ARISTOTLE's contributions to philosophy

In today's class we are going to study the main contributions of Aristotle to philosophy. Aristotle of Stagina (384-322 a. C.) is one of the most important thinkers in history and his thesis had great prominence for about 2000 years, having a special influence on the Middle Ages.

Furthermore, in its prolific career left about 200 written manuscripts, of which we retain 31. Which are about various disciplines: logic, physics, politics, biology, astronomy, ethics or poetics. Fields in which our protagonist left great contributions. If you want to know more about Aristotle's contributions to philosophy, keep reading this lesson from a PROFESSOR. The class begins!

Aristotle was born in 384 BC. C. in the Macedonian city of Esgira, in the bosom of a family linked to medicine and Macedonian court, his father Nicomachus was a doctor of the King Aminantas III. However, at the age of 17 and after the death of his parents, he was sent by his guardian Proxene of Atarneo to study in the Plato's Academy

. Institution to which he was linked for about 20 years, until the death of its founder in 347 BC. C.

After the death of his teacher, Aristotle left Athens and, a few years later, in 343 BC. C., returned to Macedonia as Guardian of the son of King Philip II, Alexander the Great. In 355 a. C. his work as tutor to the future king ceased and he returned to Athens to found his own school, the Lyceum. Finally, he died in 323 BC. C. with 62 years.

In short, we can see that the life of our protagonist is framed in the 4th century BC. C. A period of time that was characterized by being a period of change and transition, in which classical Greece was in full crisis / disintegration and Macedonian power in full swing. It was also a moment of tension between Greeks and Macedonians, since the Macedonians were imposing their own rules on the Greeks, such as their form of government; empire versus the Greek concept of independent poleis.

Aristotle's contributions are multiple and cover a myriad of disciplines, however, the most important are:

Aristotle in medieval philosophy: medieval Aristotelianism

Aristotelian thought was in force for approximately 200 years. Which was due to three issues:

• His school was active for approximately 300 years.
• During that time many philosophers kept Aristotle's theses alive.
• The survival of his legacy in the Islamic world through Averroes or Avicenna.

Likewise, during the 11th century, with the Muslim presence in Spain and the Toledo school of translators, began to translate the works of Aristotle and his legacy began to be rediscovered in the West, reaching until St. Albert the Great and Saint Thomas of Aquino. Both were responsible for selecting what was compatible with Christianity and, therefore, adapting it. Thus was born medieval Aristotelianism and it became the preponderant official doctrine / philosophy from the 13th century onwards.

In this sense, it stands out, the path of the immobile first motor or cosmological vision (Metaphysics) that served Saint Thomas Aquinas to prove the existence of God:

1. Way of the Movement: Everything that moves is moved by another. The existence of someone who moves without being moved is necessary: ​​God.
2. Path of Causality: Every cause is caused, the existence of a cause that is not caused is necessary: ​​God.
3. Route of Contingency: All the objects of the world are contingent, the existence of a being that is necessary to give meaning to the universe is necessary: ​​God.
4. Way of the Degrees of Perfection: All objects are more or less perfect. The existence of an absolute perfection is necessary: ​​God.
5. Way of the Order of the World: All objects in the Universe, even inanimate ones, follow their function perfectly. The existence of someone who establishes this order is necessary: ​​God.

Your cosmological view of the universe

Before the 15th-16th centuries the heliocentric model, the accepted cosmological model was the one proposed by Aristotle. A model that was based on two main ideas:

The universe is dual, is divided into two regions:

• The subluna regionA: It is composed of four corruptible materials: air, fire, sea and air). In addition, it is a region in which everything changes and whose movement is linear.
• The supralunar region: It is on the moon, it exists forever, it cannot be destroyed, it is divine, eternal and incorruptible. Likewise, it is composed of ether (bright and light-emitting matter) and its movement is circular and local.

The earth is the center of the universe, it remains immobile and around it the moon, the sun and the planets move.

