Aristotle
Aristotle was born in Stagira, Macedonian peninsula, in 384 BC, and died in 322 BC in Chalcis, Greece. He was the son of Nicomachus, a doctor and personal friend of Alexander the Great’s grandfather. Because of the closeness of the families, Aristotle became a mentor to Alexander the Great.
In his youth, Aristotle left for Greece, where he attended Plato’s Academy, of whom he was a disciple. Aristotle developed works in several areas of Philosophy and sciences developed in Greece and is considered the author of a more comprehensive system of Western philosophy.
Aristotle’s Physics
Aristotle’s work was organized and brought together, mainly during scholasticism, by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, in a set called Corpus Aristotelicum. The union of works includes writings produced during Aristotle’s lifetime, many of which are considered didactic in nature.
However, the philosopher’s most famous work is titled “Physical”. These writings present detailed research into mathematical laws, physical phenomena, and the organization of nature.
In “Physics”, Aristotle also presents a fifth element: ether, a substance of divine origin that makes up plants, stars, and the visible part of the celestial vault.
It is also in this work that the philosopher points out that the reason for all things is linked to four main causes:
1. Material Cause: what things are made of, from what material?
2. Formal Cause: what gives shape to things.
3. Efficient Cause: how the object or thing in question was constructed.
4. Final Cause: the intention of the one who built the things or objects.
Studies were also carried out on logic. Aristotelian works influenced thinkers and scientists until the 19th century.
Aristotle’s Metaphysics
In Aristotelian writings, metaphysics can be understood as a subdivision of Philosophy that investigates the realities found beyond the sensible world and that provides foundations for the development of sciences, in particular, natural sciences.
Metaphysical works influenced philosophical writings of the Middle Ages and the emergence of the discipline of Metaphysics itself.
Three principles are presented by the author for understanding Metaphysics:
1. Identity: A proposition is always itself.
2. Non-contradiction: A proposition can only be false or true, not both.
3. Excluded third: There is no third hypothesis for a proposition, only false or true.
Peripatetic School
In mid-336 BC and 335 BC. C, after a period in Macedonia, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he found a philosophical school called the Lyceum. The followers and students of the Aristotelian Lyceum are called peripatetics.
The word peripatetic, from the Greek, means ambulatory, itinerant, what strolls. The school received its name because Aristotle transmitted his teachings outdoors, while he and his students walked.
The Aristotelian school adopted empirical orientations and was opposed to the academic Plato, which adopted speculative points of view. However, some elements of Platonic philosophy are found in Aristotle’s teachings, as the philosopher had been a student of Plato.
Plato x Aristotle
A student of Plato’s school, Aristotle developed a philosophy that distanced itself from Platonic idealism.
Plato affirmed the existence of the sensible world and the intelligible world, and because of this division, the philosopher states that it is impossible for a concrete object to represent itself in its entirety. Only the idea would be able to represent such an object in a way closer to the real thing. The idea could be achieved through reason, through intellect.
Aristotle, in turn, affirmed the existence of only one world captured from the intellect and the senses. The most classic example to understand how Aristotle and Plato understand the object is that of the chair.
Plato states that there is no possibility of understanding a chair as a concrete object since each individual can think of a specific type of chair. The idea of a chair is what guarantees the essence of this object. For Aristotle, it is possible to know a chair based on the material, shape, origin or purpose of this object. In the painting about Plato’s academy, he points upward, demonstrating his belief in the world of ideas. Aristotle, in turn, points downwards, demonstrating the existence of a single world, captured by reason and senses.