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Aristotle

384-322 BC

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Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 BC) - the greatest ancient Greek philosopher, who created his original teaching, which constituted an era in philosophy. He came from the city of Stagira (that's why he is often called Stagirite). His father Nicomachus was a doctor at the court of the Macedonian king Amyntas Sh. In 367 BC, when Aristotle was seventeen he left for Athens to continue Education and entered the Platonic Academy, becoming a student of Plato. IN Academy stayed for 20 years until the death of Plato, after which he moved to Atarney, and then - to Methylene. After a while he is the son's tutor Macedonian king Philip Alexander. Three years later, Philip dies, Alexander becomes king and Aristotle returns to Athens on the fiftieth year of life after a twelve-year absence. Creates a school in Athens the name Likey, since it was located on the territory of the gymnasium, adjoining to the Temple of Apollo Lyceum. Aristotle usually taught in the alleys gymnasium, so the school was called peripatetic (from the Greek word "peripateo" - I walk). After the death of Alexander (323 BC) in Athens, an anti-Macedonian uprising took place. Aristotle always advocated connections with Macedonia. He was charged with "godlessness", but he did not began to wait for the court and went to Chalkis on about. Euboea, where he died a year later 322 B.C.

The literary legacy of Aristotle that has come down to us is not complete, except Moreover, not everything that has come down is recognized as truly Aristotelian. mature works Aristotle can be divided into several groups: logical works called "Organon", which includes "Categories", "On Interpretation", "Analysts", "Topeka", "On sophistical refutations"; a book about being "Metaphysics"; natural sciences works - "Physics", "About the sky", "About parts of animals", etc.; ethical works - "Nicomachean ethics"; treatise "Politics"; work on rhetoric and poetics - "The Art of Rhetoric", "On Poetics". List of Aristotle's works testifies to the encyclopedic nature of the issues under consideration. While still in walls of the Platonic Academy, Aristotle disagreed with Plato in his philosophical views. Subsequently, he criticized the Platonic theory of ideas, which was important for the further development of philosophy. He believed that the division into ideas and things has no rational meaning, since ideas are simply copies of sensible things and are identical to them in content. Separating ideas from things causes it to double what it should be explained.

According to Plato, things must be explained by means of ideas, i.e., by Aristotle should recognize the causal dependence of ideas and things, but Plato denies any causal relationship between them. Ideas, according to Plato, are examples of things, but this is a figurative expression, not a philosophical explanation. Except Moreover, since a thing is manifold, it must in this case have several samples, i.e. a few ideas.

According to Aristotle, the Platonic idea, being the essence of a thing, at the same time torn off from the thing itself, and thus it turns out that the essence of the thing is torn off from the thing itself. Aristotle in his philosophical reasoning proceeded primarily from recognition of the existence of an objective world that is material. Based on their criticism of Plato's "ideas" that are outside of things, Aristotle tried to create the theory that the essence is in the things themselves.

According to Aristotle, each concrete sensible thing is a unity "matter" and "form". "Form" is understood by Aristotle as the essence of a thing. Form in the same time is non-material, but it is not something external in relation to matter. Matter and form are "what things are made of". Every thing is like shaped matter. An example is a copper ball representing a unity of copper (substance) and sphericity (form). The opposite of "form" and "matter" for Aristotle is relative. Copper can act as matter in relation to one object (for example, a ball) and shape in relation to another object (for example, physical elements). Copper may not be decorated, but in at the same time in potency it contains the form as a possibility. Those. form - yes the realized possibility of matter. Thus, Aristotle has correlative transition from matter to form and vice versa. This hierarchy of forms leads to a higher "form", which is the last and behind which there is no longer neither form nor matter follows. The last form is the prime mover, or God. Thus, matter and form, according to Aristotle, are a unity, the relationship, the development of phenomena, he understood as the formation of matter.

