Aristotle's Metaphysics

(Originally written July 9, 2006 in Book 4)

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 19 - Aristotle's Metaphysics

In reading Aristotle it is important to refer to two things: 1) his predecessors and 2) his successors. He made great strides in reference to his predecessors, but many mistakes in reference to his successors.

Aristotle came at the end of the creative period of Greek thought. It would be 2,000 years before a philosopher would come around that could be regarded as an approximate equal.

His views began to impede intellectual progress at the end of his intellectual reign. Most intellectual advancements since the beginning of the 17th century has its origin in some attack on an Aristotelian doctrine.

Aristotle was born in 384 BC at Sagyra (in Thrace). He was a pupil of Plato. He tutored Alexander the Great.

He was the first philosopher to write systematically. He is not passionate or profoundly religious.

"Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking may be described as Plato diluted by common sense" (Russell, 162).

He rejected the theory of ideas and produced the doctrine of universals as the alternative.

"By the term 'universal' I mean that which is of such a nature as to be predicated of many subjects, by 'individual' that which is not thus predicated" (Russell, 163).

Anything that has a proper name is a substance; an adjective or class-name (i.e. man or human) is a universal.

A universal is not a substance. Thus, a universal cannot exist by itself, it can only exist in particular things.

Russell maintains that Aristotle's doctrine of universals is not clear, but an important advancement of Plato's theory of ideas.

Essence is what you are by your very nature. Essence is important in Aristotle and his fellow scholastic philosophers.

Individuals have an essence and species have essences.

He differentiates form and matter.

Matter is unbounded, when it is bounded it takes form. The formed matter is then a thing and that thing's substance is the formed matter.

The soul is the form of the body. The soul makes the body a 'thing'. It unifies all the parts and gives the body a purpose.

The form of a thing is its essence and primary substance.

Not all things have matter, eternal things do not.

Things increase in actuality by acquiring form.

Matter without form is potentiality. Change is what we would call evolution.

God is pure form and pure actuality, no potential. Therefore, he cannot change.

There are three types of substance:
1) sensible and perishable
2) sensible but not perishable
3) neither sensible nor perishable

Plants and animals have sensible and perishable form
Heavenly bodies are sensible but not perishable
God and man's rational soul are neither sensible nor perishable

The existence of God is argued through the first-cause argument.

Like Spinoza, Aristotle holds that men must love God, but God is necessarily incapable of loving men.

There are four types of causes:
1) Material
2) Formal
3) Efficient
4) Final

He regarded the soul as being bound to the body and mocked the thought of transmigration. The soul dies with the body.

Mind and soul are separate and mind is less bound to the body, thus of higher status.

The mind is immortal.

The mind is the part of us capable of mathematics and philosophy.

The soul has one element that is rational and one element that is irrational.

The irrational soul is twofold:
1) Vegetative (all living beings have this)
2) Appetitive (all animals have this)

The rational soul contemplates eternal things and is capable of happiness. But as it is yet attached to the irrational element it cannot only contemplate and thus be purely happy. The rational soul is the mind.

The irrational soul distinguishes us from one another, the rational one unifies us.

The immortality of the rational soul is not a personal immortality, but a share in God's immortality.