspicions. Although the masters
at Paris were free to teach Aristotle's logic, which was value free, and
although no obstacle was put in the way of lecturing on any of Aristotle's works
at the universities of Oxford and Toulouse, in
the first part of the 13th century the ecclesiastical authorities at Paris
imposed a ban on lectures relating to the physics, the metaphysics, and the
psychology of Aristotle and his commentators. While this ban succeeded in
slowing down some activities it also quickened reactions and aroused strong
curiosity; the very demand for some kind of censorship of the works led to more
intimate study of them. Certainly by the 1240s the prohibition against teaching
Aristotle had become a dead letter at Paris, as can be seen from the fact that
Roger Bacon was then commenting on the "dangerous" Physics and Metaphysics.
Shortly thereafter, before 1255, all of Aristotle's philosophical treatises then
known had become a required part of the Parisian Master of Arts curriculum, and,
around the same time, Albertus Magnus--committed
though he was, as a Dominican friar, to safeguarding the purity of faith and
dogma--made Aristotle's works an indissoluble part of philosophical and
scientific literature in the Latin world. Albertus Magnus announced it as his
intention to make all of Aristotle's natural philosophy "intelligible to
the Latins." His vast encyclopaedia of secular knowledge and wisdom
consisted of an analytical exposition of Aristotle's thought combined with all
the information and interpretations that Albertus had gathered from other,
mainly Arabic, sources or that he had gained as the product of his own extensive
research and speculation. Faced with the danger of being accused of following
Aristotle against church dogma, he asserted: "I expound, I do not endorse,
Aristotle."
The approach of Albertus' pupil, Thomas
Aquinas, to Aristotle was that of a scholar. He wrote numerous detailed
commentaries on a variety of Aristotle's works, including the Physics,
Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics;
he analyzed the structure of every section of most works; he tried to discover
their organization and to follow the arguments; and he was careful to obtain the
best texts and to get from them the genuine meaning. Above all, Thomas Aquinas
drew heavily on Aristotle's thought in composing his own masterwork, the Summa
theologiae. He respected Aristotle's authoritativeness and credited him with
reasonableness, even when that was not explicitly justified. Sometimes he drew
inferences that went beyond Aristotle's own conclusions, and he allowed himself
considerable freedom whenever Aristotle had left loose ends in his attempts to
solve difficulties. At these points he often went his own way, without ascribing
the new steps to Aristotle but without feeling that he was going against him.
Compromises followed; for example, he stepped beyond Aristotle when he argued
that the individual soul, although remaining essentially and indissolubly the
form of the individual body, is separable from it and immortal. Aristotle's
account was stretched almost to the breaking point but it was not transformed.
Beyond that point Thomas Aquinas was not a Christian Aristotle but a man of
faith and dogma; he divorced himself from Aristotle when necessary and
approached closer to St. Augustine, to the Neoplatonists, or to Avicenna.
The suspicion that reading Aristotle
might lead to heresy became stronger when the closer study of his texts and of
Averroës' interpretations enhanced the admiration for The Philosopher and
increased the following of The Commentator, as these two thinkers were known
respectively. Siger de Brabant was the most
redoubtable of many Averroistic Aristotelians. What came to be called Averroism
was in fact a tendency to accept genuine or consistent Aristotelian tenets,
particularly those concerning the eternity of the world, the unity of the
intellect, and the ability of humans to achieve happiness on earth.
Ecclesiastical condemnations of propositions considered false or dangerous and
threats against the holders of doctrines implied by these propositions gave a
more definite status to the Averroists, although many propositions condemned at
Paris and Oxford in 1270 and 1277 had nothing to do with Aristotle and little
with Averroës. The effect of the condemnations soon became visible: it took
the form of a separation between the teaching of "philosophy" in the
faculty of arts and the teaching of "truth" in the faculty of
theology. This separation became rigid, with the ambiguous result that two
"truths"--truth of coherence in philosophical contexts and revealed
truth--were thought to coexist.
At the turn of the century, however, Dante's
powerful poetical vision could still merge the Averroists' Aristotle, who
claimed that natural truths were self-sufficient, and Thomas Aquinas' Aristotle,
who endorsed many of the truths of faith. For Dante, as for Averroës,
Aristotle was the embodiment of total human knowledge--"the master of them
that know." A remarkable index of Dante's commitment to Aristotelianism is
the fact that he placed Siger de Brabant, by that time condemned for his
Aristotelian heresy, in Paradise. In Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics Dante found moral guidance (he even said that this work "showed
man his true happiness"), and in Aristotle's scientific books he found the
key to understanding the workings of nature. In some aspects of Averroës'
theory of a universal human Intellect combined with the Stoic-Aristotelian
principle that all men are by nature citizens of one city, he found the basis of
the Empire, seeing it as the one polity (civilitas)
for the whole human race.
The 14th century was no less
Aristotelian than the 13th. Some scholars have indeed claimed that
Aristotelianism collapsed, but such an assertion does not take into account the
non-Aristotelian components of previous philosophies and the permanent
acceptance of Aristotelian doctrines in the new ones. Form, matter, causality,
and the idea of a universe in which events occurred with regularity but were not
necessitated provided the Aristotelian frame of the system of Duns
Scotus. The nominalism (or "terminism") of William
of Ockham, an English Franciscan, his rejection of "useless
entities," his metaphysics of a world of individual self-contained things,
and his conceptualism gave neat, though extreme, expression to Aristotle's
theory of language, the economy of nature, and the primacy of individuals in
existence and of universals in intellectual knowledge. He followed Aristotle
closely in his views on the scientific coordination of notions. He was more
faithful to Aristotle than either Thomas Aquinas or Averroës when he said
that Aristotle did not give a clear lead on the question of the immortality of
the soul. The various schools of Scholastic
philosophy--Thomism, Scotism, Ockhamism--that asserted themselves in the 14th
century and that lived on had a common Aristotelian basis, but they had
different ways of interpreting it (see also PHILOSOPHICAL
SCHOOLS AND DOCTRINES, WESTERN: Scholasticism
; CHRISTIANITY:
Christian philosophy ).
Averroistic Aristotelianism flourished
in this century in connection with, or independently of, the other trends. The
Italian medical faculties at Bologna and Padua were lively centres of logical
and philosophical studies; for example, Peter of Abano, a professor of medicine
at Padua who had been trained at Paris, pushed Aristotle's cosmology to the
brink of determinism in human affairs and used his logic to suggest that
Christ's death was only apparent. Political science,
which had been a field for lofty speculations or restrained exercises in the
analysis and exposition of texts, became important for those who practiced
politics and those who wanted to satisfy, under the aegis of Aristotle's
doctrine, the potentialities of human beings for happiness. John
of Paris wanted France to be self-sufficient, self-controlling, and
without interference from the pope; John of Jandun,
a successor of Siger de Brabant, upheld Aristotle's Politics
in all its worldliness; and Marsilius of Padua,
John of Jandun's friend in Paris, followed Aristotle in his insistence that
government had no supernatural origins but arose naturally from the needs of the
governed and that priests should be considered in the same way as members of a
guild in a city, without special privileges.
Perhaps with less attachment to the
details of Aristotle's doctrines and with a keen critical sense, the Mertonians,
a group of logician-philosophers based in Merton College, Oxford (e.g.,
Thomas Bradwardine, William of Heytesbury), and encyclopaedists, scientists, and
philosophers in France (e.g., Jean
Buridan and Nicholas Oresme) made laborious efforts to express science wholly in
terms of mathematics, to quantify changes in quality, and to determine the
nature of continuity in movement and the acceleration and speed of falling
bodies. Their starting points were the Physics
and the other texts of Aristotle. In a similar (almost mathematical) spirit,
many of the same men carried logic even further than Ockham had done into the
fields of logical calculus, paradoxes, and sophisms. Thus one may say that
Aristotle was not abandoned but expanded.
In the 15th century Italy became the
focal point at which various forms of Aristotelianism converged. Certain links
between Italian universities and religious schools and the University of Paris
had already flourished for a long time. In the late 14th century Paolo
Nicoletti (Paulus Venetus) returned from Oxford to Padua after having
absorbed the new logic and physics of the Mertonians and the radical nominalism
of Ockham and after having increased his acquaintance with the French
Averroistic trend; works by the Englishmen and by Paolo were textbooks in
Italian universities for many generations. At the end of the century a number of
Spanish and Italian Jews were passing on, in Latin, still more texts of Averroës
on Aristotle, as well as the Jews' own recent contributions to Aristotelian
learning.
A more spectacular contribution of
books, linguistic and didactic competence, and stimulating debates came with an
influx of Greek scholars into the Western sphere. They were attracted by the
humanists' craving for classical learning, the theological discussions between
Orthodox and Roman Catholic leaders, and the relative freedom offered by the
Republic of Venice and by Florence to those who were taking refuge from Turkish
domination. Many manuscripts were taken to Italy, and many were transcribed in
Italy by the Greeks, who also taught the Greek language to the Italian scholars.
An editorial masterpiece by Aldus Manutius, an
early printer, publisher, and editor, at the end of the 15th century made
accessible to many almost the complete Greek corpus of Aristotle's works. A
great number of Greek and Latin scholars--such as Bessarion, John Argyropoulos,
Leonardo Bruni, and Lorenzo Valla--produced new translations of those texts;
others translated many works on Aristotle previously unknown in Latin.
As soon as printing had been established
(that is to say, by the late 15th century), editorial activity was directed to
the production of many complete as well as partial editions of the Latin
versions of Aristotle and Averroës in both their older and newer versions
from the Greek, the Arabic, and the Hebrew. At the universities of Padua and
Bologna and at Ferrara and Venice, Averroists such as Agostino Nifo and
Nicoletto Vernia and independent interpreters such as Pietro
Pomponazzi were dominating the philosophical scene. For Pomponazzi,
Aristotle, whether right or wrong, had to be studied directly by way of his own
works and not by way of his interpreters; yet he did not think that Aristotle
had a monopoly on knowledge, and for this reason his mistakes concerning facts
needed to be exposed.
There were others who followed Aristotle
in his vast scientific achievements or searched his works for a clearer
formulation of scientific methods. It was this scientific spirit that kept alive
the interest in Aristotle's methodology and in his philosophy of nature down to
the time, in the 17th century, when William Harvey, the English physician who
discovered the circulation of the blood, was lecturing on Aristotle's books on
animals and Galileo was writing on science and logic.