The identification of different forms of government

Another of the great contributions of this sage was his theory of forms of government, which is the basis of our own classification and the political philosophy. In this way, Aristotle tells us about six forms of government based on two major premises: whether these governments seek the common good or not (degradation of the former) and the number of rulers in each of them:

Governments that seek the common good:

• Monarchy: government of a single person.
• Aristocracy: government of a few.
• Democracy: government of many.

Degraded governments:

• Tyranny: degradation of one's monarchy / government.
• Oligarchy: degradation of the aristocracy / government of a few.
• Demagoguery: degradation of the democracy / government of many.

However, within this classification is not the ideal system for Aristotle, the Politeia. A government that is the result of the combination of the Aristocracy and Democracy, with a middle-class population.

On the other hand, our protagonist define what politics is: a system aimed at maintaining orderly society through rules based on reason and whose main function is to provide well-being to the community.

Aristotle: the father of logic or philosophy of research

Aristotle is credited with developing the first research methods. Thus, the aristotelian logic is based on understanding how things work through observation, practice and reasoning, using the principles of validity / valid reasoning and invalidity / reasoning invalid.

On the other hand, another of his contributions is the principle of non-contradiction, according to which, nothing can be and not be to one aspect at the same time, that is, you cannot be one thing and its opposite at the same time or two things cannot be true at the same time and sense. As Aristotle said: “It is impossible that, at the same time and under the same relationship, the same attribute occurs and does not occur in the same subject ”.

In short, Aristotle's contribution is that with him science becomes a demonstrable knowledge and that, through results, concrete conclusions can be drawn.

Development of metaphysics

Aristotle also contributed to the development of metaphysics and, according to him, everything that exists is made up of ten elements fundamentals that are divided into two groups:

1. The substance: The authentic being, that exists by itself and that is composed of matter and form (Indissoluble). Thus, for example, the human being is composed of matter / body and form / soul = vital principle (theory of soul / natural philosophy: the human being is made up of three souls: the nutritive, the sensitive and rational).
2. The accidents: They are elements that change, such as: time, place, position, action, situation, passion or quality.

Ethics development

In the field of ethics, two were the great contributions of Aristotle:

• The ethics of happiness: An action is correct as long as it makes us happy and, therefore, we must seek our happiness. Similarly, this ethic is divided into two: teleological ethics (determines whether an action is right or wrong and is based on the goodness or badness of the actions based on the consequences) and the deontological ethics (It is a formal ethic, where what matters is the action itself and not the result).
• The ethics of virtues: Virtue is found in the soul, it is what gives life and is divided into two types: moral virtue (acquired through habit, it is responsible for mastering the irrational part of the soul and is the middle point between two extremes) intellectual virtue (It is acquired through education and is the rational part of the soul).

Aristotelian rhetoric

Aristotelian rhetoric is one of his most important contributions to philosophy. Unlike sophists and Socratic, Aristotle directly relates rhetoric to logic and dialectics, which, offer us a probable knowledge of things, are key to the study of the issues that affect the human being and create a system of persuasion from knowledge. This persuasion has three forms:

1. Ethos/credibilidad.
2. Pathos/psicología.
3. Logos/razonamiento.

Promote a new way of looking at philosophy

For our protagonist, philosophy did not have to be reduced exclusively to the study of truth, but it had to be a compendium of various disciplines. Therefore, he establishes the following division:

• The logic: As a preparatory discipline.
• Theoretical philosophy: Composed of mathematics, metaphysics and physics.
• Practical philosophy: Composed of politics and rhetoric.

We know that Aristotle was able to write around 200 works, of which only 31 concatenated have reached us in what is known as Corpus Aristotelicum, edited by Immanuel bekker between 1831 and 1836. This 19th century edition divides Aristotle's work into 5 thematic blocks:

• Logic: Categories, Interpretation, Topics, First analytics ...
• Natural / Physical Philosophy: Physics, Above the sky, From the universe, From the soul, The movements of animals, Meteorology, From plants ...
• Metaphysics: Metaphysics.
• Ethics and politics: Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Great morals, Economics, Booklet on virtues and vices ...
• Rhetoric and poetics: Poetics, Rhetoric to Alejandro ...
• Three more works outside of Bekke's editionr: Constitution of the Athenians, Fragments and Pseudo-Aristotelians.