ARISTOTLE.
I. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ARISTOTLE.—Aristotle was born 384 B. C. at
Stagira, a Greek colony in Thrace. His father, Nicomachus, was a
physician, and the friend of Amyntas, king of Macedonia. The former fact
may have had its influence in determining the scientific direction of
the son, and the latter may have procured his subsequent summons to the
Macedonian court. Aristotle at a very early age lost both his parents.
In his seventeenth year he came to Plato at Athens, and continued with
him twenty years. On account of his indomitable zeal for study, Plato
named him “the Teacher,” and said, upon comparing him with Xenocrates,
that the latter required the spur, the former the bit. Among the many
charges made against his character, most prominent are those of jealousy
and ingratitude towards his master, but most of the anecdotes in which
these charges are embodied merit little credence. It is certain that
Aristotle, after the death of Plato, stood in friendly relations with
Xenocrates; still, as a writer, he can hardly be absolved from a certain
want of friendship and regard towards Plato and his philosophy, though
all this can be explained on psychological grounds. After Plato’s death,
Aristotle went with Xenocrates to Hermeas, tyrant of Atarneus, whose
sister Pythias he married after Hermeas had fallen a prey to Persian
violence. After the death of Pythias he is said to have married his
concubine, Herpyllis, who was the mother of his son Nicomachus. In the
year 343 he was called by Philip of Macedon, to take the charge of the
education of his son Alexander, then thirteen years old. Both father and
son honored him highly, and the latter, with royal munificence,
subsequently supported him in his studies. When Alexander went to
Persia, Aristotle betook himself to Athens, and taught in the Lyceum,
the only gymnasium then vacant, since Xenocrates had possession of the
Academy, and the Cynics of the Cynosaerges. From the shady walks
περίπατοι of the Lyceum, in which Aristotle was accustomed to walk and
expound his philosophy, his school received the name of the Peripatetic.
Aristotle is said to have spent his mornings with his more mature
disciples, exercising them in the profoundest questions of philosophy,
while his evenings were occupied with a greater number of pupils in a
more general and preparatory instruction. The former investigations were
called acroamatic, the latter exoteric. He abode at Athens, and taught
thirteen years, and then, after the death of Alexander, whose
displeasure he had incurred, he is said to have been accused by the
Athenians of impiety towards the gods, and to have fled to Chalcis, in
order to escape a fate similar to that of Socrates. He died in the year
322 at Chalcis, in Eubæa.
Aristotle left a vast number of writings, of which the smaller (perhaps
a fourth), but unquestionably the more important portion have come down
to us, though in a form which cannot be received without some scruples.
The story of Strabo about the fate of the Aristotelian writings, and the
injury which they suffered in a cellar at Scepsis, is confessedly a
fable, or at least limited to the original manuscripts; but the
fragmentary and descriptive form which many among them, and even the
most important (_e. g._ the metaphysics) possess, the fact that
scattered portions of one and the same work (_e. g._ the ethics) are
repeatedly found in different treatises, the irregularities and striking
contradictions in one and the same writing, the disagreement found in
other particulars among different works, and the distinction made by
Aristotle himself between acroamatic and exoterical writings, all this
gives reason to believe that we have, for the most part, before us only
his oral lectures written down, and subsequently edited by his scholars.
II. UNIVERSAL CHARACTER AND DIVISION OF THE ARISTOTELIAN
PHILOSOPHY.—With Plato, philosophy had been national in both its form
and content, but with Aristotle, it loses its Hellenic peculiarity, and
becomes universal in scope and meaning; the Platonic dialogue changes
into barren prose; a rigid, artistic language takes the place of the
mythical and poetical dress; the thinking which had been with Plato
intuitive, is with Aristotle discursive; the immediate beholding of
reason in the former, becomes reflection and conception in the latter.
Turning away from the Platonic unity of all being, Aristotle prefers to
direct his attention to the manifoldness of the phenomenal; he seeks the
idea only in its concrete actualization, and consequently grasps the
particular far more prominently in its peculiar determinateness and
reciprocal differences, than in its connection with the idea. He
embraces with equal interest the facts given in nature, in history, and
in the inner life of man. But he ever tends toward the individual, he
must ever have a fact given in order to develope his thought upon it; it
is always the empirical, the actual, which solicits and guides his
speculation; his whole course is a description of the facts given, and
only merits the name of a philosophy because it comprehends the
empirical in its totality and synthesis; because it has carried out its
induction to the farthest extent. Only because he is the absolute
empiricist may Aristotle be called the truly philosopher.
This character of the Aristotelian philosophy explains at the outset its
encyclopedian tendency, inasmuch as every thing given in experience is
equally worthy of regard and investigation. Aristotle is thus the
founder of many courses of study unknown before him; he is not only the
father of logic, but also of natural history, empirical psychology, and
the science of natural rights.
This devotion of Aristotle to that which is given will also explain his
predominant inclination towards physics, for nature is the most
immediate and actual. Connected also with this is the fact that
Aristotle is the first among philosophers who has given to history and
its tendencies an accurate attention. The first book of the
_Metaphysics_ is also the first attempt at a history of philosophy, as
his politics is the first critical history of the different states and
constitutions. In both these cases he brings out his own theory only as
the consequence of that which has been historically given, basing it in
the former case upon the works of his predecessors, and in the latter
case upon the constitutions which lie before him.
It is clear that according to this, the method of Aristotle must be a
different one from that of Plato. Instead of proceeding like the latter,
synthetically and dialectically, he pursues for the most part an
analytic and regressive course, that is, going backward from the
concrete to its ultimate ground and determination. While Plato would
take his standpoint in the idea, in order to explain from this position
and set in a clearer light that which is given and empirical, Aristotle
on the other hand, starts with that which is given, in order to find and
exhibit the idea in it. His method is, hence, induction; that is, the
derivation of certain principles and maxims from a sum of given facts
and phenomena; his mode of procedure is, usually, argument, a barren
balancing of facts, phenomena, circumstances and possibilities. He
stands out for the most part only as the thoughtful observer. Renouncing
all claim to universality and necessity in his results, he is content to
have brought out that which has an approximative truth, and the highest
degree of probability. He often affirms that science does not simply
relate to the changeless and necessary, but also to that which
ordinarily takes place, that being alone excluded from its province,
which is strictly accidental. Philosophy, consequently, has with him the
character and worth of a reckoning of probabilities, and his mode of
exhibition assumes not unfrequently only the form of a doubtful
deliberation. Hence there is no trace of the Platonic ideals, hence,
also, his repugnance to a glowing and poetic style in philosophy, a
repugnance which, while indeed it induces in him a fixed, philosophical
terminology, also frequently leads him to mistake and misrepresent the
opinions of his predecessors. Hence, also, in whatever he treated, his
thorough adherence to that which is actually given.