In a less apparent form,
Aristotelianism, still strongly entrenched in most European schools, continued
to have its effect on the most modern philosophers. The methodology of Francis
Bacon, English philosopher, scientist, and statesman, grew out of it, and
his basic metaphysical concepts were borrowed from Aristotle, although he was
critical of the distorted version of Aristotelianism in the academic circles of
his day. The Polish astronomer Copernicus was
still attached to the perfection of circular movements. Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz, the German Rationalist and mathematician, not only
admired Aristotle's logic but also built his own metaphysics of individuals ("monads")
around the theory of matter and form. Like Aristotle, political theorists such
as Jean Bodin in France carried on their
inquiries into the nature of the state by studying existing organizations and
their natural backgrounds.
In the literary field, Aristotle's Poetics,
practically unknown until 1500, was now read and analyzed in both the Greek
and Latin versions; its doctrines were compared and partly made to harmonize
with the then-prevailing views of the ancient Roman poet Horace, and Aristotle's
view that art imitates nature prevailed for many over the conflicting theory
that stressed the creativity of the poet. The doctrine of the unities
of action, place, and time--though actually a later development resulting from
forced interpretations of Aristotle--ruled over the work of many writers of tragedies
(e.g., Gian Giorgio Trissino in Italy,
Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille in France, and, to a certain extent, Goethe in
Germany). Many critics (including the English critics from Sir Philip Sidney to
Matthew Arnold) accepted those rules, although few English poets--the great
exception was John Milton--welcomed them. A lesser influence was exercised by
Aristotle's Rhetoric outside the field
of systematic theory. (see also aesthetics,
literary criticism, poetry)
Scholasticism in these centuries
belonged to the history of Aristotelianism. All over western and central Europe
and also in Spanish America the continuance of Scholasticism ensured that higher
education remained generally within an Aristotelian framework. Remarkable work
was produced by Scholastics in the fields of commentaries and of detailed
interpretation; Pedro de Fonseca, the "Portuguese Aristotle," in the
16th century and Sylvester Maurus, author of short but pithy commentaries on all
of Aristotle's works, in Rome in the 17th are noteworthy examples. Insofar as
the different Scholasticisms were living and
interesting philosophical movements, however, they had more to do with newer
philosophies than with Aristotle.
Martin Luther's
rebellion against Rome, on the other hand, involved a rebellion against
Scholastic philosophy and its distorted Aristotelian structure, although not
against Aristotle. In fact, when Luther's follower Philipp
Melanchthon undertook to reorganize the curriculum for higher education,
a more genuine, humanistic Aristotle emerged as the great master of philosophy,
independent of theology. Once again, as in the
early 13th century in Paris, Aristotle took pride of place, particularly in the
realms of logic and ethics, and to a lesser
extent in metaphysics and natural philosophy.
The anti-Aristotelianism of the 16th to
18th century touched only a small part of the real Aristotle. Partly it was a
reaction against Scholasticism, as though this had faithfully represented
Aristotle's own philosophy. Thus, Aristotle was wrongly accused of extreme
formalism, irresponsible use of syllogisms consisting of empty or irrelevant
concepts, a multiplication of pseudo-real entities, and the application of
"scientific" methods to facts that could be vouched for only by faith.
For other critics the whole of Aristotle's canon stood condemned because of his
unsatisfactory account of local movement and the consequences it had in the
areas of mechanics, dynamics, cosmology, and astronomy. His downfall in the 17th
century was the result, above all, of his failure to create, in the 4th century
BC, a language that allowed him to describe the forms of things and events (i.e.,
their knowable aspects) in mathematical formulas and of his failure to lay
sufficient stress, in his philosophy of experience, on the need for experiments.
(see also Empiricism)
The anti-Aristotelian movement was
countered mainly by historical and philological scholarship. As Friedrich
Adolf Trendelenburg, a German philosopher, saw it, Aristotle's
personality and works must be known as exactly as possible because he provides
the indispensable historical basis of any serious philosophy. Such a type of
study had declined after the great achievements of the 16th century. After the
work done between the first new learned edition of the collected Greek texts of
Aristotle by J.G. Buhle (1791-93) and a vast collection of all documentary
material in the Aristoteles-Archiv at Berlin (which began in 1965), there is
little, if anything, that remains to be discovered concerning the original and
deteriorated forms of Aristotle's traditional corpus. A monumental edition
sponsored by the Prussian Academy from 1831 to 1870 became the basis for almost
innumerable critical editions of individual works. A rich crop of fragments,
which were identified and edited in the last centuries, brought to light
previously almost unknown aspects of Aristotle's early activity. And in 1890 a
papyrus was discovered in Egypt that contained most of the otherwise lost Constitution
of Athens. European and American academies have sponsored the editing
of ancient and medieval commentaries and translations in Greek, Latin, Arabic,
and Hebrew. Historical, philological, and philosophical exegesis has explored in
great detail the contents and background of most of Aristotle's writings.
Translations of all the works into English, German, and French and of many of
them into most of the other European languages as well as into Hebrew, Arabic,
and Japanese have made Aristotle widely accessible. Historians of ideas have
investigated Aristotle's relationship to Plato and to the Greece of his day, his
influence in following ages, and his own philosophical development.
Philosophical Aristotelianism has been
mainly confined to the German schools established by Trendelenburg and Franz
Brentano. Trendelenburg was concerned to effect a revaluation of
Aristotle's metaphysics in the face of German
idealism; he had a measure of influence in the United States on such thinkers as
Felix Adler, George Sylvester Morris, and John Dewey. Aristotle's theories of
being and knowledge formed the point of departure for Brentano's
"descriptive psychology" and his doctrine of human experience, and
they also contributed to Edmund Husserl's phenomenology.
Outside Germany, J.-G.-F.-L. Ravaisson-Mollien, a spiritualist philosopher, and
Sir David Ross, editor and translator of Aristotle's works, acknowledged a debt
to Aristotle, respectively, for their metaphysics and ethics; and the
reestablishment of Thomas Aquinas, by Pope Leo XIII
in 1879, as the great doctor of the church increased the interest in Aristotle
and in his influence on the history of Christian thought. Contemporary
philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world is often associated with a keen interest in
Aristotle (nor is he entirely neglected in other philosophical traditions), and
the name of the Aristotelian Society (London) reflects the view that good
philosophy must be practiced in the spirit of Aristotle. (see also Christianity)
|
개요
아리스토텔레스 (Aristoteles),
(영)Aristotle. BC 384 마케도니아 근처 칼키디케
스타기로스~BC 322 그리스 에우보이아 칼키스. 고대 그리스의 철학자·과학자.
 |
| 아리스토텔레스,
그리스 원상을 보고 코 부분을 복원한 로마의 ... |
플라톤과 함께 그리스 최고의 사상가로 꼽히는 인물로
서양지성사의 방향과 내용에 매우 큰 영향을 끼쳤다. 그가
세운 철학과 과학의 체계는 여러 세기 동안 중세 그리스도교
사상과 스콜라주의 사상을 뒷받침했다. 17세기말까지 서양
문화는 아리스토텔레스주의였으며 수백 년에 걸친 과학혁명
뒤에도 아리스토텔레스주의는 서양사상에 여전히 뿌리 깊게
남아 있었다.
아리스토텔레스가 연구한 지식 분야는 물리학·화학·
생물학·동물학·심리학·정치학·윤리학·논리학·형이상학·역사·문예이론·수사학
등 매우 다양하다. 가장 큰 업적은 형식논리학과 동물학
분야의 연구이다. 아리스토텔레스의 동물학은 이제 낡은
것이 되었지만, 19세기까지는 관찰과 이론 면에서 그의
연구를 넘어선 사람이 없었다. 철학 분야에서
아리스토텔레스는 아직도 살아 있다. 삼단논법론은 이제
형식논리학의 작은 부분일 뿐이지만, 그의 윤리학·정치학·형이상학·과학철학
등은 현대 철학자들 사이에서도 논의되고 있다.
생애
아버지 니코마코스는 필리포스 2세의 아버지이자
알렉산드로스 대왕의 할아버지인 아민타스 3세의 시의(侍醫)였다.
당시 의술은 가업을 잇는 전통적 직업이었기 때문에
아리스토텔레스도 의술을 배웠을 가능성이 크다. 훗날
아리스토텔레스가 세운 학교인 리케이온에서는 의술과 실제
의료행위를 연구한 것으로 알려져 있다. 이와 같이 어릴
때부터 의술과 마케도니아의 궁정생활을 접한 탓에
아리스토텔레스는 생물학의 영향이 강한 철학사상을
내놓았고, 왕자들과 궁정에 대한 깊은 혐오감을 여러 번
표현했다.
제1기(아테네의 아카데메이아
시절)
아리스토텔레스가 어릴 때 아버지가 죽자 친척으로
추정되는 프로크세노스가 후견인이 되었고, 프로크세노스는
BC 367년 그를 아테네에 있는 플라톤의 아카데메이아에
보냈다. 아리스토텔레스는 그곳에서 20년 동안 있었다. 이
기간은 그의 지적 성장의 제1기였으며, 플라톤과 그의
동료들의 영향을 크게 받은 시기였다. 아리스토텔레스는
틀림없이 아카데메이아의 모든 활동 영역에 관심을 가졌을
것이다. 때때로 수사학 공부에도 몰두했다고 알려져 있으며,
아카데메이아와 경쟁한 이소크라테스 학파에 맞서 글을
쓰기도 했다. BC 348(또는 347)년 플라톤이 죽자 그의 조카
스페우시포스가 아카데메이아를 이끌었고 그뒤 곧
아리스토텔레스는 아테네를 떠났다. 아테네를 떠난 동기는
플라톤의 후계자가 되지 못한 불만 때문이라는 해석이
있으나 이 해석은 근거가 없다. 왜냐하면 아리스토텔레스는
외지인이었으므로 처음부터 학파의 우두머리가 될 자격이
없었기 때문이다. 오히려 필리포스 왕이 BC 348년 그리스
도시국가 올린토스를 노략질한 뒤에 일어난 아테네의 반(反)마케도니아
감정 때문이라는 해석이 더 그럴 듯하다. 아테네를 12년 동안
떠나 있었던 탓인지 그는 플라톤의 아카데메이아의
동료들보다 여행을 함께 한 사람들, 특히 제자이자 동료인
에레소스의 테오프라스토스를 더 높이 평가했다.
