Archetypes of Wisdom

1
Archetypes of Wisdom

• Douglas J. Soccio
• Chapter 6
• The Naturalist Aristotle

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Learning Objectives

• On completion of this chapter, you should be able
  to answer the following questions
• What is naturalism?
• How did Plato distinguish between knowledge and
  opinion?
• What is form according to Aristotle?
• What is matter according to Aristotle?
• What are the four causes?
• What is entelechy? What is teleological
  thinking?
• What is Eudaimonia? What is Sophrosyne?
• What is character?
• What is the Aristotelian mean?
• What is virtue according to Aristotle? Vice?

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The Life of Aristotle

• The son of a court physician, Aristotle (384-322
  B.C.) was born in Stagira, a Greek community in
  Thrace.
• What little we know of him comes primarily
  through Diogenes Laertius compilation of the
  lives of ancient philosophers.
• Aristotle probably learned basic anatomy and
  dissection from his father before he was sent to
  study at Platos Academy at the age of eighteen.

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Works of Aristotle

• Aristotle is said to have written twenty seven
  dialogues.
• Unfortunately, they were all destroyed when the
  Visigoths sacked Rome in 400 C.E.
• What we know today as the writings of Aristotle
  are forty treatises including
• Physics
• De Anima (On the Soul)
• Metaphysics
• Politics
• the Nicomachean Ethics

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Teaching Alexander the Great

• In 343 B.C., King Philip of Macedon invited
  Aristotle to tutor his thirteen year-old son
  Alexander. The boy was wild and crude, but
  Aristotle was able to instill in him respect for
  knowledge and science.
• Aristotles famous pupil even ordered his
  soldiers to collect specimens of plant, marine,
  and animal life from far away for his old
  teacher.
• In 340 B.C., Philip sent Aristotle back to
  Stagira to write a code of laws in order to
  restore the community there, which had been
  disrupted by war.
• Aristotle did well enough that Stagira celebrated
  a yearly holiday in his honor.

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The Lyceum

• In 334 B.C., Aristotle at last returned to
  Athens, where he founded his own school, possibly
  with money from Alexander.
• He had it built near some of the most elegant
  buildings in Athens, and named it the Lyceum,
  after the god Apollo Lyceum.
• His students were known as the peripatetic
  philosophers, because he often discussed
  philosophy with them along the tree cover
  walkways called the Peripatos. Socrates used to
  visit the same groves, remarking on what a
  wonderful spot they made for reflection.

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The Philosopher

• Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C.E. Because
  of his favored place under the protection of
  Philip and Alexander, Aristotle found himself in
  an uncomfortable position, with the Athenians
  resenting all things Macedonian.
• He left Athens and the Lyceum after being legally
  charged with not respecting the gods of the
  state. Rather than stand trial like Socrates, he
  fled to Euboea (his mothers birthplace) lest
  Athens sin twice against philosophy.
• So great was his influence on later thinkers,
  that in 322 B.C.E., after his death, the man who
  had created the first important library, tutored
  the greatest ruler of the ancient world, invented
  logic, and shaped the thinking of an entire
  culture, was referred to simply as the
  Philosopher.

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The Naturalist

• Although Aristotle loved and respected Plato, he
  saw dangers in Platos rationalistic idealism.
  Partly in reaction to Plato, he is sometimes said
  to have brought philosophy down to earth.
• Aristotle stands alone as an archetype of the
  philosophical naturalist. Naturalism is the
  belief that reality consists of the natural
  world, which follows consistent and discoverable
  laws.
• Philosophical naturalists deny the existence of a
  separate supernatural order of reality. They
  believe that human beings, although special, are
  part of the natural order and behave according to
  fixed laws and principles.

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Natural Changes

• Aristotle is sometimes called the father of
  science because he was the first Western thinker
  of record to provide an adequate analysis of a
  process of change based on the claim that form is
  inseparable from matter.
• Aristotle was troubled by Platonic dualism, the
  division of the universe into two worlds the
  realm of becoming and the realm of being.
• Aristotle argued that form can be distinguished
  from content only in thought and never in fact.
  He warned that we must not mistake intellectual
  analysis for ontological status.
• For him, form exists within the natural order and
  cannot exist independently.

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Form and Matter

• According to Aristotle, all substances (things)
  are comprised of form and matter, which always
  occur together.
• From the Greek word for essence (ousia),
  Aristotelian form is that which gives a thing its
  shape, structure, order, making it what it is.
• From the Greek hyle, matter is the stuff which is
  formed in one way or another.
• Change amounts to the movement of matter based on
  how it is formed (e.g., an acorn becomes an oak
  by actualizing the potential it has because of
  the way its matter is formed).

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Aristotles Hierarchy of Explanations

• Aristotle was the first philosopher to understand
  that not all why questions can be answered in
  the same way.
• The answer to one why question may lead us to
  another (e.g.,Why are you doing this? So I
  can get that. Why do you want that? So I
  can have the other thing?).
• Realizing this relation between means and ends,
  Aristotle equated reasons why with causes (for
  things being the way they are). The Greek word
  for cause (aitia) meant the reason for something
  happening.
• So, knowing a reason why something happens means
  understanding what caused it. And one reason, or
  cause, leads to another in a hierarchy of
  explanations.