Connected in fine with the empirical character of the Aristotelian
philosophizing, is the fragmentary form of his writings, and their want
of a systematic division and arrangement. Proceeding always in the line
of that which is given, from individual to individual, he considers
every province of the actual by itself, and makes it the subject of a
separate treatise; but he, for the most part, fails to indicate the
lines by which the different parts hang together, and are comprehended
in a systematic whole. Thus he holds up a number of co-ordinate
sciences, each one of which has an independent basis, but he fails to
give us the highest science which embraces them all. The principle is
sometimes affirmed that all the writings follow the idea of a whole; but
in their procedure there is such a want of all systematic connection,
and every one of his writings is a monograph so thoroughly independent
and complete in itself, that we are sometimes puzzled to know what
Aristotle himself received as a part of philosophy, and what he
excluded. We are never furnished with an independent scheme or outline,
we rarely find definite results or summary explanations, and even the
different divisions of philosophy which he gives, vary essentially from
one another. At one time he divides science into theoretical and
practical, at another, he adds to these two a poetical creative science,
while still again he speaks of the three parts of science, ethics,
physics, and logic. At one time he divides the theoretical philosophy
into logic and physics, and at another into theology, mathematics, and
physics. But no one of these divisions has he expressly given as the
basis on which to represent his system; he himself places no value upon
this method of division, and, indeed, openly declares himself opposed to
it. It is, therefore, only for the sake of uniformity that we can give
the preference here to the threefold division of philosophy as already
adopted by Plato.
III. LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS. 1. CONCEPTION AND RELATION OF THE TWO.—The
word metaphysics was first furnished by the Aristotelian commentators.
Plato had used the term dialectics, and Aristotle had characterized the
same thing as “first philosophy,” while he calls physics the “second
philosophy.” The relation of this first philosophy to the other sciences
Aristotle determines in the following way. Every science, he says, must
have for investigation a determined province and separate form of being,
but none of these sciences reaches the conception of being itself. Hence
there is needed a science which should investigate that which the other
sciences take up hypothetically, or through experience. This is done by
the first philosophy which has to do with being as such, while the other
sciences relate only to determined and concrete being. The metaphysics,
which is this science of being and its primitive grounds, is the _first_
philosophy, since it is presupposed by every other discipline. Thus,
says Aristotle, if there were only a physical substance, then would
physics be the first and the only philosophy, but if there be an
immaterial and unmoved essence which is the ground of all being, then
must there also be an antecedent, and because it is antecedent, a
universal philosophy. The first ground of all being is God, whence
Aristotle occasionally gives to the first philosophy the name of
theology.
It is difficult to determine the relation between this first philosophy
as the science of the ultimate ground of things, and that science which
is ordinarily termed the logic of Aristotle, and which is exhibited in
the writings bearing the name of the _Organon_. Aristotle himself has
not accurately examined the relations of these two sciences, the reason
of which is doubtless to be found in the incomplete form of the
metaphysics. But since he has embraced them both under the same name of
logic, since the investigation of the essence of things (VII. 17), and
the doctrine of ideas (XIII. 5), are expressly called logical, since he
repeatedly attempts in the Metaphysics (_Book_ IV.), to establish the
logical principle of contradiction as an absolute presupposition for all
thinking and speaking and philosophizing, and employs the method of
argument belonging to that science which has to do with the essence of
things (III. 2. IV. 3), and since, in fine, the categories to which he
had already dedicated a separate book in the Organon are also discussed
again in the Metaphysics (_Book_ V.), it follows that this much at least
may be affirmed with certainty, that he would not absolutely separate
the investigations of the Organon from those of the Metaphysics, and
that he would not counsel the ordinary division of formal logic and
metaphysics, although he has omitted to show more clearly their inner
connection.
2. LOGIC.—The great problem both of the logical faculty and also of
logic both as science and art, consists in this, viz., to form and judge
of conclusions, and through conclusions to be able to establish a proof.
The conclusions, however, arise from propositions, and the propositions
from conceptions. According to this natural point of view, which lies in
the very nature of the case, Aristotle has divided the content of the
logical and dialectical doctrine contained in the different treatises of
the Organon. The first treatise in the Organon is that containing the
_categories_, a work which treats of the universal determinations of
being, and gives the first attempt at an ontology. Of these categories
Aristotle enumerates ten; essence, magnitude, quality, relation, the
where, the when, position, habit, action, and passion. The second
treatise (_de interpretatione_) investigates speech as the expression of
thought, and discusses the doctrine of the parts of speech, propositions
and judgments. The third are the analytic books, which show how
conclusions may be referred back to their principles and arranged in
order of their antecedence. The first Analytic contains in two books the
universal doctrine of the Syllogism. Conclusions are according to their
content and end either apodictic, which possess a certain and
incontrovertible truth, or dialectic, which are directed toward that
which may be disputed and is probable, or, finally, sophistic, which are
announced deceptively as correct conclusions while they are not. The
doctrine of apodictic conclusions and thus of proofs is given in the two
books of the second Analytic, that of dialectic, is furnished in the
eight books of the Topic, and that of sophistic in the treatise
concerning “Sophistical Convictions.”
A closer statement of the Aristotelian logic would be familiar to every
one, since the formal representations of this science ordinarily given,
employ for the most part only the material furnished by Aristotle. Kant
has remarked, that since the time of the Grecian sage, logic has made
neither progress nor retrogression. Only in two points has the formal
logic of our time advanced beyond that of Aristotle; first, in adding to
the categorical conclusion which was the only one Aristotle had in mind,
the hypothetical and disjunctive, and second, in adding the fourth to
the first three figures of conclusion. But the incompleteness of the
Aristotelian logic, which might be pardoned in the founder of this
science, yet abides, and its thoroughly empirical method not only still
continues, but has even been exalted to a principle by making the
antithesis, which Aristotle did not, between the form of a thought and
the content. Aristotle, in reality, only attempted to collect the
logical facts in reference to the formation of propositions, and the
method of conclusions; he has given in his logic only the natural
history of finite thinking. However highly now we may rate the
correctness of his abstraction, and the clearness with which he brings
into consciousness the logical operation of the understanding, we must
make equally conspicuous with this the want of all scientific derivation
and foundation. The ten categories which he, as already remarked, has
discussed in a separate treatise, he simply mentions, without furnishing
any ground or principle for this enumeration; that there are this number
of categories is only a matter of fact to him, and he even cites them
differently in different writings. In the same way also he takes up the
figures of the conclusion empirically; he considers them only as forms
and determinations of relation of the formal thinking, and continues
thus, although he allows the conclusion to stand for the only form of
science within the province of the logic of the understanding. Neither
in his Metaphysics nor in his Physics does he cite the rules of the
formal methods of conclusion which he develops in the Organon, clearly
proving that he has nowhere in his system properly elaborated either his
categories or his analytic; his logical investigations do not influence
generally the development of his philosophical thought, but have for the
most part only the value of a preliminary scrutiny.