제2기(여행)
에게 해의 아시아 쪽에 새로 건설된 도시 아소스에서는
그리스의 용병 출신인 아타르네오스의 헤르메이아스가
페르시아 군주들의 부하 신분으로 출발하여 소아시아
북서부 지방의 재정적·정치적 지배권을 장악했다.
헤르메이아스는 아테네의 아카데메이아를 방문한 뒤
그리스의 규범과 철학을 아시아 지방에 전파하기 위해
아카데메이아 분원을 세우기로 결심하고 플라톤의 제자 2명을
보내달라고 요청했다. 아리스토텔레스는 칼케돈의
크세노크라테스와 함께 아소스로 갔다. 이 시기에
아리스토텔레스는 〈정치학
Politica〉 제7권의 12개 장을 쓴 듯하다. 이 글에서 철학과
정치학의 관계를 설명하면서, 도시국가(폴리스)의 최고
목적은 철학적 생활을 할 수 있는 사람들에게 그러한 조건을
마련해주는 것이라고 주장했다. 그리고 이러한 생활을 할 수
있는 사람은 그리스인뿐이며 따라서 그리스인은 비(非)그리스인을
노예로 삼아 비천한 일을 시킬 자격이 있다고 주장했다.
같은 시기에 지금은 남아 있지 않은 〈왕권에
관하여 On Kingship〉를 썼고, 이 책에서 플라톤과 달리
철학자와 왕의 기능을 분명하게 나누었다. "왕이
철학자가 되는 것은 필요하지 않을 뿐 아니라 유익하지도
않다. 오히려 왕은 참된 철학자들의 충언을 들어야 한다.
그래야 왕은 자기 왕국을 좋은 말이 아니라 좋은 행동으로
가득 채울 수 있다."
아리스토텔레스는 후견자 헤르메이아스와 좋은 관계를
유지했으며 그의 조카딸 피티아스와 결혼하여 딸을 얻었다.
〈정치학〉에는 이상적인 결혼 나이를 남편은 37세, 아내는
18세로 규정한 대목이 있는데, 이때 아리스토텔레스의
나이가 37세였다. 피티아스가 18세였는지는 분명하지 않다.
피티아스는 오래 살지 못했고 그녀가 죽은 뒤
아리스토텔레스는 헤르필리스와 함께 살았으며 아들
니코마코스를 얻었다. 아소스 아카데메이아에서 3년을 보낸
뒤 근처의 레스보스 섬으로 옮겨 수도 미틸레네에 정착했다.
이곳에서 친구 테오프라스토스와 함께 아테네의
아카데메이아를 본떠 철학 학파를 세웠다. 그리고
생물학으로 관심의 초점을 돌려 선구적인 연구를 했다. 그는
생물학을 연구하면서 새로운 유형의 인과관계, 즉 목적론적
인과관계에 주목했다. 아리스토텔레스에 따르면 식물과
동물 등 자연의 생명체는 자연적 목표 또는 목적을 가지고
있으며 생명체의 구조와 성장은 이 목적을 알아야 충분히
설명할 수 있다. 아리스토텔레스의 생물학에서는
일반적으로 목적론과 이론이 모두 중요하지만 적어도
원칙적으로는 이론이 항상 관찰에 종속된다. 그래서
아리스토텔레스는 〈동물의 발생에 관하여 On the Generation of
Animals〉에서 벌의 발생 양식에 대해 잘 모른다고 고백하면서
다음과 같이 말했다. "사실이 충분히 밝혀지면 신뢰를
받아야 하는 것은 이론이라기보다는 관찰이며, 이론은 관찰
사실에 의해 확증되어야만 신뢰를 얻을 수 있다."
아리스토텔레스는 식물과 동물의 생활을 연구하면서
영혼과 육체의 관계도 고찰했다. 〈영혼에 관하여 De anima〉에서
그는 영혼이 독립적으로 존재하는 실체이며 일시적으로만
육체 속에 살 뿐이라는 플라톤의 견해를 배척했다. 그대신
물질적 존재의 긍정적 가치를 더 강조하면서 영혼은 육체와
본질적으로 통일되어 있는 생명의 원리라고 주장했다.
그리고 플라톤을 어느 정도 수용하여 영혼을 육체의 형상,
육체를 영혼의 질료라고 정의했다. BC 343년말(또는 BC 342초)
그의 나이 42세경에 아리스토텔레스는 마케도니아의
필리포스 2세의 초청으로 13세 된 그의 아들 알렉산드로스를
가르치기 위해 펠라로 갔다. 필리포스 2세는 그리스 최고의
지식인 아리스토텔레스에게 아들을 훌륭한 군사 지도자로
키워달라고 부탁했다. 아리스토텔레스는 알렉산드로스를
철학으로 계몽된 고전적 용기를 상징하는 인물로 만들려고
노력했으며, 그리스인의 우수함에 대한 굳은 믿음을 가지고
알렉산드로스에게 비그리스 미개인을 정복하고 그들과 피를
섞지 말라고 가르쳤다. 이 충고에도 불구하고
알렉산드로스는 그리스인과 비그리스인의 결혼을
허용했으며, 페르시아 귀족 가문 출신의 아내를 맞았다.
아리스토텔레스는 알렉산드로스에게 별로 큰 영향을
미치지 못했다. 특히 정치 이데올로기 면에서 두 사람
사이에는 큰 거리가 있었다. 아리스토텔레스는
알렉산드로스의 정복이 그리스 세계에 일으키기 시작한
근본적 변화를 감지하지 못했다. 오히려 그는
알렉산드로스의 제국정책이 도시국가의 중요성을 줄인다고
반대하기도 했다. 반면 알렉산드로스는 스승에 대한 감사의
뜻으로 아버지 필리포스 2세가 파괴한 아리스토텔레스의
고향 스타기로스를 다시 세웠다. 마케도니아 궁정에서 3년을
보낸 뒤 아리스토텔레스는 스타기로스로 되돌아왔으며,
그곳에서 테오프라스토스 등 자기의 철학 학파와 계속
교류했다.
제3기( 리케이온의
창설과 지도)
BC 335년까지 스타기로스에 머문 뒤 거의 50세가 되었을 때
아테네로 다시 돌아왔다. 이때 아카데메이아의 지도자
자리는 스페우시포스가 죽은 뒤 비어 있다가
아리스토텔레스와 생물학을 함께 연구한 칼케돈의
크세노크라테스가 이어받았다. 아리스토텔레스는
아카데메이아와 완전히 인연을 끊지는 않았지만 BC 335년
경쟁학원을 리케이온에 열었다. 아리스토텔레스가 학원
안에 있는 지붕 덮인 산책로인 페리파토스에서 학생들을
가르쳤기 때문에 이 학파는 '페리파토스'(逍遙學派라고도 함)라는
이름을 얻었다. 아리스토텔레스는 그뒤 12년 동안 많은
학자의 연구를 통합하여 리케이온을 모든 탐구의 중심지로
만들었으며 과학과 철학의 광범한 영역에 걸쳐 강의를
제공했다. 아카데메이아와 리케이온의 가장 중요한
차이점은 플라톤주의자들이 수학에 관심의 초점을 맞춘
반면 리케이온은 생물학과 역사에 이바지했다는 점이다. BC
323년 알렉산드로스 대왕이 죽은 뒤 짧은 기간이나마
아테네에서는 마케도니아에 강력히 반대하는 분위기가
형성되었다. 아리스토텔레스는 마케도니아와 오랫동안
관계를 맺고 있었고 아테네를 섭정한 마케도니아 장군
안티파트로스와도 친했기 때문에 신변의 위협을 느끼고
아테네를 떠나 에우보이아 섬의 칼키스에 있는 어머니의
영지로 갔다. 이듬해 그곳에서 위장병으로 죽었으며, 이때
나이는 62(또는 63)세였다. 그가 아테네를 떠난 까닭은
아테네인들이 철학에 대해 2번 죄짓는 것(첫번째는
소크라테스를 죽인 일을 가리킴)을 막기 위해서였다고 한다.
인물·성격 및 철학적 위치
흉상과 조각으로 우리에게 낯익은 아리스토텔레스의
모습은 잘 생기고 세련되어 보인다. 그러나 출처가 분명하지
않은 한 자료에 따르면 아리스토텔레스는 가늘고 긴 다리를
가지고 있었고 혀 짧은 소리를 했으며, 이런 신체의 결함을
만회하기 위해 좋은 옷을 입고 고급 신을 신었다고 한다.
아리스토텔레스는 스타기로스에 많은 재산을 가지고 있었던
것 같다. 그는 책을 모으는 데 돈을 많이 썼다. 플라톤은
그의 부유함을 부러워한 듯한데 그를 '책벌레'라고 부르기도
했다. 어느날 플라톤이 소크라테스의 최후를 담은 〈파이돈
Phaidon〉을 읽어주고 있었는데 제자들이 하나 둘 빠져나가고
아리스토텔레스만 남았다는 일화가 전해온다. 꾸민
이야기인지도 모르지만 이 일화는 아리스토텔레스가 그당시
영혼불멸에 대한 소크라테스의 학설에 깊게 빠져 있었음을
보여준다. 그는 이 학설에 지적으로 관심을 가졌을 뿐
아니라 정서적으로도 깊이 매료되어 있었다. 그가
아카데메이아 시절에 쓴 초기 대화편들(지금은 단편만 남아
있음)은 현세의 무가치함과 내세에 관한 사상도 담고 있다.
그에 관한 일화들을 살펴보면 그는 친철하고 다정한
성격을 가지고 있었으며 잘난 체하는 성격은 별로 보이지
않는다. 유언장에는 자신의 행복한 가정생활에 관해
이야기하고 자식과 노예에 대해 깊이 배려한 대목도 있다.