Aristotle developed the original doctrine of the four kinds of causes. He distinguishes four types of causes: 1) material, or matter; 2) formal, or form; 3) producing; 4) final, or goal. The material cause is matter, it "denotes the material that is part of the thing, from which, things arise" [Aristotle. Metaphysics. V, 2, 1013a24-1013c21]. Formal reason is that, under the influence of form, matter is transformed into reality. The producing cause is that which creates things. "So, for example, the person who gave advice is the cause of what is done, and that which changes - the cause of what changes" [Ibid.]. Target cause Aristotle understands in the sense that something is done for the sake of something. "For example, the purpose of the festivities is health". Aristotle's theory of causes can be explained by the example given by him by ourselves: an architect builds a house, in this case the material is matter, the plan of the house is is the form, the architect is the producing cause, and the finished building is target. In the question of the relationship between form and matter, he believed that matter is passive and formless, but the form is active, active. The form thus became essence of being. Moreover, the form was considered as such a beginning, which precedes matter, in view of the fact that form is active and matter is passive.

The problem of form and matter has introduced two very important concepts into philosophy - this possibility and reality, which were of great importance for the subsequent development of philosophy, as they allowed, on the basis of their application, to solve the problem occurrence, which in this case was explained by the specific features of the thing. These categories pointed to the source of the movement, no longer considered as an external in relation to the thing, but as lying within it.

Nature for Aristotle acted as the transformation of possibility into reality. He likened life to the nature of human activity, pointing out that, just as a sculptor creates a figure from a block of marble, turning the possibilities of marble into reality, so in nature the possibilities of the seed updated in the plant. Aristotle distinguished between "first" and "last" matter. The "first" matter is the basis of all being, it is only a possibility that can act as any reality, but is not itself a reality, it is only conceived, forming a potential prerequisite for existence. In contrast from the "first" matter, the "last" is also the possibility of any forms, and at the same time reality, since this matter has certain features and a concept can be expressed, formulated about it.

In the example considered earlier, this "last" matter is copper, ball. The questions discussed above about matter, form, causes cover the area the so-called first philosophy as the doctrine of immutable and immovable essences, albeit in their connection with the movement. These questions are dealt with by Aristotle in his "Metaphysics", which received its name by chance, due to the fact that in the collection Andronicus of Rhodes, who compiled a list of the works of Aristotle, this work was "after physics". However, the word "metaphysics" later received its own, a special meaning - as a doctrine of the principles of being, not disclosed by physics, i.e. speculative, ontological propositions from which other philosophical positions. Aristotle did a lot of valuable and important work in areas of natural philosophy, physics, although the latter is not separated by a sharp boundary from first philosophy. Aristotle's physics is not physics in the modern sense, but the same general philosophical questions, but closely related to the understanding of nature, i.e. natural philosophy. Specific physical issues are dealt with by Aristotle in treatises: "Meteorology", "On the emergence and destruction", etc. An important contribution to philosophy introduced by Aristotle on the problem of understanding movement. He distinguishes four type of movement: 1) emergence and destruction; 2) a qualitative change, or transformation of properties; 3) quantitative change, i.e. increase or decrease; 4) movement in space. Chief among these views for Aristotle - movement in space, which acts as a condition for all other types movement and to which all other species are reduced. Exploring movement in space as such, Aristotle divides it into separate types, and namely: 1) circular motion; 2) straightness; 3) combination of rectangular circular motion.