3. METAPHYSICS.—Among all the Aristotelian writings, the Metaphysics is
least entitled to be called a connected whole; it is only a connection
of sketches, which, though they follow a certain fundamental idea,
utterly fail of an inner mediation and a perfect development. We may
distinguish in it seven distinct groups. (1) Criticism of the previous
philosophic systems viewed in the light of the four Aristotelian
principles, _Book_ I. (2) Positing of the apories or the philosophical
preliminary questions, III. (3) The principle of contradiction, IV. (4)
Definitions, V. (5) Examination of the conception of essence (οὐσία) and
conceivable being (the τί ἦν εἴναι) or the conception of matter (ὕλη),
form (εἶδος), and that which arises from the connection of these two
(σύνολον), VII. VIII. (6) Potentiality and actuality, IX. (7) The Divine
Spirit moving all, but itself unmoved, XII. (8) To these we may add the
polemic against the Platonic doctrine of ideas and numbers, which runs
through the whole Metaphysics, but is especially carried out in _Books_
XIII. and XIV.
(1) _The Aristotelian Criticism of the Platonic Doctrine of Ideas._—In
Aristotle’s antagonism to the Platonic doctrine of ideas, we must seek
for the specific difference between the two systems, a difference of
which Aristotle avails himself of every opportunity (especially
_Metaph._ I. and XIII.) to express. Plato had beheld every thing actual
in the idea, but the idea was to him a rigid truth, which had not yet
become interwoven with the life and the movement of existence. Such a
view, however, had this difficulty, the idea, however little Plato would
have it so, found standing over against it in independent being the
phenomenal world, while it furnished no principle on which the being of
the phenomenal world could be affirmed. This Aristotle recognizes and
charges upon Plato, that his ideas were only “immortalized things of
sense,” out of which the being and becoming of the sensible could not be
explained. In order to avoid this consequence, he himself makes out an
original reference of mind to phenomenon, affirming that the relation of
the two is, that of the actual to the possible, or that of form to
matter, and considering also mind as the absolute actuality of matter,
and matter, as the potentially mind. His argument against the Platonic
doctrine of ideas, Aristotle makes out in the following way.
Passing by now the fact that Plato has furnished no satisfactory proof
for the objective and independent reality of ideas, and that his theory
is without vindication, we may affirm in the first place that it is
wholly unfruitful, since it possesses no ground of explanation for
being. The ideas have no proper and independent content. To see this we
need only refer to the manner in which Plato introduced them. In order
to make science possible he had posited certain substances independent
of the sensible, and uninfluenced by its changes. But to serve such a
purpose, there was offered to him nothing other than this individual
thing of sense. Hence he gave to this individual a universal form, which
was with him the idea. From this it resulted, that his ideas can hardly
be separated from the sensible and individual objects which participate
in them. The ideal duality and the empirical duality is one and the same
content. The truth of this we can readily see, whenever we gain from the
adherents to the doctrine of ideas a definite statement respecting the
peculiar character of their unchangeable substances, in comparison with
the sensible and individual things which participate in them. The only
difference between the two consists in appending _per se_ to the names
expressing the respective ideas; thus, while the individual things are
_e. g._ man, horse, etc., the ideas are man _per se_, horse _per se_,
etc. There is only this formal change for the doctrine of ideas to rest
upon; the finite content is not removed, but is only _characterized_ as
perpetual. This objection, that in the doctrine of ideas we have in
reality only the sensible posited as a not-sensible, and endowed with
the predicate of immutability, Aristotle urges as above remarked when he
calls the ideas “immortalized things of sense,” not as though they were
actually something sensible and spacial, but because in them the
sensible individual loses at once its individuality, and becomes a
universal. He compares them in this respect with the gods of the popular
and anthropomorphical religion; as these are nothing but deified men, so
the ideas are only things of nature endowed with a supernatural potency,
a sensible exalted to a not-sensible. This identity between the ideas
and their respective individual things amounts moreover to this, that
the introduction of ideas doubles the objects to be known in a
burdensome manner, and without any good results. Why set up the same
thing over again? Why besides the sensible twofoldness and
threefoldness, affirm a twofoldness and threefoldness in the idea? The
adherents of the doctrine of ideas, when they posit an idea for every
class of natural things, and through this theory set up two equivalent
theories of sensible and not-sensible substances, seem therefore to
Aristotle like men who think they can reckon better with many numbers
than with few, and who therefore go to multiplying their numbers before
they begin their reckoning. Therefore again the doctrine of ideas is a
tautology, and wholly unfruitful of the explanation of being, “The ideas
give no aid to the knowledge of the individual things participating in
them, since the ideas are not immanent in these things, but separate
from them.” Equally unfruitful are the ideas when considered in
reference to the arising and departing of the things of sense. They
contain no principle of becoming, of movement. There is in them no
causality which might bring out the event, or explain the event when it
had actually happened. Themselves without motion and process, if they
had any effect, it could only be that of perfect repose. True, Plato
affirms in his Phædon that the ideas are causes both of being and
becoming, but in spite of the ideas, nothing ever _becomes_ without a
moving; the ideas, by their separation from the becoming, have no such
capacity to move. This indifferent relation of ideas to the actual
becoming, Aristotle brings under the categories, potentiality and
actuality, and farther says that the ideas are only potential, they are
only bare possibility and essentiality because they are wanting in
actuality.—The inner contradiction of the doctrine of ideas is in brief
this, viz., that it posits an individual immediately as a universal, and
at the same time pronounces the universal, the species, as numerically
an individual, and also that the ideas are set up on the one side as
separate individual substances, and on the other side as participant,
and therefore as universal. Although the ideas as the original
conceptions of species are a universal, which arise when being is fixed
in existence, and the one brought out in the many, and the abiding is
given a place in the changeable, yet can they not be defined as they
should be according to the Platonic notion, that they are individual
substances, for there can be neither definition nor derivation of an
absolute individual, since even the word (and only in words is a
definition possible) is in its nature a universal, and belongs also to
other objects, consequently, every predicate in which I attempt to
determine an individual thing cannot belong exclusively to that thing.
