A-level Philosophy Aristotle

•Born in Macedonia, 384 BCE

•Aged 17 moved to Athens, joined Plato’s Academy

•347 BCE, moved to Turkey

•341 BCE, moved back to Macedonia to become Alexandra Great’s tutor

•After Alexander became King, Moved back to Athens and founded his own school: the Lyceum.

•Aristotle was taught by Plato but had approached topics of study differently

•Plato: emphasising the world of ideas and reason as the source of knowledge

•Aristotle: emphasising the physical world and experience as the basis of knowledge

•Aristotle approach is empirical and not concerned with the world of forms

•Aristotle reject the theory of forms as the relationship between forms and objects in the material world was never explained

•Was interested in why things exist in the way they do

•Turned to the world around him in order to reason why anything exists at all

•E.g. A car is made of matter, but all the bits of matter have a particular structure and arrangements as part of the car.

•Aristotle identified the four causes as to why a thing or object exists as it does.

•There is no ideal form! Opposite of Plato

•Refers to the matter or substance that something is made of

•E.g. a book is made out of paper

•Aristotle said that materials always have the potential for change

•The materials represent the impermanence of our world

•Refers to what gives the matter its form or structure

•E.g. a book does not have random pages and words. It is cut and arranged in a certain way

•What we are doing is mentally fitting the object into a category we already know.

•Refers to the cause of an object existing

•E.g a book exists because someone wrote it

•However, the efficient cause does not necessarily have to be a person, as a gust of wind might be the efficient cause of a tree falling over

•An object might have more than one efficient cause- e.g. a cake’s efficient cause is not only the baker but the mixing and cooking process too

•Concerned with the reason why something is the way it is

•Concerned with the function of anything or object

•The final cause is teleological (the purpose/end)

•This cause examines the purpose of the object; the reason it exists at all

•Explains the final cause for living things as well, that is, their purpose

•Not obvious what the final cause of a natural object is

•Aristotle sees the final cause in terms of the function it performs

•Objects in nature seemed to be driven towards a goal to obtain a certain form proper to them and their actions are all directed towards this goal

•Everything in life is changing

•Everything that exists is in a permanent state of ‘movement’ or ‘motion’

•By motion, we mean a state of change •Aristotle observed four things:

1.The physical world was constantly in a state of motion and change

2.The planets seemed to be moving eternally

3.Change of motion is always caused by something

4.Objects in the physical world were in a state of actuality and potentiality

•Aristotle concluded that something must exist which causes the motion and change without being moved and that is eternal

•The prime mover causes change and motion by attracting other things towards itself

•It does nothing but is the object of everything

1.Does not depend on anything else for its existence, otherwise, he would be capable of change – e.g. if god relied on sunlight for his existence, then God would change and die if the sunlight fizzled out.                                                                                              God = no potential = has no capacity for change = must exist independently/necessarily

2.Must be eternal, because of lack of potentiality. If God cannot change, then he cannot cease to be and if he exists then that means he must have always existed  

3.God = perfectly good; badness = lacking something that should be there –  if god = pure actuality, then he must contain everything thought to be there, so he must be perfect

4.God must = immaterial and beyond time and space, meaning that he cannot perform any kind of physical activity. God must be purely spiritual, thought and not thinking about anything which could cause him to change, which led Aristotle to conclude that God must think only for himself and his own perfect nature.

5.The prime mover relates to Aristotle ideas about causation. Prime mover = the final cause of everything that exists in the universe, in the sense of being the purpose and being the origin of everything

6.Prime mover is not an efficient cause as it cannot do anything

7.Aristotle describes the prime mover s the final cause, in the term of it drawing everything to itself without itself being affected

•Difficult to evaluate because it often lacks clarity → Hard to follow

•Scholars believe that the surviving writings of Aristotle were never meant for publication but are Lecture notes → Maybe the notes were made by his students, who jotted down in an abbreviated way the main gist of what they understood → They could’ve added their own comments and ideas as to why Aristotle gave the impression that he was contradicting himself

•Some criticised Aristotle for rejecting Plato’s belief, in another world

•It may make more sense to talk about a ‘spiritual knowledge’ or ‘intuitive knowledge’ rather than simply confine ourselves scientifically

•Aristotle believed that the universe must have a ‘telos’ is criticised by many such as Russell and Dawkins. The claim that it made no sense to talk of a purpose for the universe → it just exists without any kind of goal → simply a result of chance

•More likely to question the unmoved mover seems like an unnecessary complication

•Aristotle’s god is often objected by theists – they argue that his god is irrelevant for the universe because he no interaction with it and is unaffected by it.

•Theists might claim that the God of their own experience is very different from the one Aristotle arrived at through logic and that perhaps philosophical logic has its limitations.