Of these, the main types of movement are circular and rectilinear. With teaching Aristotle on the types of motion is connected with his teaching on the physical elements of nature. He believed, like Empedocles, that nature consists of four elements: fire, air, water and land, each of which is characterized by a combination of two qualities that form two classes - active and passive qualities. Fire has qualities of warm (active) and dry (passive), air - warm (active) and wet (passive), water - cold (active) and wet (passive), earth - cold (active) and dry (passive). In addition to those listed elements, there is, according to Aristotle, another fifth - ether, which fills everything world space and from which the celestial bodies are composed. By nature, he different from the other four elements. Ether has the property of immutability and perfection. For Aristotle, the combination of the four elements, or elements, in various quantitative ratios forms a complex body in which these elements penetrate each other and dissolve in each other. In this for Aristotle expressed the fluidity and variability of phenomena in nature, the idea of ​​the universal connection of things in the world around us, the idea of ​​mutual transitions and interconnection of phenomena. However these views of nature were not the result of an empirical study of the world, but were natural-philosophical propositions derived from the philosophical system, and therefore often leading to untrue conclusions. So, for example, if you follow Aristotle, a smaller body, mixing with a larger one, loses its properties and takes on the properties of a larger one, and vice versa: by mixing wine with water, we we get water if there is more water, and wine if there is more wine. Aristotle spoke against atomism, believing that indivisible particles of matter do not exist, since even the smallest particle of matter consists of four elements, otherwise Otherwise, these particles would not have the qualities that the whole body has. Aristotle's natural-philosophical views are permeated by teleology. According to Aristotle, any phenomenon implies the possibility of change and the goal towards which this change. The realization, the fulfillment of this goal, Aristotle calls entelechy, which is a kind of program of change. in living organisms Aristotle associates the concept of purpose with the concept of the soul. But he endures purposeful functions of the soul on the world as a whole. For Aristotle, teleological determines the expedient nature of the entire world process, which is directed towards a single goal. Purposeful movement of nature is carried out unconsciously. Aristotle's cosmology was a step backwards from the cosmology of the atomists and Pythagoreans.

At the center of the world is the motionless Earth, it does not make circular movement, but tends to the center of the world. Thus he rejects the heliocentric an idea that was just in its infancy at the time. According to Aristotle, the earth, being in center of the spherical world, itself has a spherical shape. around the earth in spheres are in the process of rotation, planets and the sky with stars are fixed on them. This cosmological scheme was subsequently developed by Ptolemy and adopted all before the discovery of Nicolaus Copernicus. played an important role in the history of philosophy Aristotle's doctrine of knowledge. Here he proceeds from the position that, regardless of human being, there is an objective world that is material, independent of the cognizer subject. The first stage of cognition is sensory cognition through sensations, which are a reflection of the external world, they are the imprints of the forms of knowable items. Although sensations are the source of theoretical thinking, they give only knowledge of the individual. The result of the repetition of sensations are general ideas. The highest level of knowledge consists not in sensations, but in concepts, in finding the common in the separate, which is carried out through theoretical activity of thinking. Aristotle is credited with developing questions of logic. For the first time in ancient Greek philosophy, we find treatises with him, dedicated to logic. For Aristotle, logic comes first tool of any science, by means of which certain results are achieved, logic is a kind of science of proof, forms of thinking applied when knowing.

Aristotle laid the foundations of logic as a science, if understood in this case science not as a special branch of knowledge, but as a set of methodological positions in the study. The main method of Aristotle's logic is reduction, consisting in distinguishing between the conditions under which the proof. Aristotle clearly formulated the laws of thought: the law of identity (the concept must be used in the same meaning), the law of contradiction (sentences and judgments cannot be true at the same time as their negation), law of the excluded middle (if two mutually contradictory judgments are given, then with Under these conditions, only one can be true). Aristotle made a great contribution in the creation of the theory of categorical syllogism. He writes: syllogism is speech, "in which, if something is presupposed, something necessarily follows, different from what is posited by virtue of the fact that what is posited is" [Aristotle. I Analytics. I, 246]. From the position that all people are mortal and Socrates is a man, it follows that Socrates died. A syllogism is a conclusion from the general to private, i.e. deduction. But Aristotle also recognized induction - a conclusion from a particular to the general.