The adherents of the doctrine of ideas, are therefore not at all in a
condition to give an idea a conceivable termination; their ideas are
indefinable.—In general, Plato has left the relation of the individual
objects to ideas very obscure. He calls the ideas archetypes, and allows
that the objects may participate in them; yet are these only poetical
metaphors. How shall we represent to ourselves this “participation,”
this copying of the original archetype? We seek in vain for more
accurate explanations of this in Plato. It is impossible to conceive how
and why matter participates in the ideas. In order to explain this, we
must add to the ideas a still higher and wider principle, which contains
the cause for this “participation” of objects, for without a moving
principle we find no ground for “participation.” Alike above the idea
(_e. g._ the idea of man), and the phenomenon (_e. g._ the individual
man), there must stand a third common to both, and in which the two were
united, _i. e._ as Aristotle was in the habit of expressing this
objection, the doctrine of ideas leads to the adoption of a “third man.”
The result of this Aristotelian criticism is the immanence of the
universal in the individual. The method of Socrates in trying to find
the universal as the essence of the individual, and to give definitions
according to conception, was as correct (for no science is possible
without the universal) as the theory of Plato in exalting these
universal conceptions to an independent subsistence as real individual
substances, was erroneous. Nothing universal, nothing which is a kind or
a species, exists besides and separate from the individual; a thing and
its conception cannot be separated from each other. With these
principles Aristotle hardly deviated from Plato’s fundamental idea that
the universal is the only true being, and the essence of individual
things; it may rather be said that he has freed this idea from its
original abstraction, and given it a more profound mediation with the
phenomenal world. Notwithstanding his apparent contradiction to Plato,
the fundamental position of Aristotle is the same as that of his master,
viz., that the essence of a thing (τὸ τί ἐστιν, τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) is known
and represented in the conception; Aristotle however recognizes the
universal, the conception to be as little separated from the determined
phenomenon as form from matter, and essence or substance (οὐσία) in its
most proper sense is, according to him, only that which cannot be
predicated of another, though of this other every remaining thing may be
predicated; it is that which is a this (τόδε τι), the individual thing
and not a universal.
(2.) _The four Aristotelian principles or causes, and the relation of
form and matter._—From the criticism of the Platonic doctrine of ideas
arose directly the groundwork of the Aristotelian system, the
determinations of matter (ὕλη), and form (εἶδος). Aristotle enumerates
four metaphysical principles or causes: matter, form, moving cause, and
end. In a house, for instance, the matter is the wood, the form is the
conception of the house, the moving cause is the builder, and the end is
the actual house. These four determinations of all being resolve
themselves upon a closer scrutiny into the fundamental antithesis of
matter and form. The conception of the moving cause is involved with the
two other ideal principles of form and of end. The moving cause is that
which has secured the transition of the incomplete actuality or
potentiality to the complete actuality, or induces the becoming of
matter to form. But in every movement of the incomplete to the complete,
the latter antedates in conception this movement, and is its motive. The
moving cause of matter is therefore form. So is man the moving and
producing cause of man; the form of the statue in the understanding of
the artist is the cause of the movement by which the statue is produced;
health must be in the thought of the physician before it can become the
moving cause of convalescence; so in a certain degree is medicine,
health, and the art of building the form of the house. But in the same
way, the moving or first cause is also identical with the final cause or
end, for the end is the motive for all becoming and movement. The moving
cause of the house is the builder, but the moving cause of the builder
is the end to be attained, _i. e._ the house. From such examples as
these it is seen that the determinations of form and end may be
considered under one, in so far as both are united in the conception of
actuality (ἐνέργεια), for the end of every thing is its completed being,
its conception or its form, the bringing out into complete actuality
that which was potentially contained in it. The end of the hand is its
conception, the end of the seed is the tree, which is at the same time
the essence of the seed. The only fundamental determinations, therefore,
which cannot be wholly resolved into each other, are matter and form.
Matter when abstracted from form in thought, Aristotle regarded as that
which was entirely without predicate, determination and distinction. It
is that abiding thing which lies at the basis of all becoming; but which
in its own being is different from every thing which has become. It is
capable of the widest diversity of forms, but is itself without
determinate form; it is every thing in possibility, but nothing in
actuality. There is a first matter which lies at the basis of every
determinate thing, precisely as the wood is related to the bench and the
marble to the statue. With this conception of matter Aristotle prides
himself upon having conquered the difficulty so frequently urged of
explaining the possibility that any thing can become, since being can
neither come out of being nor out of not-being. For it is not out of
not-being absolutely, but only out of that which as to actuality is
not-being, but which potentially is being, that any thing becomes.
Possible or potential being is no more not-being than actuality. Every
existing object of nature is hence but a potential thing which has
become actualized. Matter is thus a far more positive substratum with
Aristotle than with Plato, who had treated it as absolutely not-being.
From this is clearly seen how Aristotle could apprehend matter in
opposition to form as something positively negative and antithetic to
the form, and as its positive denial (στέρησις).
As matter coalesces with potentiality, so does form coincide with
actuality. It is that which makes a distinguishable and actual object, a
this (τόδε τι) out of the undistinguished and indeterminate matter; it
is the peculiar virtue, the completed activity, the soul of every thing.
That which Aristotle calls form, therefore, is not to be confounded with
what we perhaps may call shape; a hand severed from the arm, for
instance, has still the outward shape of a hand, but according to the
Aristotelian apprehension, it is only a hand now as to matter and not as
to form: an actual hand, a hand as to form, is only that which can do
the proper work of a hand. Pure form is that which, in truth, is without
matter (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι); or, in other words, the conception of being,
the pure conception. But such pure form does not exist in the realm of
determined being; every determined being, every individual substance
(οὐσία), every thing which is a this, is rather a totality of matter
and form, a (σύνολον). It is, therefore, owing to matter, that being is
not pure form and pure conception; matter is the ground of the becoming,
the manifold, and the accidental; and it is this, also, which gives to
science its limits. For in precisely the measure in which the individual
thing bears in itself a material element is it uncognizable. From what
has been said, it follows that the opposition between matter and form is
a variable one, that being matter in one respect which in another is
form; building-wood, _e. g._ is matter in relation to the completed
house, but in relation to the unhewn tree it is form; the soul in
respect to the body is form, but in respect to the reason, which is the
form of form (εἶδος εἴδους) is it matter. On this standpoint the
totality of all existence may be represented as a ladder, whose lowest
step is a prime matter (πρώτη ὕλη), which is not at all form, and whose
highest step is an ultimate form which is not at all matter, but is pure
form (the absolute, divine spirit). That which stands between these two
points is in one respect matter, and in another respect form, _i. e._
the former is ever translating itself into the latter. This position,
which lies at the basis of the Aristotelian view of nature, is attained
analytically through the observation that all nature exhibits the
perpetual and progressive transition of matter into form, and shows the
exhaustless and original ground of things as it comes to view in ever
ascending ideal formations. That all matter should become form, and all
that is potential should be actual, and all that is should be known, is
doubtless the demand of the reason and the end of all becoming; yet is
this actually impracticable, since Aristotle expressly affirms that
matter as the antithesis, or denial of form, can never become wholly
actualized, and therefore can never be perfectly known. The Aristotelian
system ends thus like its predecessors, in the unsubdued dualism of
matter and form.
