Aristotle dictionary

300 Pages·2015·1.3 MB·English

by  Thomas P. Kiernan

Aristotle Dictionary
Thomas P. Kiernan
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
New York
Table of Contents
Title Page
Foreword
ARISTOTLE - Introduction
KEY OF REFERENCES
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foreword
Aristotle was born at Stagira in Thrace, in the year 384 B.C., son of
Nicomachus, a Doctor and personal physician of the King of Macedonia,
Amyntas II. At the age of seventeen Aristotle was sent to Athens in continuance
of his studies. The profession of medicine had been in his family for many
generations, and perhaps because he was brought up in an atmosphere that was
closely related to medicine and to the theories of the healing art, such a
background could explain his gift, later to be manifested across broad areas of
knowledge, for the concrete and the positive, for experiment and analysis.
Upon his arrival in Athens, he became a member of Plato’s Academy, and for
twenty years he was in the discipleship of Plato until the latter’s death in 348-7
B.C. While at the Academy, Aristotle found in Plato a friend and teacher for
whom he had the greatest reverence, and although Aristotle’s eventual teachings
were to be to a large degree grounded on disagreements with Platonic theory, he
was, during his apprenticeship, a devoted student of his master.
After Plato’s death, Aristotle left the Academy with Xenocrates and journeyed
to Assos, where, under the sponsorship of Hermias, ruler of Atarneus, he
established a Platonic community in which he put forth the beginnings of his
own autonomous teachings. Three years later, after having married Pythias, the
daughter of Hermias, he went to Mitylene on the island of Lesbos, where he met
Theophrastus, who was to become his most ardent and celebrated disciple.
By this time he had acquired a modest reputation throughout Greece, and in
342 he was summoned to Pella by King Philip of Macedonia in order to take the
principal hand in the education of the King’s son, Alexander, who was then
thirteen years old, and who was subsequently to play so great a role on the
political stage of the era as Alexander the Great. When Alexander assumed the
reins of the kingdom in 336-5, Aristotle left Macedonia for Athens, by way of
Stagira, his birthplace, which had been rebuilt by Alexander in compensation for
Aristotle’s pedagogical services.
Returning to Athens in 335-4, Aristotle founded his own school, the Lyceum.
For ten years he lived and worked there, presenting the great body of his system
in the form of lectures. In 323, following the death of Alexander the Great, there
was in Greece a great reaction against the Macedonian suzerainty, and Aristotle
found himself in peril because of his association with Alexander and because the
Lyceum was established under Macedonian protection. He therefore fled to
Chalcis, the birthplace of his mother, where he lived for a year before his death
in 322-1.
The circumstances surrounding Aristotle’s writings are lodged in a curious
paradox. The writings which he designated for general publication—the esoteric
works—and which were well known in antiquity, are now for the most part lost
and unknown, whereas those which were written for presentation to his students
and colleagues—the pedagogical works—and which were relatively obscure in
antiquity, are those which have survived. These latter works are, of course,
extremely complicated and axiomatic in style due to the fact that they were
intended for limited and highly specialized scholarly consumption. On the other
hand, those works written for public consumption were of a much more graceful
literary style, fluidly oratorical and discursive, and in quite stark contrast to the
prosaic severity of his scholastic writings. There remain of his public works only
fragments, the most numerous of which belong to the dialogues Protrepticus and
Eudemus. These fragments come out of his earliest writing period, when he was
still under the direct influence of Plato. It is evident that in this earliest period—
it is generally agreed that his work falls into three main periods—he held
without much reservation to the Platonic philosophy.
In his second period Aristotle began to separate himself from Platonic theory,
becoming less the poetic philosophizer and more the empirical scientist. He
criticized Plato’s theory of Forms or Ideas, and took profound issue with the
formerly held distinction between matter and form, negating the contention that
these two terms constitute a dualism. He maintained, on the other hand, that
matter and form are indissolubly united to form what is truly real being.
Aristotle’s third period was that of his engagement in the Lyceum, where his
genius for the organization of detailed research in the realms of nature and
history awesomely manifested itself. The method and spirit of intensely incisive
research into the phenomena of nature and history, which Aristotle fathered,
represented something completely new in the Greek culture, and of course it still
has its ramifications in the contemporary world. And yet there is no evidence
from which to conclude that Aristotle, the growing empiricist, ever abandoned
the more poetical flight through metaphysical speculation.
The Aristotelian system, or Aristotelianism, is not a radical contradiction of
Platonism, as has often been held. Rather it is, if not a continuance of Plato’s
theories, at least an extension of Platonic thought. Historically speaking,
Aristotelianism is the development of Platonism, through critical examination
based on empirical evidence and physical fact, into a new metaphysics
constructed on synthesis. Plato’s metaphysics was a subjective, one-sided flower
of the imagination. Aristotle’s was a comprehensive and intricately landscaped
garden of empirically supported logic.
T.P.K.
We cannot speak of injustice between master and slave, or between father and
