Tiểu luận Philosophy of Aristotle

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

Name: TRUONG THI THU HA
DOAN THU TRANG
Class: VISK2016A
Group: 02
Professor: NGUYEN VU HAO


ARISTOTLE

Contents
Contents...............................................................................................2
OPENNING.............................................................................................3
I. FAMILY BACKGROUNG AND LIFE CHANGES........................................4
II. ARISTOTLE'S THEORY TRUTH............................................................5
1.Aristotle’s perspectives..................................................................5
2. Aristotle's critique of Plato's theory of Idea...................................5
- Formal cause is a change or movement caused by the
arrangement, shape or appearance of the thing changing or
moving. A simple example of the formal cause is the mental image
or idea that allows an artist, architect, or engineer to create a
drawing..............................................................................................7
- Efficient cause consists of things apart from the thing being
changed or moved, which interact so as to be an agency of the
change or movement. For example, the efficient cause of a table is
a carpenter, or a person working as one, and according to Aristotle
the efficient cause of a boy is a father..............................................7

- Final cause is that for the sake of which a thing is what it is. For a
seed, it might be an adult plant. For a sailboat, it might be sailing.
For a ball at the top of a ramp, it might be coming to rest at the
bottom...............................................................................................7
In which, form and material play the most important role (dualism).
However, he argues that form has a more decisive role than
material (idealistic monism); because without form, material is only
passive and not realistic. The form is the essence of existence, the
positive nature of things, it contains within itself the motive and
purpose. Thanks to the positivity of the form, all things move; and
the movement of things is an objective process that happened in
pre-arranged sequences, it’s mean purpose of God. He argued that
the existence of both the original non-formal material (the passive
ability) and the original non-physical form (the form of all forms,
pure reason, God, the first engine the first of the world, the ultimate
cause, the ultimate purpose of all phenomena). Thus, when he
moved from the dualistic standpoint to idealism, he fell into the
theology of theology, his theory of reason approached and even
merged into Platonic Concepts..........................................................7
4. Epistemology.................................................................................7
5. Logic..............................................................................................8
7. Politics and Political Philosophy..................................................10
10. Evaluation..................................................................................13
III. ARTS, POETICS AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT.................................13
V. DEATH AND HERITAGE....................................................................15
VI. CONCLUSION.................................................................................16
VI. REFERRENCE.................................................................................16
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ARISTOTLE

OPENNING
Philosophy was born and developed until now has a history
of about 3000 years. The development of human
philosophical ideas is a long, diverse process with many
different schools, development and influence varying by
geographical region.
Ancient Greek Philosophy is a potential beginning of the
history of human philosophy as a premise for the entire
Western Philosophy system. And one of the philosophers
has a great influence on the Western philosophy, we must
refer to Aristotle philosopher.
The essay will go through six major parts:
Part 1: FAMILY BACKGROUNG AND LIFE CHANGES
Part 2: ARISTOTLE'S THEORY TRUTH
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Part 3: ARTS, POETICS AND ECONOMIC THOUGHTS
Part 4: WRITING
Part 5: DEATH AND HERITAGE
Part 6: CONCLUSION

I. FAMILY BACKGROUNG AND LIFE CHANGES
Aristotle was born at Stagira in Thrace region in 384/3 (BC). Aristotle was
the original Renaissance Man long before the Renaissance. He wrote about
biology, ethics, logic, physics, rhetoric, politics and countless other
subjects. In sum, Aristotle’s work comprised the first Systematic form of

Western Philosophy. Aristotle is also the first genuine scientist in history.
Stagira is a small province in the East of Salonica, which close to the
border of Macedonia kingdom, also a Greek colony on the Northern
Aegean coast which today is the Stavro. His father was Nicomachus, the
court physician in Macedonia under King Amyntas III.
In 367 BC, when Aristotle was 17, he was sent to Athens to pursue higher
education. Athens at this time was the best place in the world to be
educated. Aristotle enrolled in The Academy, the school founded by Plato.
Aristotle was a star pupil at the Academy, and stayed on at the school as an
instructor. He remained at the Academy for 20 years.
Although Aristotle was a valued member of the Academy, he was not seen
as Plato’s successor. This was because of some fundamental differences
between their philosophies. Plato believed that true knowledge could only
be achieved through Reason, while Aristotle favored experimentation with
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real objects. When Plato died, Aristotle did not take over the Academy as
some imagined he might, but instead went back to Macedonia. Aristotle
was welcomed back into the Royal fold in Macedonia. He became a tutor
to King Philip II’s teenage son Alexander (whom be known as Alexander
The Great). Meanwhile, Aristotle returned to Athens and in 335 BC
founded his own school, called the Lyceum where he spent most of the rest
of his life studying, teaching and writing. He liked to walk about while
teaching and discussing ideas. His students following him on these walks.
They came to be known as “The Peripatetics” from the Greek for “walking
around”
When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, the government support
Macedonia was overthrown, and in view of those who opposed Macedonia,