이 개인적인 행복은 엄밀한 의미에서 그의 마지막 문예
작품인 〈철학에 관하여 On Philosophy〉에 잘 나타나 있다. BC
348년경 이 작품을 완성한 뒤 그는 연구, 교육, 전문적 논문
집필 등에 힘썼다. 〈철학에 관하여〉는 그 뒤의 고대사상에
큰 영향을 미쳤다. 이 저작은 철학을 하나의 전문직업으로
확립한 책이다. 현재 남아 있는 단편에 따르면,
아리스토텔레스는 철학자의 특수한 역할에 대해 정의를
내리고 있다. 문명의 발달사를 5단계로 나누고 철학의
등장을 그 절정으로 본다. 첫번째 단계는 사람들이 필수품을
만드는 데 전력하지 않을 수 없는 단계이다. 2번째
단계에서는 생활을 세련되게 만드는 예술이 나타나고, 3번째
단계에서는 아리스토텔레스가 생각한 대로 훌륭한 생활을
하는 데 선결 요건인 정치기술이 나타난다. 4번째 단계에서
질서있는 국가가 나타남으로써 지적 호기심을 채울 여유가
생기고, 존재하는 사물의 물질적 원인에 대한 탐구가
이루어진다. 5번째 단계에서 사람들의 정신은 물질세계를
넘어 사물의 형상인과 목적인을 파악하고, 이 단계에서
자연철학은 신의 철학으로 이행한다.
이 신의 철학은 별들의 신에 초점을 맞추었다.
아리스토텔레스는 아테네에 있을 때 천체의 완전한 질서를
찾아내기 위해 오랫동안 노력했다. 그리고 이 완전성은
플라톤의 의도처럼 수학적 추상화로는 확증할 수 없고 눈에
보이는 천체 자체를 신의 구현으로 볼 수 있다고 생각했다.
아리스토텔레스는 이와 같이 신과 그의 작품인 물질적
우주가 친밀한 관계를 맺고 있다고 봄으로써 현세의 가치를
적극적으로 인정했다. 또 영혼은 육체 속에 갇혀 있고
따라서 자유로워지려면 물질과의 연결고리를 끊어야 한다는
플라톤의 학설도 거부했다. 아리스토텔레스는 바로 이러한
관점 때문에 사상사에서 독창적 위치를 차지하고 있다.
저작
아리스토텔레스의 저작은 두 부류로 나누어진다. 첫번째
부류는 아리스토텔레스가 발표했지만 지금은 없어진
저작들이고, 2번째 부류는 아리스토텔레스가 발표하지
않았고 발표할 생각도 없었지만 다른 사람이 모으고
편집하여 지금까지 남아 있는 저작들이다. 첫번째 부류에는
그 자신이 '대중용'(exoteric)이 라고 부른 저작, 즉 일반대중을
위해 대화체 또는 그밖의 유행하는 문학형식으로 쓴 책, '기억용'(hypomnematic)이라고
부른 노트와 더 나아가 연구를 위한 자료모음이 포함된다.
이중 현재 남아 있는 것은 단편들뿐이다. 마지막으로 '강의용'(acroamatic)이라고
부른 현재 거의 완전하게 남아 있는 저작 또는 논문은
아리스토텔레스의 학원에서 사용하기 위한 것이었으며
간결하고 개성있는 문체로 씌어 있다. 고대 후반기에
아리스토텔레스의 글은 수백 권의 두루마리였다고 하는데,
현재 남아 있는 것은 30권의 2,000쪽가량이다. 고대의
책목록을 보면 아리스토텔레스의 저작은 총 170여 권에
달했다.
아리스토텔레스가 발표했으나
없어진 저작
없어진 대중용 저작에는 수필과 플라톤식의 대화편뿐만
아니라 시와 편지도 있다. 이 없어진 대중용 저작을
재구성하려는 학자들은 여러 가지 난제에 부딪쳤다. 예를
들어 없어진 대화편은 현존하는 글 속에 들어 있는 학설과
상당히 다른 듯하다.
아리스토텔레스의 대화편 〈행복론 Eudemus〉에 관해 현재
밝혀진 것이나 〈영혼에 관하여〉는 영혼과
육체의 관계를 부자연스러운 결합, 예컨대 티레니아 해적이
포로를 시체와 묶어 가한 고통에 비유한다.
아리스토텔레스는 현존하는 글에서 플라톤주의를 지지하는
동료들에게 영혼과 육체를 서로 적으로 만든다고 비판했다.
이러한 맥락에서 2세기말에 활동한 권위 있는
아리스토텔레스 해석가 아프로디시아스의 알렉산드로스는
혹시 그가 '2가지 진리', 즉 일반인을 위한 '대중용' 진리와
리케이온의 제자들을 위한 '비전용'(秘傳用 esoteric) 진리를
따로 말한 것이 아닐까라는 의문을 제기했다. 오늘날
학자들은 아리스토텔레스의 대중용 저작이 대부분 플라톤의
아카데메이아에 있던 초기 단계에 나온 것이고 따라서 이
저작은 그의 '대중용' 사상보다는 '미숙한' 사상을
보여준다는 점에 동의하고 있다. 없어진 저작 중 중요한
것으로는 플라톤의 〈파이돈〉의 전통을 잇는 〈행복론〉,
나중에 〈형이상학
Metaphysica〉에서 설명하는 주제들을 담은 일종의 철학
강령인 〈철학에 관하여〉, 철학적 생활을 권하는
〈프로트레프티코스 Protrepticus〉, 〈그릴로스 Gryllus〉 또는
〈수사학에 관하여 Rhetorica〉, 〈정치학〉과 비슷한 주제를
다룬 〈정의에 관하여 On Justice〉, 플라톤의 형상론을 비판한
〈이데아에 관하여 On Ideas〉 등이 있다.
남아 있는 저작
현존하는 저작은 아리스토텔레스가 남긴 수고(手稿)를
바탕으로 만들어졌다. 아리스토텔레스는 이중 많은 것을
강의 노트로 사용한 것 같다. 아리스토텔레스의 저작을 처음
편집·출간한 사람은 BC 60년경 리케이온을 마지막으로 이끈
로데스의 안드로니코스였다. 아리스토텔레스 자신이 편집을
하지 않았다는 사실은 그의 사상을 해석하는 데 중요한
영향을 미쳤다. 예를 들어 그는 〈형이상학〉이라는 책을
쓰지 않았고, 10여 편의 짧은 논문을 썼을 뿐이다. 그러나
후세의 편집자들은 이 논문을 모아 〈자연학 Physica〉 다음에
읽어야 한다는 뜻에서 〈형이상학〉이라고 이름 붙였다.
그러므로 〈형이상학〉과 그밖의 몇몇 저작은 사상의
일관성이나 뚜렷한 연속성이 없어 보인다. 또 리케이온의
학생이나 구성원이 뜯어고친 것으로 보이는 표현들도 있다.
안드로니코스는 선배 편집자들의 도움을 받아
아리스토텔레스의 저작을 논리적·교훈적 순서로 편집했다.
그결과 논문의 시간적 순서가 무시되었고 서로 다른 시기에
쓴 논문들이 함께 묶여 있다. 아리스토텔레스의 논문들은
연구하는 철학자의 모습을 잘 보여준다. 그는 다루어야 할
문제를 정의하고, 선배 사상가들의 견해를 평가하고, 자신의
예비적 의견을 정식화한 뒤, 여러 난점과 반론에 비추어 이
의견을 수정할 필요가 있는지 검토하고, 다른 관점을
지지하는 논증을 다시 듣고 난 다음 곧이어 자기 문제의
가장 적절한 해답을 찾아낸다. 그래서 독자들은
아리스토텔레스가 어떤 학설을 독단적으로 제시하고 있다고
생각하지 않고, 난관·모순·역설 들에서 벗어나 하나의 전망
또는 식견을 계발하려 연구하고 있다고 생각한다.
아리스토텔레스 사상의 진화에
관한 이론
예거의 발달이론
20세기 이전 아리스토텔레스의 현존하는 논문들은 그의
진짜 사상을 보여주는 글로 해석되었다. 그리고 발렌틴
로제처럼 없어진 대화편들이 모두 가짜라는 주장도 있었다.
이러한 해석의 밑바탕에는 아리스토텔레스처럼 엄밀하고
체계적인 정신을 가진 사람이 일관성없는 사상을 제시했을
리 없다는 가정이 깔려 있었다. 그러나 20세기 전반 독일의
베르너 예거는 아리스토텔레스 사상이 단계적으로
발달했다는 이론을 제시했다. 예거는 역사발생론적
방법론을 이용하여 아리스토텔레스의 없어진 저작 대부분은
그가 아카데메이아에서 플라톤의 영향을 강하게 받을 때
지닌 사상을 보여준다고 주장했다. 예거에 따르면
영혼불멸과 같은 주제에 대한 선호, 물질세계에 대한 경멸,
이데아의 '상기'(想起) 이론, 지혜의 우위, 금욕주의, 신의
존재 인정 등 초기 사상은 플라톤적이었으며, 그 뒤에
아리스토텔레스는 점차 플라톤의 견해와 멀어져 관념론을
버리고 경험주의로 나아갔다.
예거의 발달이론을 비판하는 사람들은 아리스토텔레스
저작의 정확한 연대를 결정할 수 없다는 점을 지적했다.
따라서 어느 논문이 어느 시점에 쓴 것인지를 알 수
없으므로 아리스토텔레스의 초기 사상만이 플라톤과
일치한다는 가정은 증명할 수 없다고 비판했다. 그러나
예거의 이론은 아리스토텔레스의 심리학과 관련해서는
타당성을 지니고 있다. 아리스토텔레스는 초기에 영혼을
육체와 분리된 실체로 묘사했고, 육체를 영혼의 도구로 보는
중간 단계를 거쳐 마지막에는 영혼을 육체의 형상 또는
현실태로 봄으로써 영혼과 육체의 실체적 통일을 주장했다.
아리스토텔레스 사상의 발달과
체계화에 관한 최근의 분석
아리스토텔레스 연구자들은 대체로 그의 사상이
단계적으로 발달했다고 볼 근거가 있지만 변화의 시점과
정도를 결정하는 데는 문제가 있다고 한다. 현대 해석가들은
아리스토텔레스가 경험적 지식과 물질의 역동적 측면을
중시하게 되면서 플라톤의 관념론의 모든 측면을 거부한
것은 아니라는 점에는 동의한다. 오히려 아리스토텔레스는
생물학에서는 실험적으로 연구하면서도 물리학에서는
지각과 사유, 사물의 우연적 특성과 본성 사이의 차이를
계속 주장했다.
아리스토텔레스 원전의 개관
논리학에 관한 저작
논리학이라는 용어는 이미 아카데메이아의
크세노크라테스가 만들었지만 아리스토텔레스는 언어(로고스)에
많은 의미를 부여하여 이를 인간만의 특징으로 강조하고
인간을 이성적 동물로 정의했다. 여기서 이성적 동물은
그리스어로 '언어·말' 또는 '단어'를 가진 동물이라는
뜻이다. 아리스토텔레스의 논리학 논문들은 〈오르가논
Organon〉('도구'라는 뜻)이라는 저작 속에 모여 있다. 이
제목은 후대의 해석가들이 붙인 것인데, 이들은 소요학파의
전통에 따라 논리학을 철학하는 수단으로 생각했다.