(3.) _Potentiality and Actuality_ (δύναμις and ἐνέργεια).—The relation
of matter to form, logically apprehended, is but the relation of
potentiality to actuality. These terms, which Aristotle first employed
according to their philosophical significance, are very characteristic
for his system. We have in the movement of potential being to actual
being the explicit conception of becoming, and in the four principles we
have a distribution of this conception in its parts. The Aristotelian
system is consequently a system of the becoming, in which the Heraclitic
principle appears again in a richer and profounder apprehension, as that
of the Eleatics had done with Plato. Aristotle in this has made no
insignificant step towards the subjection of the Platonic dualism. If
matter is the possibility of form, or reason becoming, then is the
opposition between the idea and the phenomenal world potentially
overcome, at least in principle, since there is one being which appears
both in matter and form only in different stages of development. The
relation of the potential to the actual Aristotle exhibits by the
relation of the unfinished to the finished work, of the unemployed
carpenter to the one at work upon his building, of the individual asleep
to him awake. Potentially the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown up
tree is it actually; the potential philosopher is he who is not at this
moment in a philosophizing condition; even before the battle the better
general is the potential conqueror; potentially is space infinitely
divisible; in fact every thing is potentially which possesses a
principle of motion, of development, or of change, and which, if
unhindered by any thing external, will be of itself. Actuality or
entelechy on the other hand indicates the perfect act, the end as
gained, the completely actual (the grown-up tree _e.g._ is the entelechy
of the seed-corn), that activity in which the act and the completeness
of the act fall together, _e. g._ to see, to think where he sees and he
has seen, he thinks and he has thought (the acting and the completeness
of the act) are one and the same, while in those activities which
involve a becoming, _e. g._ to learn, to go, to become well, the two are
separated. In this apprehension of form (or idea) as actuality or
entelechy, _i. e._ in joining it with the movement of the becoming, is
found the chief antagonism of the Aristotelian and Platonic systems.
Plato considers the idea as being at rest, and consisting for itself, in
opposition to the becoming and to motion; but with Aristotle the idea is
the eternal product of the becoming, it is an eternal energy, _i. e._ an
activity in complete actuality, it is not perfect being, but is being
produced in every moment and eternally, through the movement of the
potential to its actual end.
(4.) _The Absolute, Divine Spirit._—Aristotle has sought to establish
from a number of sides, the conception of the absolute spirit, or as he
calls it, the first mover, and especially by joining it to the relation
of potentiality and actuality.
(_a._) _The Cosmological Form._—The actual is ever antecedent to the
potential not only in conception (for I can speak of potentiality only
in reference to some activity) but also in time, for the acting becomes
actual only through an acting; the uneducated becomes educated through
the educated, and this leads to the claim of a first mover which shall
be pure activity. Or, again, it is only possible that there should be
motion, becoming, or a chain of causes, except as a principle of motion,
a mover exists. But this principle of motion must be one whose essence
is actuality, since that which only exists in possibility cannot alone
become actual, and therefore cannot be a principle of motion. All
becoming postulates with itself that which is eternal and which has not
become, that which itself unmoved is a principle of motion, a first
mover.
(_b._) _The Ontological Form._—In the same way it follows from the
conception of potentiality, that the eternal and necessary being cannot
be potential. For that which potentially is, may just as well either be
or not be; but that which possibly is not, is temporal and not eternal.
Nothing therefore which is absolutely permanent, is potential, but only
actual. Or, again, if potentiality be the first, then can there be no
possible existence, but this contradicts the conception of the absolute
or that which it is impossible should not be.
(_c._) _The Moral Form._—Potentiality always involves a possibility to
the most opposite. He who has the capacity to be well, has also the
capacity to be sick, but actually no man is at the same time both sick
and well. Therefore actuality is better than potentiality, and only it
can belong to the eternal.
(_d._) So far as the relation of potentiality and actuality is identical
with the relation of matter and form, we may apprehend in the following
way these arguments for the existence of a being which is pure
actuality. The supposition of an absolute matter without form (the πρώτη
ὕλη) involves also the supposition of an absolute form without matter (a
πρῶτον εἶδος). And since the conception of form resolves itself into the
three determinations, of the moving, the conceivable, and the final
cause, so is the eternal one the absolute principle of motion (the first
mover πρῶτον χινοῦν), the absolute conception or pure intelligible (the
pure τί ἧν εἶναι), and the absolute end.
All the other predicates of the first mover or the highest principle of
the world, follow from these premises with logical necessity. Unity
belongs to him, since the ground of the manifoldness of being lies in
the matter and he has no participation in matter; he is immovable and
abiding ever the same, since otherwise he could not be the absolute
mover and the cause of all becoming; he is life as active self-end and
actuality; he is at the same time intelligible and intelligence, because
he is absolutely immaterial and free from nature; he is active, _i. e._
thinking intelligence, because his essence is pure actuality; he is
self-contemplating intelligence, because the divine thought cannot
attain its actuality in any thing extrinsic, and because if it were the
thought of any thing other than itself, this would make it depend upon
some potential existence for its actualization. Hence the famed
Aristotelian definition of the absolute that it is the thought of
thought (νόησις νοήαεως), the personal unity of the thinking and the
thought, of the knowing and the known, the absolute subject-object. In
the Metaphysics (XII. 1.) we have a statement in order of these
attributes of the Divine Spirit, and an almost devout sketch of the
eternally blessed Deity, knowing himself in his eternal tranquillity as
the absolute truth, satisfied with himself, and wanting neither in
activity nor in any virtue.
As would appear from this statement, Aristotle has never fully developed
the idea of his absolute spirit, and still less has he harmonized it
with the fundamental principles and demands of his philosophy, although
many consequences of his system would seem to drive him to this, and
numerous principles which he has laid down would seem to prepare the way
for it. This idea is unexpectedly introduced in the twelfth book of the
Metaphysics simply as an assertion, without being farther and
inductively substantiated. It is at once attended with important
difficulties. We do not see why the ultimate ground of motion or the
absolute spirit must be conceived as a personal being; we do not see how
any thing can he a moving cause and yet itself unmoved; how it can be
the origin of all becoming, that is of the departing and arising, and
itself remain a changeless energy, a principle of motion with no
potentiality to be moved, for the moving thing must stand in a relation
of passive and active with the thing moved. Moreover, Aristotle, as
would follow from these contradictory determinations, has never
thoroughly and consistently determined the relation between God and the
world. He has considered the absolute spirit only as contemplative and
theoretical reason, from whom all action must be excluded because he is
perfect end in himself, but every action presupposes an end not yet
perfected; we have thus no true motive for his activity in reference to
the world. He cannot be truly called the first mover in his theoretical
relation alone, and since he is in his essence extra-mundane and
unmoved, he cannot once permeate the life of the world with his
activity; and since also matter on one side never rises wholly to form,
we have, therefore, here again the unreconciled dualism between the
Divine spirit and the unmistakable reality of matter. Many of the
arguments which Aristotle brings against the gods of Anaxagoras may be
urged against his own theory.