Aristotle was accused of disrespect for his relationship with his former
pupil and the Macedonian palace. In order to avoid execution, he left
Athens and fled to Chalcis - where he died a year later.

II. ARISTOTLE'S THEORY TRUTH
1.Aristotle’s perspectives
Aristotle said that human nature is the aspiration towards when awake,
people are born to realize, who is not aware, that person is not human.
Awareness is the process that comes from the reality of reality through the
feeling period, symbol to thinking, reasoning. Without the impact of the
perceived object on the senses there will be no knowledge; sensory
awareness is not capable of going into the nature of things; it is only the
rational awareness that discovers the common, inevitable, the law, the
nature of things. Although awareness is the active nature of the human soul,
but the human soul is born as a blank sheet of paper (Aristotle outlines the
uselessness of conceptualism and fabrication contained in the conception of
perception of Plato, denies the existence of innate knowledge in the soul).
Awareness is the process of reflecting the external reality into the soul,
which is a record of the souls of the words of knowledge. To avoid
mistakes in the process of understanding the nature, discovering the laws of
objective reality, the rational soul must be equipped with the right thinking
methods, must comply with the requirements of logic.
2. Aristotle's critique of Plato's theory of Idea
Aristotle primarily articulates his arguments against Plato in
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Metaphysics: In Aristotle’s view, because he has made an important
distinction between things that exist and things that do not exist; it is, in

large part, what he finds missing in Plato. But that lack in Plato must be
traced back to its origins in his predecessors, from whom he borrowed
many things. Aristotle’s structure of the Metaphysics is therefore initially
historical.
Aristotle states that the object of philosophy’s search is “wisdom” and
wisdom is “to deal with the first causes and the principles of things”.In that
search he then summarizes and criticizes his predecessors, beginning with
Thales’s prioritizing of the element water, of which he says, “He got his
notion from this fact, and from the fact that the seeds of all things have a
moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things.”He
notes though a shared flaw – a flaw that he will also see in Plato: “The
question of movement – whence and how it is to belong to things – these
thinkers, like the others, lazily neglected.”
Ethics: Aristotle conceived ethics as a very important science and
according to him it deals with actual human behavior. Unlike Plato, he
affirmed that the empirical world and life in it are valuable. But unlike the
materialists, he adopts a teleological conception of human life and hence
conceived that there is a higher purpose to life, which needs to be realized
in our present life in this world.
3. Metaphysics
Aristotle’ doctrine of four causes:
- Material cause is the aspect of the change or movement which is
determined by the material that composes the moving or changing things.
For a table, that might be wood; for a statue, that might be bronze or
marble.

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- Formal cause is a change or movement caused by the arrangement, shape
or appearance of the thing changing or moving. A simple example of
the formal cause is the mental image or idea that allows an artist,
architect, or engineer to create a drawing.
- Efficient cause consists of things apart from the thing being changed or
moved, which interact so as to be an agency of the change or
movement. For example, the efficient cause of a table is a carpenter,
or a person working as one, and according to Aristotle the efficient
cause of a boy is a father.
- Final cause is that for the sake of which a thing is what it is. For a seed, it
might be an adult plant. For a sailboat, it might be sailing. For a ball at
the top of a ramp, it might be coming to rest at the bottom.
In which, form and material play the most important role (dualism).
However, he argues that form has a more decisive role than material
(idealistic monism); because without form, material is only passive
and not realistic. The form is the essence of existence, the positive
nature of things, it contains within itself the motive and purpose.
Thanks to the positivity of the form, all things move; and the
movement of things is an objective process that happened in prearranged sequences, it’s mean purpose of God. He argued that the
existence of both the original non-formal material (the passive ability)
and the original non-physical form (the form of all forms, pure reason,
God, the first engine the first of the world, the ultimate cause, the
ultimate purpose of all phenomena). Thus, when he moved from the
dualistic standpoint to idealism, he fell into the theology of theology,
his theory of reason approached and even merged into Platonic
Concepts.
4. Epistemology
• There are two epistemological problems:
 Knowledge of the external world
Vision is not sufficient to give knowledge of how things are. Vision needs