Aristotle considered induction as a way of knowing the general. In logic Aristotle's development of the question of general principles was of great importance. proof. The first principle is that proof was carried out by a successive series of steps, starting with the axioms as the most obvious statements. The second principle is to adopt rules that guarantee the formal correctness of the conclusions. Aristotle's merit is that he defined the general principles of proof, the rules of the syllogism as inferences, leading to proof. He defined judgment as a form of thinking, developed a comprehensive doctrine of categories. Aristotle first proposed classification of ten categories: 1) essence is the basis of all other properties; 2) quality; 3) quantity; 4) attitude; 5) place; 6) time; 7) position; 8) possession; 9) action; 10) suffering. Aristotle - creator not only logical science, but also psychology, presented in the treatise "On the Soul", where the understanding of the soul, the phenomena of perception and memory is given. soul, according to Aristotle, represents the highest activity of the human body. In the shower there is a mind (nus), which does not arise and is not subject to death, destruction. Aristotle makes an attempt to create a theory of the plant, animal and rational soul, underlying division - living beings into plants, animals and people. The organic part of the philosophical heritage of Aristotle is his views on issues development of society and the state. He rejects the "ideal state" project Plato and offers his theory of a state based on slavery. This the state, according to Aristotle, is the best form of community. IN in this state, power should not belong to the rich and the poor, but to the middle stratum slave owners. "In every state we meet three classes of citizens: very the prosperous, the extremely poor, and the third, standing in the middle between the one and the other. Since, according to the generally accepted opinion, moderation and the middle are the best between two extremes, then, obviously, the average prosperity of all goods is the best " [Policy. I, 9, Z]. Slavery as a phenomenon, Aristotle considered existing from nature. He regarded the slave as a "talking instrument" that belongs to the master who is a "social animal". Aristotle identified the following forms of state: monarchy, aristocracy, politician? (these are all normal forms) and tyranny, oligarchy, democracy (abnormal). The most perfect form state structure for Aristotle seemed to be watered. He stood for established social stratification of society. So, he wrote: "Is it fair will be if the poor, relying on the fact that they represent the majority, start to divide among themselves the wealth of the rich?” [Ibid. Sh, 6, I]. At the same time, he believed that considerable wealth was the result of an unnatural way of acquisition, which is "disgusting to human reason and state device".

Aristotle's socio-political views are closely intertwined with his views on morality. He believed that the state, which he did not separate from society, should demand from a member of society virtuous behavior, without which life is impossible the last one. Virtues according to Aristotle are divided into ethical, based on habit and custom, and dianoetic - reasonable, based on reasoning. The ethical virtues are active, the dianoetic virtues are contemplative, though bound with behavior. Therefore, Aristotle called ethics practical philosophy. The virtuous member of society strives to avoid excess in all respects, since morality consists in the observance of a certain measure. Among virtues Aristotle emphasizes justice. For him justice There are two types - equalizing and distributive. The first kind of justice refers to the goods of individuals and has to do with exchange in accordance with quantity and quality of labor. The second kind deals with common goods and aimed at sharing the benefits in accordance with the merits of citizens. ethics Aristotle characterizes as the preaching of active human activity. He rejects the desire for power and pleasure. Such a life is parasitic and animal, and he calls it "the slavish way of thinking." noteworthy considers a life that is characterized as practical (political) or theoretical (cognitive) activity. It is necessary, in his opinion, not only to know what virtue is, but also to act in accordance with it.

Aristotle made a significant contribution to ancient aesthetics. For him art had a cognitive value, and in this he sharply diverged from Plato, who separated and contrasted art and knowledge. Art, according to Aristotle, reproduces reality, using all creativity possibilities. The highest form of art for Aristotle was a tragedy that, through catharsis, purifies a person and ennobles his feelings. The work of Aristotle in the field of philosophy and science is considered the pinnacle of ancient thoughts. He summed up the development of a whole period in ancient Greek culture - with its beginning up to the 4th century BC. He is credited with systematizing knowledge and the allocation of a number of scientific areas, which subsequently began to branch off into independent directions.

Blinnikov L.V. Brief dictionary of philosophical personalities. M., 2002.

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