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The Four Causes

• Why questions can be answered in four different
  but related ways.
• The four reasons (or causes) for a things
  being what or how it is are
• The Material Cause the stuff its made of
• The Formal Cause the form it takes
• The Efficient Cause its proximate motion
• The Final Cause its purpose or goal

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Entelechy

• Manmade things have the form or structure they do
  because we made them to serve our purposes.
  Natural objects get their form on their own.
• Aristotle used the Greek word entelechy to
  describe an objects having its end within
  itself. Entelechy means that things do not just
  happen, but develop according to natural design.
• Using the example of the oak, the acorn must have
  within itself the natural design enabling it to
  become an oak tree. Its goal or end (telos) is
  already inside of it thats entelechy.

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Psyche as Entelechy

• For Aristotle, psyche is the form of the body.
  Just as we cannot imagine matter moving around
  unformed, so we never encounter bodies and souls
  moving around apart from one another.
• Aristotle believed that it was impossible to
  affect the body without affecting the soul or to
  affect the soul without affecting the body. He
  thinks of them in the same way that he thinks of
  wax and its shape separable only in thought.
• Just like the oak, then, humans have a form a
  psyche or soul that structures their body and
  the way that body is able to develop. So, psyche
  is our entelechy.

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The Hierarchy of Souls

• Aristotle does not think that humans are the only
  creatures that have souls.
• Since psyche is the principle of life, or
  autonomous motion, all living things have psyches
  or souls.
• Aristotle thinks there are three levels of soul,
  which form a hierarchy of complexity. They are
• The nutritive
• The sensitive
• The rational

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Levels of the Hierarchy of the Souls

• The lowest level is the nutritive, or vegetative,
  soul, which all forms of animate matter (such as
  plants) have, enabling them to absorb food,
  transform it into tissue, and to reproduce.
• The next is sensitive, or sentient soul, which
  applies to those creatures capable of sensation
  or feeling (animals). These creatures can sense
  pleasure and pain, and move to get or avoid it.
• The highest is rational soul, which only humans
  have. As rational animals, humans are capable of
  everything above, along with the capacity to
  reason.

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Natural Happiness

• Because people have this highest level of soul,
  they cannot just sit back and let their lives
  develop in the way an acorns does.
• Because they are capable of reasoning, they must
  make a project of their lives in order that their
  lives be good.
• A good life is one that provides all the
  necessary conditions and opportunities for a
  person to fully actualize their potential and
  one in which the person has the character to do
  so.
• So, a good life involves the development of ones
  character.

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Teleological Thinking

• Every art and every scientific inquiry, and
  similarly every action and purpose, may be said
  to aim at some good. Hence, the good may be
  defined as that at which all things aim.
  Aristotle
• The technical name for this kind of thinking is
  teleological from the Greek root telos, meaning
  end, purpose, or goal. Teleological thinking is
  a way of explaining a thing in terms of its
  ultimate goal, or final cause. For example, the
  telos of infancy is adulthood.
• Both Aristotles ethic and conception of virtue
  are teleological.

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The Science of the Good

• In one sense, Aristotle thinks we can study the
  good the way we can study anything else. Once we
  know the four causes of human nature, we can
  figure out what is best for objects of our kind
  to do.
• The work in which Aristotle considers issues of
  right and wrong, and what constitutes the good
  life, is the Nicomachean Ethics (dedicated to his
  son, Nicomachus).
• However, in the first book of the Ethics,
  Aristotle says that it would be wrong to expect
  the same degree of accuracy in all subjects.
  Since life has incalculable variables, we should
  never expect the same exactitude in ethics as we
  do in mathematics.

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Eudaimonia

• If asked what we want from life, happiness is
  probably the answer most of us would give. The
  Greek word Aristotle uses is eudaimonia, which
  implies being really alive, rather than merely
  existing.
• Aristotle considers whether pleasure or honor are
  sufficient for happiness, and finds that
  something more is required, something proper to
  the person, which cannot be taken away our
  ability to reason. Eudaimonia or well being
  comes from right action in accordance with
  reason.
• So ethics is a practical endeavor, rather than a
  purely theoretical study, one that should have
  practical benefits and help us to build a better
  character by developing good habits.

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Hitting the Mark

• When dealing with everyday problems, it is easy
  to go to extremes. Aristotle thinks that this
  destroys our virtues.
• He suggests we strive to find the mean between
  extremes not too much or too little, with
  respect to each virtue.
• Doing that requires moderation, which the Greeks
  referred to as sophrosyne. Learning to moderate
  our behavior is part of developing good habits
  (so that we fare better in future situations).
• This is no easy task, though, and lasts a
  lifetime. As Aristotle says, to miss the mark is
  easy, to hit it difficult.
• That makes what is today often referred to as
  virtue ethics the study of a lifetime.

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Application of the Mean
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Discussion Question

• Study and discuss Table 6.1, Aristotelian Virtues
  and Vices. How do the concepts in each category
  compare?
• Consider principles from the Nicomachean Ethics
  and the concept of the mean. Then add and discuss
  your own examples of virtues and vices. What
  might you add?

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Chapter ReviewKey Concepts and Thinkers

• Naturalism
• Aristotelian Form
• Matter
• Material cause
• Formal cause
• Efficient cause
• Final cause

• Entelechy
• Teleological thinking
• Eudaimonia
• Sophrosyne
• Character
• Mean
• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)