IV. THE ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS.—The Aristotelian Physics, which embraces
the greater portion of his writings, follows the becoming and the
building up of matter into form, the course through which nature as a
living being progresses in order to become individual soul. All becoming
has an end; but end is form, and the absolute form is spirit. With
perfect consistency, therefore, Aristotle regards the human individual
of the male sex as the end and the centre of earthly nature in its
realized form. All else beneath the moon is, as it were, an unsuccessful
attempt of nature to produce the male human, a superfluity which arises
from the impotence of nature to subdue the whole of matter and bring it
into form. Every thing which does not gain the universal end of nature
must be regarded as incomplete, and is properly an exception or
abortion. For instance, he calls it an abortion when a child does not
resemble its father; and the female child he looks upon as an abortion
in a less degree, which he accounts for by the insufficient energy of
the male as the forming principle. In general, Aristotle regards the
female as imperfect in comparison with the male, an imperfection which
belongs in a higher degree to all animals except man. If nature did her
work with perfect consciousness, then were all these mistakes, these
incomplete and improper formations inexplicable, but she is an artist
working only after an unconscious impulse, and does not complete her
work with a clear and rational insight.
1. The universal conditions of all natural existence, _motion_,
_matter_, _space_ and _time_, Aristotle investigates in the books of
Physics. These physical conceptions may, moreover, be reduced to the
metaphysical notions of potentiality and actuality; motion is
accordingly defined as the activity of being potentially, and is
therefore a mean between the merely potential entity and the perfectly
realized activity;—space is the possibility of motion and possesses,
therefore, potentially, though not actively, the property of infinite
divisibility; time is in the same way the infinitely divisible,
expressing the measure of motion in number, and is the number of motion
according to before and after. All three are infinite, but the infinite
which is represented in them is only potentially but not actually a
whole: it comprehends nothing, but is itself comprehended,—a fact
mistaken by those who are accustomed to extol the infinite as though it
comprehended and held every thing in itself, because it had some
similarity with the whole.
2. From his conception of motion Aristotle derives his view of the
_collective universe_, as brought out in his books _De Cælo_. The most
perfect motion is the circular, because this is constant, uniform, and
ever returning into itself. The world as a whole is therefore
conditioned by the circular motion, and being a whole complete in
itself, it has a spherical form. But because the motion which returns
into itself is better than every other, it follows, from the same
ground, that in this spherical universe the better sphere will be in the
circumference where the circular motion is most perfect, and the
inferior one will arrange itself around the centre of the universal
sphere. The former is heaven, the latter is earth, and between the two
stand the planetary spheres. Heaven, as the place of circular motion,
and the scene of unchangeable order, stands nearest the first moving
cause, and is under its immediate influence; it is the place where the
ancients, guided by the correct tradition of a lost wisdom, have, placed
the Divine abode. Its parts, the fixed stars, are passionless and
eternal essences, which have attained the best end, which must be
eternally conceived in a tireless activity, and which, though not
clearly cognizable, are yet much more divine than man, A lower sphere,
next to that of the fixed stars, is the sphere of the planets, among
which, besides the five known to the ancients, he reckons the sun and
the moon. This sphere stands a little removed from the greatest
perfection: instead of moving directly from right to left, as do the
fixed stars, the planets move in contrary directions and in oblique
orbits; they serve the fixed stars, and are ruled by their motion.
Lastly, the earth is in the centre of the universe, farthest removed
from the first mover, and hence partaking in the smallest degree of the
Divine. There are thus three kinds of being, exhibiting three stages of
perfection, and necessary for the explanation of nature; first, the
absolute spirit or God, an immaterial being, who, himself unmoved,
produces motion; second, the super-terrestrial region of the heavens, a
being which is moved and which moves, and which, though not without
matter, is eternal and unchangeable, and possesses ever a circular
motion; and, lastly, in the lowest course this earth, a changeful being,
which has only to play the passive part of being moved.
3. _Nature in a strict sense_, the scene of elemental working,
represents to us a constant and progressive transition of the elementary
to the vegetative, and of the vegetative to the animal world. The lowest
step is occupied by the inanimate bodies of nature, which are simple
products of the elements mingling themselves together, and have their
entelechy only in the determinate combinations of these elements, but
whose energy consists only in striving after a fitting place in the
universe, and in resting there so far as they reach it unhindered. But
now such a mere external entelechy is not possessed by the living
bodies; within them dwells a motion as organizing principle by which
they attain to actuality, and which as a preserving activity develops in
them towards a perfected organization,—in a word they have a soul, for a
soul is the entelechy of an organic body. In plants we find the soul
working only as persevering and nourishing energy: the plant has no
other function than to nourish itself and to propagate its kind; among
animals—where we find a progress according to the mode of their
reproduction—the soul appears as sensitive; animals have sense, and are
capable of locomotion; lastly, the human soul is at the same time
nutritive, sensitive, and cognitive.
4. _Man_, as the end of all nature, embraces in himself the different
steps of development in which the life of nature is exhibited. The
division of the faculties of the soul must therefore be necessarily
regulated, according to the division of living creatures. As the
nutritive faculty is alone the property of vegetables, and sensation, of
animals, while to the more perfect animals locomotion also belongs, so
are these three activities also development steps of the human soul, the
antecedent being the necessary condition of, and presupposed in time by,
the subsequent, while the soul itself is nothing other than the union of
these different activities of an organic body in one common end, as the
entelechy of the organic body. The fourth step, thought or reason,
which, added to the three others, constitutes the peculiarity of the
human soul, forms alone an exception from the general law. It is not a
simple product of the lower facilities of the soul, it does not stand
related to them simply as a higher stage of development, nor simply as
the soul to the body, as the end to the instrument, as actuality to
possibility, as form to matter. But as pure intellectual activity, it
completes itself without any mediation of a bodily organ; as the reason
comes into the body from without, so is it separable from the body, and
therefore has it no inner connection with the bodily functions, but is
something wholly foreign in nature. True, there exists a connection
between thought and sensation, for while the sensations are outwardly
divided, according to the different objects of sense, yet internally
they meet in one centre, as a common sense. Here they become changed
into images and representations, which again become transmuted into
thoughts, and so it might seem as if thought were only the result of the
sensation, as if intelligence were passively determined; (here we might
notice the proposition falsely ascribed to Aristotle: _nihil est in
intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu_, and also the well-known though
often misunderstood comparison of the soul with an unwritten tablet,
which only implies this much, viz., that as the unwritten tablet is
potentially but not actually a book, so does knowledge belong
potentially though not actually to the human reason; fundamentally and
radically the thought may have in itself universal conceptions, so far
as it has the capacity to form them, but not actually, nor in a
determined or developed form). But this passivity presupposes rather an
activity; for if the thought in its actuality, in that it appears as
knowledge, _becomes_ all forms and therefore all things, then must the
thought _constitute itself_ that which it becomes, and therefore all
passively determined human intelligence rests on an originally active
intelligence, which exists as self-actualizing possibility and pure
actuality, and which, as such, is wholly independent of the human body,
and has not its entelechy in it but in itself, and is not therefore
participant in the death of the body, but lives on as universal reason,
eternal and immortal. The Aristotelian dualism here again appears.