아리스토텔레스는 논리학을 과학의 분류체계 속에 넣지
않고 각 지식분야를 연구하기 전에 먼저 해야 할
예비학문으로 여겼다. 그가 논리학에 직접 붙인 이름은 '분석론'(analytica)이었다.
〈오르가논〉은 〈범주론 Categoriae〉·〈해석론 De
interpretatione〉·〈분석론 전서 Analytica priora〉·〈분석론 후서
Analytica posteriora〉·〈토피카 Topica〉·〈궤변론 Sophistici elenchi〉
등의 논문으로 구성되어 있다. 이 논문들의 배열 순서는
연대보다 체계에 따른 것으로 보이며, 집필연대에 따른
순서를 확정하는 일은 거의 불가능하다. 〈범주론〉이
실제의 사물 또는 사물의 본성에 관한 이론인지 아니면 말
또는 표현에 관한 이론인지는 분명하지 않다. 그러나
아리스토텔레스는 범주론을 실재에 관한 이론으로 사용하여
플라톤의 형상이론을 비판했다. 그에 따르면 플라톤은 예를
들어 아름다움 또는 지혜와 같은 질에 실체성을
부여함으로써 실체 범주와 그밖의 범주를 혼동했다.
〈범주론〉 5장에서 아리스토텔레스는 실체 범주 안에서도 '제1실체'와
'제2실체'를 구분했다. 제1실체는 이 사람, 저 말, 이 돌 등의
개체이며, 제2실체는 이 개체가 속한 종(種)과 유(類)이다.
이와 같이 아리스토텔레스는 종과 유를 파생된 종류의
실체로 보았다. 그러나 〈형이상학〉에서는 종과 유가 1차적
실체로 나타난다. 아리스토텔레스의 견해는 분명하지
않으며, 그래서 몇몇 학자들은 그가 〈형이상학〉에서
플라톤적 존재론으로 되돌아갔다고 해석한다. 〈해석론〉에서는
우선 '이름'·'동사' 등 문장을 구성하는 단순한 부분들에
관해 논의한 다음 다양한 종류의 완전한 문장들과 이들
사이에 성립하는 논리적 관계(반대·모순·함언)를 검토한다.
또 '양상' 문장('……은 가능하다', '……은 필연적이다')에
대한 선구적인 설명과 '미래의 우연'에 대한 유명한 논의(만일
내일 해전이 있을 것이라는 점이 이미 참이라면, 어떻게 그
해전을 우연적 사건으로 볼 수 있는가? 만일 진리가 이미
결정되어 있다면 그 해전은 확정적이고 필연적인가?
아리스토텔레스의 대답은 미래에 관한 특정 유형의 문장은
참도 아니고 거짓도 아니라는 것임)를 포함하고 있다. 〈토피카〉는
주로 어떤 주장을 확인하거나 반박할 논증을 어떻게 찾을
것인가를 다룬다. 그래서 이 논문은 논리학의 일반 법칙
또는 규칙을 설명하고 있다.
〈궤변론〉은 겉으로 보면 타당한 것
같지만 실은 오류인 추론규칙을 밝힌다. 오류논증의 예로는
'선결문제 요구의 오류' 또는 순환논증(예컨대 영혼은
불멸이기 때문에 영혼은 육체가 죽은 뒤에도 계속
존재한다는 '증명'), 후건긍정의 오류(예컨대 만일 어떤
사람이 술꾼이라면 그는 가난할 것이다, 피터는 가난하다,
그러므로 피터는 술꾼이다라는 논증), 논점일탈의 오류(문제가
되는 결론을 증명하는 대신 무관한 사실에 주의를
돌림으로써 자신의 논점을 뒷받침하는 논증) 등이 있다.
〈분석론 전서〉의 가장 큰 업적은 오늘날
아리스토텔레스의 삼단논법론이라고 알려진 논리학 체계를
발달시킨 점이다. 삼단논법이란 세 명제(두 전제와 한 결론)로
구성된 논증형식이며, 타당한 삼단논법의 예는 다음과 같다.
'모든 그리스인은 사람이다·모든 사람은 죽는다·모든
그리스인은 죽는다.' 〈분석론 전서〉는 놀라울 정도로
엄밀하고 정교하게 삼단논법의 다양한 형식을 검토한다. 〈분석론
후서〉에서 아리스토텔레스는 논리학 이론을 과학과
인식론의 목적에 응용하려 한다. 과학지식의 적절한 구조를
논의하면서, 각각의 과학은 제1원리, 즉 공리와 여기서
연역된 정리로 구성되어야 한다고 주장했다. 이러한
맥락에서 〈분석론 후서〉 제2권은 주로 '정의'(定義) 이론을
다룬다.
자연철학에 관한 저작
〈자연학〉에서는 자연 물체 일반, 즉
형체를 가진 모든 것을 다루고, 특수한 종류의 물체는
〈하늘에 관하여 On the Heavens〉·〈기상학 Meteorology〉 등의
글에서 다룬다. 〈자연학〉 제1권은 자연 물체를 구성하는
본질적 요소들, 즉 '질료'와 '형상'을 다룬다. 질료는 변화를
거치더라도 계속 존재하는 기체이고 형상은 변화의 성질을
결정하는 특징이다. 제2권은 주로 자연학자들이 연구하는
다양한 유형의 원인을 다룬다. 이러한 원인으로는 질료인·형상인
이외에 어떤 것이 존재하는 목적인과 어떤 것을 존재하게
하는 작용인 등이 있다. 제3~7권은 운동과 공간·위치·시간·크기·연속성
등 운동과 관련된 개념을 다룬다. 제8권의 주제는 원동자(原動者)이다.
원동자란 그 자체가 자연 물체는 아니지만 모든 자연 물체를
운동하게 만드는 원인이며, 부동성·영원성 등의 속성을
가지고 있다.
아리스토텔레스는 〈자연학〉에서 논의한 일반원리를
우주 전체를 다루는 〈하늘에 관하여〉(여기서 그는 우주가
공간 면에서 유한하지만 시간 면에서 영원하다고 논증함)와
우주의 생명 없는 부분을 다루는 〈생성과 소멸에 관하여 On
Generation and Corruption〉·〈기상학〉 등에도 적용한다.
〈생성과 소멸에 관하여〉는 4원소(흙·공기·불·물)와 그
상호관계를 다룬다. 특히 그는 한 원소가 다른 원소를
변하게 하거나 다른 원소로 변할 수 있다고 주장했다.
〈기상학〉은 예컨대 혜성·강·연소·무지개 등 잡다한
문제를 다룬다. 여기서 그는 자연학의 일반원리와
원소론에서 한 걸음 더 나아가 지구가 항상 일종의 '증발'(수증기나
연기와 같이 습기가 있는 것도 있고 없는 것도 있음)을 하고
있다고 가정하고, 위의 다양한 현상을 이 증발로 설명하려
한다.
생물학과
동물학 저작에도 〈자연학〉의 원리는 분명하게 나타난다. 〈동물사
History of Animals〉는 서로 다른 동물 종에 대한 기술이
주내용이다. 이중 갑각류 동물종에 대한 것을 비롯한 몇
가지 기술은 놀라울 정도로 상세하고 정확하다. 몇몇
아리스토텔레스 연구자는 〈동물사〉가 1차 자료들을 모은
것일 뿐 체계화하지는 않았다고 주장한다. 한편
아리스토텔레스는 〈동물사〉에서 생물 분류학을 세우려
했고 그래서 동물세계를 유(類)와 종(種)으로 나누었다고
주장하는 학자도 있다. 그러나 〈동물의 신체 부분 Parts of
Animals〉·〈동물의 생성 Generation of Animals〉은 비록 많은
경험자료를 담고 있지만 과학적 설명 체계를 세우려는
의도를 가진 글이다.
그는 동물의 여러 기관과 그밖의 '신체 부분'의 성질·기능
등을 단순히 기술하지 않고 '설명'하려 한다. 바로 여기서
아리스토텔레스의 목적론적 설명이 뚜렷하게 나타난다.
"자연은 쓸데없는 짓을 하지 않는다"라고 말했으며,
분명하게 표현하지는 않았지만 동물의 모든 특징을
기능적으로 설명할 수 있다고 주장하기도 했다. 〈동물의
생성〉은 특히 생식과 성장의 문제를 다룬다.
아리스토텔레스의 가장 무르익은 이 과학저작에는 그의
방법의 장단점이 잘 나타나 있다. 그는 조심스럽고 정확하며,
이론적 설명을 제시하면서도 이론이 관찰을 왜곡시키지
않으려 한다. 그러나 지식과 새 지식을 얻는 그의 수단은
분명히 한계를 가지고 있으며 따라서 적어도 몇몇 이론적
개념은 거칠고 부적절하다. 그밖에 생물학 저작으로는
〈동물의 운동 Movement of Animals〉·〈동물의 진보 Progression of
Animals〉 등 2편의 짧은 논문이 있다. 여기서
아리스토텔레스는 동물의 움직임에 대한 생리학적 설명과
심리학적 논의를 결합하려 했다.
심리학에 관한 저작
감각 생활과 지적 생활에서 작용하는 능동적 원리와
수동적 연속체 사이의 관계 또는 형상과 질료의 관계를
검토하는 저작은 〈영혼에 관하여〉이다. 아리스토텔레스는
영혼의 본성에 관한 플라톤의 초월주의적 이론과
소크라테스 이전의 유물론적 이론을 모두 거부한다. 영혼은
생명체의 형상으로서 질서있는 기능을 가지고 있다고
주장했다. 이 기능은 양육·지각·지성 등이다. 양육 기능은
모든 생명체에 공통적인 기능이며 보고, 듣고, 냄새 맡고,
움직이는 역할을 담당한다. 지성 기능은 인간에게만 있다.
아리스토텔레스는 지각 양식을 자세히 설명했고, 사유에
대해서도 '수동' 지성과 '능동' 지성을 구분하는 어렵기로
소문난 설명을 제시했다. 이 저작은 동물의 움직임과 그
전제조건인 상상·욕망 등에 대해서도 논의했다.
