Aristotle

(The Peripatetics)

A. The Person

· studied under Plato

· a scientist/biologist type—there is nothing in our heads that was not first experienced by our senses (empiricism).

· taxonomy of the world (animal, vegetable, mineral)

B. Metaphysics

1. Things are made up of form and substance

· These forms are not innate ideas like Plato’s.

· The form of something is its general characteristics (its species).

· Women cannot be thinkers because they are bearers of substance, not form.

2. The four causes

· material

· efficient

· formal

· final

C. Logic

Deductive Reasoning: the syllogism

D. Ethics

The Golden Mean: “moderation in all things”

Three Forms of Happiness (the ultimate good):

· Pleasure

· Free and Responsible Citizen

· Contemplation (highest)

Virtue as a habit: motion brings emotion

E. Society

“Man is a political animal”

Government—best and worst

· monarchy, best; tyranny, worst

· aristocracy, good; oligarchy, bad

· polity, good; mob rule, bad

Aristotle on the household (Politics 1253b)

F. Art (good—rational)

1. Artists grasp the forms, the universals in the particulars.

2. Art provides a “catharsis,” a cleansing or purging of the emotions Plato is so concerned with.