Manifestly this active intelligence stands related to the soul as God to
nature. The two sides possess no essential relation to each other. As
the Divine spirit could not enter the life of the world, so is the human
spirit unable to permeate the life of sense; although it is determined
as something passionless and immaterial, still must it as soul be
connected with matter, and although it is pure and self-contemplative
form, still it should be distinguished from the Divine spirit which is
its counterpart; the want of a satisfactory mediation on the side of the
human and on that of the Divine, is in these respects unmistakable.
V. THE ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS. 1. RELATION OF ETHICS TO PHYSICS.—Aristotle,
guided by his tendency towards the natural, has more closely connected
ethics and physics than either of his predecessors, Socrates or Plato,
had done. While Plato found it impossible to speak of the good in man’s
moral condition, disconnected from the idea of the good in itself,
Aristotle’s principal object is to determine what is good for man
solely; and he supposes that the good in itself, the idea of the good,
in no way facilitates the knowledge of that good, which alone is
attainable in practical life. It is only the latter, the moral element
in the life of men, and not the good in the great affairs of the
universe, with which ethics has to do. Aristotle therefore considers the
good especially in its relation to the natural condition of men, and
affirms that it is the end towards which nature herself tends. Instead
of viewing the moral element as something purely intellectual, he rather
apprehends it as only the bloom of the physical, which here becomes
spiritualized and ethical; instead of making virtue to be knowledge, he
treats it as the normal perfection of the natural instinct. That man is
_by nature_ a political animal, is his fundamental proposition for the
doctrine of the state.
From this connection of the ethical and the physical, arose the
objections which Aristotle urged against the Socratic conception of
virtue. Socrates had looked to the dialectical exclusively for the
ground of all morality, and had accordingly made virtue and knowledge
one. But in this, said Aristotle, the pathological element which is
associated by nature with every moral act, is destroyed. It is not
reason, but the circumstances and natural bias of the soul which are the
first ground of virtue. There is an instinct in the soul which at first
strives unconsciously after the good, which is only subsequently sought
with the full moral insight. Moral virtue arises first from that which
is natural. It is on this ground, also, that Aristotle combats the
notion that virtue may be learned. It is not through the perfection of
knowledge, but by exercise that we become acquainted with the good. It
is by a practice of moral acts that we become virtuous, just as by a
practice of building and of music we become architects and musicians;
for the habit which is the ground of moral constancy, is only a fruit of
the abundant repetition of a moral action. Hence it is that originally
we have our virtuous or our vicious dispositions in our power, but as
soon as they are formed either to virtue or to vice, we are no longer
able to control them. It is by three things, therefore, nature, habit,
and reason, that man becomes good. The standpoint of Aristotle is in
these respects directly opposed to that of Socrates. While Socrates
regarded the moral and the natural as two opposites, and made the moral
conduct to be the consequent of a rational enlightenment, Aristotle
treated both as different steps of development, and reversing the order
of Socrates, made the rational enlightenment in moral things consequent
upon the moral conduct.
2. THE HIGHEST GOOD.—Every action has an end; but since every end is
only itself a means to some other, we need therefore something after
which we can strive for its own sake, and which is a good absolutely, or
a best. What now is this highest good and supreme object of human
pursuit? In name, at least, all men are agreed upon it, and call it
happiness, but what happiness is, is a much disputed point. If asked in
what human happiness consists, the first characteristic given would be
that it belongs alone to the peculiar being of man. But sensation is not
peculiar to man, for he shares this with the brute. A sensation of
pleasure, therefore, which arises when some desire is gratified, may be
the happiness of the brute, but certainly does not constitute the
essential of human happiness. Human happiness must express the
completeness of intelligent existence, and because intelligence is
essentially activity, therefore the happiness of man cannot consist in
any merely passive condition, but must express a completeness of human
action. Happiness therefore is a well-being, which is at the same time a
well-doing, and it is a well-doing which satisfies all the conditions of
nature, and which finds the highest contentment or well-being in an
unrestrained energy. Activity and pleasure are thus inseparably bound
together by a natural bond, and happiness is the result of their union
when they are sustained through a perfect life. Hence the Aristotelian
definition of happiness. It is a perfect practical activity in a perfect
life.
Although it might seem from this as though Aristotle placed the
happiness of man in the natural activity of the soul, and regarded this
as self-sufficient, still he is not blind to the fact that perfect
happiness is dependent on other kinds of good whose possession is not
absolutely within our power. It is true he expresses an opinion, that
outward things in moderation are sufficient, and that only great success
or signal reverses materially influence the happens of life; still he
holds that wealth, the possession of friends and children, noble birth,
beauty of body, etc., are more or less necessary conditions of
happiness, though these are partly dependent on accidental
circumstances. These wavering and inconsistent views of Aristotle
respecting the nature of happiness, naturally rise from his empirical
method of investigation. Careful in noting every thing which our limited
experience seems to utter, he expressly avoids making either virtue or
pleasure his principle, because actual experience shows the separation
of the two. Although therefore he gives directions in general to strive
after that pleasure in which the good man delights, or which is
connected with a virtuous activity, yet is pleasure with him an end for
its own sake, and not merely an accident of virtue, an empiricist,
Aristotle is here also a dualist, while the Stoics and Epicureans have
respectively taken and held fast to each of the two sides.