형이상학에 관한 저작
형이상학은 그 주제 면에서 의견이 일치하지 않던
분야였는데 아리스토텔레스는 이 분야의 연구를 혁신했다. 〈형이상학〉에는
그가 때로는 '지혜'라 부르고 때로는 '제1철학' 또는 심지어 '신학'이라
부른 학설이 설명되어 있다. 이 학설의 과제는 실재의 가장
일반적·추상적 특징과 보편타당성을 지닌 원리를 기술하는
것이다. 널리 알려진 대로 그는 형이상학을 '존재로서의
존재'를 연구하는 학문이라고 했는데, 이 말은 존재하는
것이라면 모두 충족해야 하는 일반조건, 달리 말해서
존재하는 모든 것에 관해 참인 것을 연구한다는 뜻이다.
〈형이상학〉 제1권에서는 선배 철학자들이 사용하거나
논의한 설명 형식을 조사·연구하고 자신의 '4원인' 이론이
설명문제에 관한 올바른 이론이라고 주장했다. 이 조사·연구는
소크라테스 이전 철학자들과 플라톤 철학의 몇 가지 측면에
관한 정보를 제공하는 귀중한 자료이다. 제2권은 과학의
원리에 대한 짧은 논문이고, 제3권은 형이상학의 수수께끼
또는 '아포리아이'(aporiai)를 나열한 글이다. 제4권에서는 '제1철학'이
존재의 조건에 대한 일반적 연구라고 설명하고, 모순율('P와
비P가 모두 참은 아니다')과 배중률('P가 참이거나 아니면 비P가
참이다')을 옹호한다. 아리스토텔레스 철학 사전이라고
불리는 제5권에서는 중요하면서도 모호한 약 40개의 철학
용어를 분석한다. 제6권의 주제는 제4권과 같다.
제7~9권은 아리스토텔레스가 쓴 가장 어려운 글 가운데
하나이며 따라서 요약할 수 없다. 핵심문제는 실체란
무엇인가, 세계의 기본 구성물은 무엇이며, 독립적으로
존재하고 우리가 인식·정의할 수 있는 것은 무엇인가
등이다. 아리스토텔레스의 논의는 매우 복잡하게 꼬여
있으며, 질료와 형상, 실체와 본질, 변화와 발생, 현실태와
가능태 등에 초점을 맞춘다. 결론은 실체란 어떤 의미에서는
형상이라는 것인 듯하다. 그러나 이때 형상은 플라톤식의
추상적 형상이 아니라 구체적이고 특수한 형상이다. 이러한
형상은 예컨대 '이 사람', '저 말' 또는 '이 참나무' 등의
표현이 지시하는 것이다. 제10권은 통일성·연속성·동일성
등 '일자'(一者)에 관한 독립적인 논문이다. 제11권은
〈자연학〉·〈형이상학〉의 앞부분을 요약하는 글이다. 제12권에서
아리스토텔레스는 '목적론'을 제시한다. 세계를 설명하기
위해서는 얼마나 많은 원인을 설정해야 하는지를 묻고, 결국
신 또는 움직이지 않는 제일 원동자라는 생각에 도달한다.
제13·14권에서는 수학적 대상의 본성에 대해 길게 논의한다.
윤리학과 정치학에 관한 저작
아리스토텔레스는 이론과학과 실천과학의 목적이
결정적으로 다르다고 강조하면서, 실천과학은 무엇인가를
행하거나 만들기 위한 학문이지 그것을 사고하고 정의하고
알기 위한 학문이 아니라고 주장했다. 〈니코마코스
윤리학 Ethica Nicomachea〉 첫 부분에서 왜 실천과학이
이론과학만큼 정확성을 가질 수 없는지를 설명하는데, 그
이유는 실천과학의 주제가 정확하게 정의할 수 있는 것에
한정되지 않고 습관·기술·제도 등까지 포함하기 때문이다.
그리고 생물학적 정의나 심리학적 정의가 아무리
정확하더라도 사람은 환경·교육·가족·재산·신분, 심지어
여가 방식 등에 따라 다양하다고 주장했다. 개인에게 영향을
미치는 도덕문제들은 서로 분리할 수 없을 뿐 아니라
정치문제와도 분리할 수 없다고 설명했다. 그러므로
〈니코마코스 윤리학〉·〈정치학〉은 독자적인 주제를
다루는 서로 분리된 과학이 아니라 공통의 영역을 서로 다른
관점에서 다루면서 상호보완한다.
아리스토텔레스는 개인들의 가능태를 바탕으로 삼아
도덕문제를 다루었지만, 이 가능태를 현실화하고 실천하는
능력은 정치상황에 의존한다고 생각했다. 그래서
〈니코마코스 윤리학〉 제1권에서 정치철학의 광범한
맥락을 도덕적으로 고려하는 데서 출발하여, 제10권에서는
행복과 명상생활을 검토한 뒤 도덕문제에 대해 법이 기여할
수 있는 점을 언급하면서 끝낸다. 이 지점이 윤리학에서
정치학으로 넘어가는 곳이다. 윤리학에서 아리스토텔레스가
사용한 접근법은 목적론이다. 즉 도덕적으로 절대적인 어떤
것이 아니라 무엇이 인간의 선을 위해 바람직한가를
기준으로 윤리문제를 이야기한다. 이러한 접근법 때문에
다양한 종류의 선을 검토하고 마침내 행복에 이르는
최고선을 규정한다. 그리고 행복이라는 말썽 많은 개념을
면밀히 검토한 뒤 행복을 덕(arete)과 일치하는 영혼의
활동이라고 정의한다.
그는 도덕적 덕과 지적 덕을 구분하고 각각은 영혼의
비합리적 힘과 합리적 힘에 의해 규정된다고 주장한다.
그러나 인간은 태어날 때부터 이 덕을 가지고 있는 것이
아니라 살아가면서 덕을 개발할 능력 또는 성향을 가지고
있을 뿐이라고 주장한다. 예를 들어 어린이는 처음에는 자기
행동의 도덕적 우수함을 깨닫지 못한 채 부모의 명령에 따라
거짓말을 하지 않지만 결국 참말을 하는 습관이 그의
도덕성의 뿌리 깊은 일부가 된다.
그 다음 아리스토텔레스는 덕과 악을 구분하고 덕을 '중용'으로
정의한다. 예를 들어 용기는 만용과 비겁 사이의 중용이다.
그는 최고선을 정의하면서 이 논의를 끝맺는데, 행복이 덕에
따른 활동이기 때문에 최고선은 사람의 최고덕, 즉 이성적
활동에 따른 삶이라고 주장한다. 〈정치학〉은 인간 행동과
공동체의 문제를 다룬다. 그는 인간이 '본성적으로' 정치적
동물이라는 전제에서 출발하여 국가에 관한 이론을 세우고
다양한 유형의 법제도를 구분한다. 정치적 불안정과 혁명의
성질과 원인에 관한 논의도 있으며, 마지막 2권은 주로 교육
문제를 다루고 있다.
예술과 수사학에 관한 저작
아리스토텔레스는 수사학의 목적 또는 목적인을
설득이라고 주장한다. 수사학도 논리학과 마찬가지로
과학체계 속에 포함되지 않으며 따라서 특정의 주제, 단일한
방법, 일련의 원리를 갖지 않는다. 그에 따르면 설득의
양식은 설득자 자신의 성격에 따른 설득력, 원하는 감정을
청중에게 일으키는 것, 증명 또는 겉치레 증명 등 3가지이다.
〈시학 Poetica〉에서 그는 시와 역사를 비교하면서 시가
역사보다 더 철학적이고 따라서 더 큰 가치를 지닌다고
주장했다. 역사는 개별자, 즉 특정 사건이나 특정 인물을
다룬다. 반면 시는 비록 자연을 모방하지만 보편자에 가까운
유형과 상황을 창조한다. 〈시학〉 중 현재 남아 있는
유일한 단편은 비극을 분석하는 부분이며, 여기서 비극의
목적은 동정과 두려움을 통해 감정을 정화하는 것, 즉 '카타르시스'라고
말한다.
아리스토텔레스 저작을 읽는
방법
괴테는 아리스토텔레스의 철학을 피라미드에 비유했다.
아리스토텔레스 철학의 각 부분은 다른 부분을 이해하는 데
도움을 준다. 그러므로 우리는 그의 저작을 처음부터 확실히
이해하면서 읽을 수 없고, 기본적인 개념과 방법을 알아내기
위해 되풀이해서 읽어야 한다. 아리스토텔레스의
분석방식을 익힌 뒤에는 〈오르가논〉에 있는 논리학
부분과 〈자연학〉에 있는 공간·시간·운동론을 읽는 것이
좋다. 그 다음으로 〈형이상학〉·〈영혼에 관하여〉에 있는
좀더 복잡한 사상을 만나보고, 윤리학과 문학이론 연구에서
나온 결론을 그 통찰력·분별력·논증력 등에 비추어
검토해봄직하다. 아리스토텔레스가 내린 결론에 접근해보면
그는 하나의 철학을 제시한 인물로서 중요할 뿐 아니라
정신을 갈고닦는 데 도움을 준 사람으로서도 중요하다는
점이 밝혀질 것이다.
A. H. Amadio 글
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MAJOR WORKS
LOGIC: These six works are known
collectively as the Organon: Kategoriai
(Categories); Peri hermeneias (Latin trans., De
Interpretatione; Eng. trans., On
Interpretation); Analytika protera
(Prior Analytics); Analytika
hystera (Posterior Analytics); Topika
(Topics); and Peri sophistikon elegchon (Sophistical
Refutations).
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND NATURAL SCIENCE: Physike
(Physics); Peri ouranou (On
the Heavens); Peri geneseos kai phthoras (On
Generation and Corruption; On Coming to Be and Passing Away); Meteorologika
(Meteorology); Peri kosmou
(spurious; Latin trans., De mundo;
Eng. trans., On the Universe); Peri
ta zoa historiai (History of Animals);
Peri zoon morion (Parts of Animals); Peri zoon
kineseos (Movement of Animals); Peri
poreias zoon (Progression of Animals); Peri
zoon geneseos (Generation of Animals);
and the works collectively known as the Parva
Naturalia: Peri aistheseos (On the
Senses and Their Objects; On Sense and Sensible Objects); Peri
mnemes kai anamneseos (On Memory and
Recollection); Peri hypnou kai
egregorseos (On Sleep and Waking);
Peri enypnion (On Dreams); Peri tes kath
hypnon mantikes (On Divination in
Sleep; On Prophecy in Sleep); Peri
makrobiotetos kai brachybiotetos (On
Length and Shortness of Life); Peri
neotetos kai geros (On Youth and Old
Age); Peri zoes kai thanatou (On
Life and Death); Peri anapnoes (On Respiration);
and Peri pneumatos (spurious; On
Breath).