child or toward what is part of one’s self. Though we can speak of justice
between a man and his wife it is not on the same level as between citizens not in
the same immediate family. Between citizens justice is partly natural and partly
conventional, the natural being valid everywhere and it does not depend on the
individual’s acceptance or rejection. The conventional varies among individuals
and is prescribed for a definite circumstance, such as measures of corn and wine.
What is just and what is equitable are generically the same but the equitable is
better. The reason is that every law is laid down in general terms and in accord
with what holds for the majority of cases, whereas in concrete circumstances a
particular case may be an exception and so the just must be amended. As
amended we have the equitable in that particular case. An equitable man is
willing to take less than his due even when the law is on his side.
After this analysis of the moral virtues Aristotle proceeds to a study of the
intellectual virtues since virtue implies a mean as prescribed by right reason
according to some standard. What is right reason and what is its standard? To
answer this we must remember that the soul involves both rational and irrational
activities and that the rational part of the soul involves both a scientific or
demonstrative power and a calculative or deliberative power. Moreover, the
powers that guide us in action and the grasp of the truth are sense, reason and
desire. Sense cannot originate action and, of the other two, reasoning has two
modes, viz. affirmation and negation, and desire involves pursuit and avoidance.
Since moral virtue is a formed power of choice and choice is desire following
deliberation, the calculation or reasoning must be true and the desire right and
this regards the practical rather than the speculative. So purpose is either desiring
reason or reasoning desire about what is to be done or avoided.
The mind arrives at truth by means of art, science, prudence, wisdom and
understanding. Scientific knowledge is invariable and its object is necessary,
eternal and invariable. Science can be taught. Induction is the process toward
universal principles; syllogism (scientific reasoning) starts from these and
proceeds to scientific conclusions. Hence, science is a formed habit of
demonstration as explained in the Posterior Analytics. What is variable includes
what man makes and what he does. The habit of making according to right
reason is art, the habit of acting according to proper calculation is prudence.
Prudence cannot be science because the sphere of prudence is action concerning
what is variable; it cannot be art because it deals with doing rather than making.
So prudence is a habit of calculative reason which issues in action in the domain
of human good and evil. Wisdom is the union of intuitive reason with scientific
knowledge concerning the noblest of objects and it is the same for all men,
whereas prudence is relative to the matters of deliberation concerning the
variable in matters of practice. Wisdom deals with the general, prudence with the
particular facts, for it issues in action. Prudence may be called practical wisdom.
Its types relate to the proper management of a household (oekonomia), the
legislative faculty and statesmanship, either deliberative or judicial. Just as
understanding (intuitive reason) deals with primary principles which cannot be
demonstrated, prudence deals with particular facts which cannot be scientifically
proved.
What is this calculation or deliberation which prudence involves? It is not
science or happy guessing or sagacity or just any kind of opinion but rather a
correctness of reasoning (dianoia) by which we come to right conclusions in the
correct manner and at the right time as to what ought to be done concerning the
means to an end. It implies the exercise of intelligence, good judgment or
discernment and correct reasoning. So intuitive reason is basic to both ultimate
scientific truths and the principles of correct conduct. In virtue of our
apprehension of the fundamentals of morality we deliberate about the proper
means to our end. The conclusions of our deliberation are intuitively understood
as the principles of conduct. We understand that the good is to be done, that such
and such is good in such and such circumstances and therefore, we understand
that it is to be done here and now. Prudence, as a virtue of the practical intellect,
does not give us just a knowledge of the good but it produces the good act as
ensuring the rightness of the means as moral virtue guarantees the rightness of
the end. For, e.g. just acts involve both a knowledge that the acts are just and the
performance of them by deliberate purpose for their own sake. “It is impossible
to be prudent without being morally good,” and virtue is a habit implying right
reason. So if Socrates held that moral virtues are forms of reason he was partly
right, if he meant that they imply reason. He is wrong if he meant simply that all
virtues are forms of prudence. And prudence does not rule wisdom but “rules in
its interests.”
There are three types of moral states to be avoided: vice, whose opposite is
virtue, incontinence, the contrary of which is continence, and brutishness, whose
opposite is god-likeness. Having discussed virtue and vice he will now consider
incontinence and softness and their opposites which are not vices and virtues but
dispositions of a different kind. The usual method of dialectical discussion of
current opinions is carried out so that all error can be wiped out and truth left in
possession of the agora. Continence and hardiness are considered good and
praiseworthy; incontinence and softness are bad and blameworthy. This is quite
evident but in what sense can a man judge rightly and act incontinently, as some
contend taking incontinence to mean “uncontrolled by reason”? The self-