3. CONCEPTION OF VIRTUE.—As has already been seen in the Aristotelian
Polemic against Socrates, virtue is the product of an oft-repeated moral
action, a condition acquired through practice, a moral dexterity of the
soul. The nature of this dexterity is seen in the following way: every
action completes something as its work; but now if a work is imperfect
when it has either a want or a superfluity, so also is every action
imperfect in so far as there is in it either too little or too much; its
perfection, therefore, is only found as it contains the right degree,
the true mean between the too much and too little. Accordingly, virtue
in general may be explained as the observation of the right mean in
action, by which is meant not the arithmetical or absolute mean, but the
one relative to ourselves. For what is enough for one individual is
insufficient for another. The virtue of a man, of a woman, of a child,
and of a slave is respectively different. Thus, virtue depends upon
time, circumstance, and relation. The determination of this correct mean
will always waver. In the impossibility of an active and exhaustive
formula, we can only say respecting it that it is the correct mean as
determined by a correct practical insight which is seen to be such by
the intelligent man.
It follows from this general conception of virtue, that there will be as
many separate virtues as there are circumstances of life, and as men are
ever entering into new relations, in which it becomes difficult
practically to determine the correct method of action, Aristotle, in
opposition to Plato, would limit the field of separate virtues by no
definite number. Only certain fundamental virtues can be named according
as there are certain fixed and fundamental relations among men. For
instance, man has a fixed relation to pleasure and pain. In relation to
pain, the true moral mean is found in neither fearing nor courting it,
and this is valor. In relation to pleasure, the true mean standing
between greediness and indifference is temperance. In social life, the
moral mean is between doing and suffering wrong, which is justice. In a
similar way many other virtues might be characterized, each one of them
standing as a mean between two vices, the one of which expresses a want
and the other a superfluity. A closer exhibition of the Aristotelian
doctrine of virtue would have much psychological and linguistic
interest, though but little philosophical worth. Aristotle takes the
conception of his virtues more from the use of language than from a
thoroughly applied principle of classification. His classification of
virtues is, therefore, without any stable ground, and is differently
given in different places. The conception of the correct mean which
Aristotle makes the measure of a moral act is obviously unworthy of a
systematic representation, for as it cannot be determined how the
intelligent man would act in every case, there could never be given any
specific directions how others should act. In fine, the criterion of
virtue as the correct mean between two vices cannot be always applied
for in the virtue of wisdom, _e. g._ which Aristotle describes as the
mean between simplicity and cunning, there is no such thing as too much.
4. THE STATE.—Aristotle, like Plato, makes the highest condition of
moral virtue attainable only through political life. The state exists
before the individual, as the whole is prior to its parts. The
rationality and morality of the state is thus antecedent to that of the
individual. Hence in the best state, moral and political virtue, the
virtue of the man and the virtue of the citizen are one and the same
thing, although in states as they are, the good citizen is not
necessarily also the good man. But though this principle harmonized with
Plato, yet Aristotle, at whose time the old aboriginal states had
already begun their process of dissolution, cherished a very different
view concerning the relation of the individual and the family to the
state. He allows to both these an incomparably greater consideration,
and yields to them a far wider field of independent action. Hence he
combats Plato’s community of wives and goods, not simply on the ground
of its practicability, but also on the ground of its principle, since
the state cannot be conceived as a strict unit, or as possessing any
such centralization as would weaken or destroy individual activity. With
Plato the state is but the product of the philosophical reflection,
while with Aristotle it results from given circumstances, from history
and experience, and he therefore wholly omits to sketch a model state or
a normal constitution, but carefully confines his attention to those
which actually exist. Although the ideal of a state constitution in the
form of a limited monarchy is unmistakably in his mind, still he
contents himself with portraying the different kinds of polities in
their peculiarities, their origin, and their reciprocal transitions. He
does not undertake to declare which is the best state absolutely, since
this depends upon circumstances, and one constitution is not adapted for
every state. He simply attempts to show what form of the state is
relatively the best and the most advisable under certain historical
circumstances, and under given natural, climatic, geographic, economic,
and intellectual conditions. In this he is faithful to the character of
his whole philosophy. Standing on the basis of the empirical, he
advances here as elsewhere, critically and reflectively, and in despair
of attaining the absolutely true and good, he seeks for these
relatively, with his eye fixed only on the probable and the practicable.
VI.—THE PERIPATETIC SCHOOL.—The school of Aristotle, called the
Peripatetic, can here only be mentioned; the want of independence in its
philosophizing, and the absence of any great and universal influence,
rendering it unworthy an extended notice. Theophrastus, Eudemus, and
Strato are its most famous leaders. Like most philosophical schools, it
confines itself chiefly to a more thorough elaboration and explanation
of the system of its master. In some empirical provinces, especially the
physical, the attempt was made to carry out still further the system,
while at the same time its speculative basis was set aside and
neglected.
VII.—TRANSITION TO THE POST-ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY.—The productive
energy of Grecian philosophy expends itself with Aristotle,
contemporaneously and in connection with the universal decay of Grecian
life and spirit. Instead of the great and universal systems of a Plato
and an Aristotle, we have now systems of a partial and one-sided
character, corresponding to that universal breach between the subject
and the objective world which characterized the civil, religious, and
social life of this last epoch of Greece, the time succeeding Alexander
the Great. That subjectivity, which had been first propounded by the
Sophists, was at length, after numerous struggles, victorious, though
its triumph was gained upon the ruins of the Grecian civil and artistic
life; the individual has become emancipated, the subject is no longer to
be given up to the objective world, the liberated subjectivity must now
be perfected and satisfied. This process of development is seen in the
post-Aristotelian philosophy, though it finds its conditioning cause in
the character of the preceding philosophical strivings. The dualism
which formed the chief want of the systems both of Plato and Aristotle,
has forced itself upon our attention at every step. The attempt which
had been made, with the greatest expenditure of which the Grecian mind
was capable, to refer back to one ultimate ground both subject and
object, mind and matter, had produced no satisfactory result; and these
two oppositions, around which all previous philosophy had struggled in
vain, still remained disconnected. Wearied with the fruitless attempts
at mediation, the subject now breaks with the objective world. Its
attention is directed towards itself in its own self-consciousness. The
result of this gives us either STOICISM, where the moral subject appears
in the self-sufficiency of the sage to whom every external good and
every objective work is indifferent, and who finds a good only in a
moral activity; or EPICUREANISM, where the subject delights itself in
the inner feeling of pleasure and the calm repose of a satisfied heart,
enjoying the present and the past, and never fearing the future while it
sees in the objective world only a means by which it can utter itself;
or, again, Scepticism, where the subject, doubting and rejecting all
objective truth and science, appears in the apathy of the Sceptic, who
has broken both theoretically and practically with the objective world.
In fine, NEW-PLATONISM, the last of the ancient philosophical systems,
bears this same character of subjectivity, for this whole system turns
upon the exaltation of the subject to the absolute, and wherever it
speculates respecting God and his relation to man, it is alone in order
to establish the progressive transition from the absolute object to the
human personality. The ruling principle in it all is the interest of the
subjectivity, and the fact that in this system there are numerous
objective determinations, is only because the subject has become
absolute.