PSYCHOLOGY: Peri psyches (Latin trans., De
anima; Eng. trans., On the Soul).
METAPHYSICS: Ta meta ta physika (Metaphysics).
ETHICS AND POLITICS: Ethika Nikomacheia (Nichomachean
Ethics); Ethika Eudemeia (Eudemian
Ethics); Ethika megala (spurious; Latin and Eng. trans., Magna
moralia); Peri areton kai kakion (spurious; On Virtues and Vices); Politika
(Politics); Oikonomika (spurious; Economics);
and Athenaion politeia (incomplete; Constitution
of Athens).
AESTHETICS AND LITERATURE: Techne
rhetorike (Rhetoric); Rhetorike pros
Alexandron (spurious; Rhetoric to
Alexander); and Peri poietikes
(incomplete; Poetics).
OTHER WORKS: These remain in the corpus
but are believed by scholars to be falsely attributed to Aristotle: Peri
chromaton (On Colours); Peri akouston (On
Things Heard); Physiognomonika (Physiognomonics);
Peri phyton (On Plants); Peri thaumasion
akousmaton (On Marvellous Things Heard);
Mechanika (Mechanics);
Problemata (Problems); Peri
atomon grammon (On Indivisible Lines);
Anemon theseis kai prosegoriai (The
Situations and Names of Winds); and Peri
Melissou, peri Xenophanous, peri Gorgiou (On
Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias).
TEXTS: The standard edition of the Greek
text is the Berlin Academy edition, Aristotelis
Opera, ed. by Immanuel Bekker, 5 vol. (1831-70, reissued 5 vol. in 4,
1960-61); and the standard edition of the fragments is Aristotelis qui Ferebantur Librorum Fragmenta, ed. by Valentin Rose
(1870, reissued 1967). For most works these texts have been superseded by more
recent editions, notably by the volumes of the Teubner series, the Oxford
Classical Text series, the Loeb Classical Library series (with English
translations), and the Budé series (with French translations). The
medieval Latin translations of Aristotle are being printed in Aristoteles
Latinus, ed. by L. Minio-Paluello (1939- ); see also Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentariis, 9 vol. in 11 (1562-74,
reissued 1962). In addition there is much useful information of a textual nature
in the early Greek commentaries, the most important of which have been published
in Commentaris in Aristotelem Graeca,
23 vol. in 46 (1882-1909). An invaluable aid to the study of Aristotle is
Hermann Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus
(1870, reprinted 1955).
RECOMMENDED EDITIONS: Numerous English
translations of the major treatises are available. The standard complete edition
is Jonathan Barnes (ed.), The Complete
Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vol. (1984). Of the
many editions of and commentaries on individual works, the following may be
mentioned: J.L. Ackrill (trans.), Categories,
and De Interpretatione (1963, reprinted 1978); W.D. Ross (ed.), Prior
and Posterior Analytics (1949, reprinted 1957); Jonathan Barnes (trans.), Aristotle's
Posterior Analytics (1976); W.D. Ross (ed.), Physics (1950, reprinted 1977); W. Charlton (trans.), Aristotle's
Physics: Books 1 & 2 (1970); Edward Hussey (trans.), Aristotle's
Physics, Books III and IV (1983); Harold H. Joachim (ed.), Aristotle
on Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away (De
Generatione et Corruptione) (1922, reprinted 1982); C.J.F. Williams
(trans.), Aristotle's De Generatione et Corruptione (1982); R.D. Hicks
(trans.), De Anima (1907, reprinted
1976); W.D. Ross (ed.), Parva Naturalia
(1955, reprinted 1970); G.R.T. Ross (trans.), De Sensu and De Memoria (1906, reprinted 1973); Richard Sorabji, Aristotle
on Memory (1972); D.M. Balme (trans.), Aristotle's
De Partibus Animalium I; and, De Generatione Animalium I (1972); Martha
Craven Nussbaum (ed. and trans.), Aristotle's
De Motu Animalium (1978); W.D. Ross (ed.), Metaphysics,
2nd ed. (1928); Christopher Kirwan (trans.), Aristotle's Metaphysics (1971), Books 4-6; Myles Burnyeat (ed.), Notes
on Book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics (1979), and Notes
on Books Eta and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics (1984); Julia Annas
(trans.), Aristotle's Metaphysics
(1976), Books 13-14; J.A. Stewart, Notes
on the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1892, reprinted 1973); Michael
Woods (trans.), Aristotle's Eudemian
Ethics: Books I, II, and VIII (1982); W.L. Newman (ed.), The
Politics of Aristotle, 4 vol. (1887-1902, reprinted 1973); Richard Robinson
(trans.), Politics, Books III and IV (1962); Edward Meredith Cope (ed.), The
Rhetoric of Aristotle, 3 vol. (1877, reprinted 1973); D.W. Lucas (ed.), Poetics
(1968, reprinted 1980); P.J. Rhodes (trans.), The Athenian Constitution (1984); and Ingemar Düring (ed.), Protrepticus:
An Attempt at Reconstruction (1961).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
There are several good introductions to
Aristotle's thought: JONATHAN BARNES, Aristotle
(1982); J.L. ACKRILL, Aristotle the
Philosopher (1981); D.J. ALLAN, The
Philosophy of Aristotle, 2nd ed. (1970, reissued 1978); G.E.R. LLOYD, Aristotle:
The Growth and Structure of His Thought (1968); W.D. ROSS, Aristotle,
5th ed. (1949, reprinted 1977); and FRANZ BRENTANO, Aristotle and His World View (1978; originally published in German,
1911). For a comprehensive survey see INGEMAR DÜRING, Aristoteles: Darstellung und Interpretation seiner Denkens (1966).
Two of the most influential books on Aristotle written in the 20th century are
WERNER W. JAEGER, Aristotle: Fundamentals
of the History of His Development, 2nd ed. (1948, reissued 1962; originally
published in German, 1923), which advances a theory of the development of
Aristotle's thought; and HAROLD CHERNISS, Aristotle's
Criticism of Plato and the Academy (1944, reissued 1962), which discusses,
in a uniformly critical spirit, Aristotle's knowledge and assessment of Plato's
work.
Most of the scholarly work done on
Aristotle appears in articles rather than in books. There is a useful anthology:
JONATHAN BARNES, MALCOLM SCHOFIELD, and RICHARD SORABJI (eds.), Articles
on Aristotle, 4 vol. (1975-79). The proceedings of the triennial Symposium
Aristotelicum contain some of the most up-to-date work.
Life:
For all aspects of Aristotle's life, see INGEMAR DÜRING, Aristotle
in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (1957); for his writings, see PAUL
MORAUX, Les Listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (1951); for the history
of the Lyceum, see JOHN PATRICK LYNCH, Aristotle's School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution
(1972); and PAUL MORAUX, Der
Aristotelismus bei den Griechen: Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias,
2 vol. (1973-84).
(Logic):
On Aristotle's formal syllogistic the classic study is JAN LUKASIEWICZ, Aristotle's
Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic, 2nd ed. enlarged
(1957, reprinted 1967); and the standard work is GÜNTHER PATZIG, Aristotle's
Theory of the Syllogism: A Logico-Philological Study of Book "A" of
the "Prior Analytics" (1969; originally published in German, 2nd
ed. 1963). A less formal account can be found in ERNEST KAPP, Greek
Foundations of Traditional Logic (1942, reissued 1967). See also JONATHAN
LEAR, Aristotle and Logical Theory
(1980); and, for the Topics, the
introduction to JACQUES BRUNSCHWIG (trans.), Topiques (1967). On the development of Aristotle's ideas in logic,
see FRIEDRICH SOLMSEN, Die Entwicklung der
aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik (1929, reprinted 1975). For Aristotle's
modal logic, see STORRS McCALL, Aristotle's
Modal Syllogisms (1963); and for less formal treatments of his ideas about
modality, see JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Time &
Necessity: Studies in Aristotle's Theory of Modality (1973); and SARAH
WATERLOW, Passage and Possibility: A Study
of Aristotle's Modal Concepts (1982). On the connection between Aristotle's
logic and his scientific methodology, see J.M. LE BLOND, Logique
et méthode chez Aristote: étude sur la recherche des principes
dans la physique aristotélicinne, 2nd ed. (1970).
The standard introduction to the Physics
is AUGUSTE MANSION, Introduction à
la physique aristotélicienne, 2nd rev. ed. (1946); see also FRIEDRICH
SOLMSEN, Aristotle's System of the Physical World: A Comparison with His
Predecessors (1960, reprinted 1970). Among the most stimulating recent
studies are WOLFGANG WIELAND, Die
aristotelische Physik; 2nd rev. ed. (1970); RICHARD SORABJI, Necessity,
Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory (1980), and Time,
Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
(1983); and SARAH WATERLOW, Nature,
Change, and Agency in Aristotle's "Physics" (1982).
It is still worth consulting D'ARCY
WENTWORTH THOMPSON, On Aristotle as a
Biologist (1913); the best recent study is PIERRE PELLEGRIN, La
Classification des animaux chez Aristote: statut de la biologie et unité
de l'aristotélisme (1982).
FRANZ BRENTANO, The Psychology of Aristotle: In Particular His Doctrine of the Active
Intellect (1977; originally published in German, 1867), remains one of the
most valuable works in this area. The standard study of the development of
Aristotle's views on the soul is FRANÇOIS NUYENS, L'Évolution de la psychologie d'Aristote (1948, reissued
1973). Among more recent works are EDWIN HARTMAN, Substance,
Body, and Soul: Aristotelian Investigations (1977); and DAVID CHARLES, Aristotle's
Philosophy of Action (1984).
There are two large and comprehensive
volumes: JOSEPH OWENS, The Doctrine of
Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek Background of
Medieval Thought, 3rd ed. rev. (1978); and PIERRE AUBENQUE, Le
Problème de l'être chez Aristote: essai sur la problèmatique
aristotélicienne, 4th ed. (1977). There is a helpful brief
introduction in G.E.M. ANSCOMBE and P.T. GEACH, Three Philosophers (1961, reprinted 1963). On special aspects of the
metaphysics, see FRANZ BRENTANO, On the
Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1975, reprinted 1981; originally
published in German, 1862); R.M. DANCY, Sense
and Contradiction: A Study in Aristotle (1975); SUZANNE MANSION, Le
Jugement d'existence chez Aristote, 2nd ed. rev. (1976); and A.C. LLOYD, Form
and Universal in Aristotle (1981).
W.F.R. HARDIE, Aristotle's Ethical Theory, 2nd ed. (1980), provides a helpful
companion. Some of the best recent work is collected in AMÉLIE OKSENBERG
RORTY (ed.), Essays on Aristotle's
"Ethics" (1980). See also STEPHEN R.L. CLARK, Aristotle's
Man: Speculations upon Aristotelian Anthropology (1975), reprinted 1983);
JAMES J. WALSH, Aristotle's Conception of
Moral Weakness (1963); JOHN M. COOPER, Reason
and Human Good in Aristotle (1975); ANTHONY KENNY, The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship Between the
Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1978), and Aristotle's
Theory of the Will (1979); and TROELS ENGBERG-PEDERSEN, Aristotle's
Theory of Moral Insight (1983, reprinted 1985).
The standard discussion is ERNEST
BARKER, The Political Thought of Plato and
Aristotle (1906, reissued 1959); see also R.G. MULGAN, Aristotle's Political Theory: An Introduction for Students of Political
Theory (1977). On Aristotle's historical interests, see GEORGE HUXLEY, On
Aristotle and Greek Society: An Essay (1979).
(Rhetoric):
WILLIAM M.A. GRIMALDI, Studies in the
Philosophy of Aristotle's Rhetoric (1972). On the psychological aspects of
rhetoric, see W.W. FORTENBAUGH, Aristotle
on Emotion: A Contribution to Philosophical Psychology, Rhetoric, Poetics,
Politics, and Ethics (1975).
JOHN JONES, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (1962, reissued 1980); and RICHARD
JANKO, Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a
Reconstruction of "Poetics" II (1984).
Extensive treatment of Aristotelianism
is included in the fundamental history of philosophy by FRIEDRICH UEBERWEG, A
History of Philosophy, from Thales to the Present Time, 2 vol. (1872-74,
reprinted 1972; originally published in German, 4th ed., 3 vol., 1871-73), with
a vast bibliography. Useful histories of philosophy, general or partial, are
FREDERICK C. COPLESTON, A History of
Philosophy, 9 vol. (1946-74); MEYRICK H. CARRÉ, Phases
of Thought in England (1949, reprinted 1972), which is particularly good on
Aristotelianism; JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, The
Career of Philosophy, 2 vol. (1962-65, reissued 1970), imaginative and
stimulating; and ÉTIENNE GILSON, History
of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955, reissued 1980), a personal
interpretation, with documentation and bibliography.
INGEMAR DÜRING, "Von
Aristoteles bis Leibniz: Einige Hauptlinien in der Geschichte des
Aristotelismus," Antike und
Abendland, 4:118-154 (1954), mostly on Greek and medieval Aristotelianism;
LORENZO MINIO-PALUELLO, Opuscula: The
Latin Aristotle (1972), a collection of articles and essays concerning the
Latin transmission of Aristotle's works; and RICHARD McKEON,
"Aristotelianism in Western Christianity," in JOHN THOMAS McNEILL,
MATTHEW SPINKA, and HAROLD R. WILLOUGHBY (eds.), Environmental
Factors in Christian History, pp. 206-231 (1939, reissued 1970). On
Boethius, see HENRY CHADWICK, Boethius:
The Consolation of Music, Logic,
Theology, and Philosophy (1981); and MARGARET GIBSON (ed.), Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence (1981). (On
Greek Aristotelianism): EDUARD ZELLER, Die
Philosophie der Griechen, vol. 2, Sokrates,
Plato, Aristoteles (1846), and vol. 3, parts 1-2, Die
nacharistotelische Philosophie (1852), parts of which have been translated
from various editions: Aristotle and the
Earlier Peripatetics, trans. by B.F.C. COSTELLOE and J.H. MUIRHEAD (1897);
and A History of Eclecticism in Greek
Philosophy, trans. by S.F. ALLEYNE (1883), fundamental for the first eight
centuries; PAUL MORAUX, D'Aristote
à Bessarion: trois exposés sur l'histoire et la transmission de
l'aristotélisme grec (1970); "Rückblick: Der Peripatos in
vorchristlicher Zeit," in FRITZ R. WEHRLI (ed.), Die
Schule des Aristoteles, vol. 10, pp. 93-128 (1959); KLAUS OEHLER,
"Aristotle in Byzantium," Greek,
Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 5(2):133-146 (Summer 1964); and BASILE
TATAKIS, La Philosophie byzantine, 2nd
ed. (1959), an extensive survey, with a rich bibliography. (On Latin Aristotelianism): FERNAND VAN STEENBERGHEN, Aristotle
in the West: The Origins of Latin Aristotelianism, 2nd ed. (1970; originally
published in French, 1946), a scholarly survey of contemporary studies; RICHARD
J. LEMAY, Abu Ma'shar and Latin
Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century: The Recovery of Aristotle's
"Natural Philosophy" Through Arabic Astrology (1962), important
contributions; D.A. CALLUS, "Introduction of Aristotelian Learning to
Oxford," Proceedings of the British
Academy, 29:229-281 (1943), original, fundamental research; PAUL MORAUX et
al., Aristote et Saint Thomas d'Aquin (1957), which includes some of the
most reliable studies on the subject; M.-D. CHENU, La
Théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle, 3rd ed.
rev. (1957, reissued 1969), on the interplay of Aristotelian methodology and
dogma; and HASTINGS RASHDALL, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, new ed., 3 vol.
(1936, reissued 1969), basic for Aristotelianism in the schools. (On
Syriac, Arabic, and Jewish Aristotelianism): ANTON BAUMSTARK, Geschichte
der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der christlich-palästinensischen
Texte (1922, reprinted 1968), with exhaustive factual information and a
bibliography; ANTON BAUMSTARK (ed.), Aristoteles
bei den Syrern vom 5. bis 8.
Jahrhundert: Syrische Texte (1900, reprinted 1975), specialized research and
texts; T.J. DE BOER, The History of
Philosophy in Islam (1903, reprinted 1983; originally published in German,
1901); CARL BROCKELMANN, Geschichte der
arabischen Litteratur, 2 vol. (1898-1902), exhaustive factual information
and bibliography; F.E. PETERS, Aristoteles
Arabus: The Oriental Translations and
Commentaries of the Aristotelian Corpus (1968), from Syriac and Arabic; R.
WALZER, "Aristutalis," in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 1, pp. 630-633, and
related articles; ISAAC HUSIK, A History
of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy (1916, reissued 1974); GEORGES VAJDA, Introduction
à la pensée juive du Moyen Age (1947), limited in scope, with
a good bibliography; HARRY A. WOLFSON, "Revised Plan for the Publication of
a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois
in Aristotelem," Speculum,
38(1):88-104 (January 1963), complete lists of Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew texts
of Averroës' commentaries, and Crescas'
Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle's "Physics" in Jewish and
Arabic Philosophy (1929, reprinted 1971); and "Aristotle," in Encyclopaedia
Judaica, vol. 3, col. 445-449 (1971), and related articles. (On
Renaissance and later Aristotelianism): PAUL OSKAR KRISTELLER, Renaissance
Philosophy and the Mediaeval Tradition (1966), a brilliant survey, with
bibliography, and Studies in Renaissance
Thought and Letters (1956, reprinted 1969), many relevant essays; BRUNO
NARDI, Saggi sull'Aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (1958), one
of several fundamental works by this author; PETER PETERSEN, Geschichte
der aristotelischen Philosophie in protestantischen Deutschland (1921,
reprinted 1964), and Die Philosophie
Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburgs: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Aristoteles im
19. Jahrhundert (1913); and CHARLES B. SCHMITT, Aristotle
and the Renaissance (1983).
(On
logic): WILLIAM KNEALE and MARTHA KNEALE, The Development of Logic (1962, reprinted 1984), an objective
assessment of the Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian elements in the history of
logic; and I.M. BOCHENSKI, A
History of Formal Logic, 2nd ed. (1970; originally published in German,
1956), technical, with much bibliography. (On
science): GEORGE SARTON, Introduction
to the History of Science, 3 vol. in 5 (1927-48, reprinted 1975),
fundamental, with extensive information and bibliography; RENÉ TATON
(ed.), A General History of the Sciences, 4
vol. (1963-66; originally published in French, 1957-64); ALASTAIR C. CROMBIE, Robert
Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science,
1100-1700 (1953, reissued 1971), which upholds the view of Aristotelian
impact on experimental method; ANNELIESE MAIER, Studien
zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik, 5 vol. (1949-58), fundamental
research; and ALEXANDRE KOYRÉ, Galileo
Studies (1978; originally published in French, 1939), indispensable for a
proper evaluation of anti-Aristotelianism. (On
politics): GEORGE H. SABINE, A History
of Political Theory, 4th ed. rev. by THOMAS LANDON THORSON (1973); ALEXANDER
PASSERIN D'ENTRÈVES, The Medieval
Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard
Hooker (1939, reprinted 1959); GEORGES DE LAGARDE, La
Naissance de l'esprit laïque au déclin du Moyen Age, 3rd ed., 5
vol. (1956-70), fundamental for the 14th century; and HORST DREITZEL, Protestantischer
Aristotelismus und absoluter Staat: Die "Politica" des Henning
Arnisaeus (ca. 1575-1636) (1970),
excellent, with an extensive bibliography on German Aristotelianism. (Poetics
and rhetoric): BERNARD WEINBERG, A
History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vol. (1961,
reprinted 1974), containing good surveys concerning Aristotle; LANE COOPER, The
Poetics of Aristotle: Its Meaning and
Influence (1923, reissued 1972); MARVIN T. HERRICK, The Fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criticism, 1531-1555
(1946), and The Poetics of Aristotle in
England (1930, reprinted 1976), indispensable complements to Cooper's book;
and CHARLES S. BALDWIN, Renaissance
Literary Theory and Practice: Classicism in the Rhetoric and Poetic of Italy,
France, and England, 1400-1600 (1939, reissued 1959), useful for both
poetics and rhetoric.
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