to be “corrected” with information derived from the other senses. Most
people have noticed that vision can play tricks. Although such anomalies
may seem simple and unproblematic at first, deeper consideration of them
shows that just the opposite is true. For example: A straight stick
submerged in water looks bent, though it is not. Each of those phenomena
is misleading in some way. Anyone who believes that the stick is bent is
mistaken about how the world really is.
 The other-minds:
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Suppose a surgeon tells a patient who is about to undergo a knee operation
that when he wakes up he will feel a sharp pain. When the patient wakes
up, the surgeon hears him groaning and contorting his face in certain ways.
Although one is naturally inclined to say that the surgeon knows what the
patient is feeling, there is a sense in which she does not know, because she
is not feeling that kind of pain herself. Unless she has undergone such an
operation in the past. It follows from the foregoing analysis that each
human being is inevitably and even in principle prevented from having
knowledge of the minds of other human beings. Despite the widely held
conviction that in principle there is nothing in the world of fact that cannot
be known through scientific investigation, the other-minds problem shows
to the contrary that an entire domain of human experience is resistant to
any sort of external inquiry. Thus, there can never be a science of the
human mind.
• Aristotle's remarks on how we come to know the starting points are
somewhat baffling. What is clear is that sense perception is a crucial
ingredient in the process of coming to know, but that sense perception
by itself does not constitute knowledge. This is because sense

perception shows us only particular objects; genuine knowledge is by
definition about universal characteristics of things. One thus needs to be
able to grasp the universal characteristics present in a body of related
sensory information. Aristotle shows no lack of confidence in the ability
of human beings to do this reliably. But this is no surprise; it is clear that
he conceives of the world as ordered in such a way as to be
understandable, and of human beings as having the capacities necessary
to achieve that understanding—most notably, rationality. However, he
stresses, particularly in his ethical works, that one cannot expect
complete precision in all subjects; the study of ethics, no matter how
expertly conducted, is bound to yield conclusions less exact and more
subject to exceptions than the study of mathematics.
5. Logic
Aristotle was the first philosopher to analyze the method whereby some
propositions were deduced logically as true, based on some other
propositions already recognized. He believes that this process of logical
deduction is based on a form of debate that he calls Syllogism. In a thesis, a
proposition is deduced from two other correct propositions. An example of
this argument is as follows: (1) All men are mortal; (2) Socrates is a man;
therefore, (3) Socrates is mortal.
Three episodes have played an important role in later Philosophy by
creating more complex reasoning systems. In logic, Aristotle made a clear
distinction between two things, dialectic and analytic. According to him,
dialectics only test opinions based on logical consistency, while analytic
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works are derived from principles based on clear experience and
observation. This is a difference with the position of Plato's Academy,

where dialectics is the only method suitable for Science and Philosophy.

6. Ethics
True happiness lies in the active life of a rational being or in a perfect
realization and outworking of the true soul and self, continued throughout a
lifetime. Aristotle expands his notion of happiness through an analysis of
the human soul which structures and animates a living human organism.
According to him, the human soul is divided into three parts:
-Nutritive soul
-Rational soul
-Appetitive soul.
Virtue according to Aristotle is the virtue of moral conduct. It is not
automatically given to people, naturally showing people the possibility of
virtue. His list may be represented by the following table:
VICE OF DEFICIENCY

VIRTUOUS MEAN

VICE OF EXCESS

Cowardice

Courage

Insensibility

Temperance

Illiberality

Liberality

Pettiness

Munificence

Humble-mindedness

High-mindedness

Vaingloriness

Want of Ambition

Right Ambition

Over-ambition

Spiritlessness

Good Temper

Surliness

Friendly Civility

Ironical Depreciation

Sincerity

Boastfulness

Boorishness

Wittiness

Buffoonery

Shamelessness

Modesty

Bashfulness

Callousness

Just Resentment

Spitefulness

Rashness
Intemperance
Prodigality
Vulgarity

Irascibility
Obsequiousness

Aristotle insists on the "autonomy of will" as indispensable to virtue:
courage for instance is only really worthy of the name when done from a

love of honor and duty: munificence again becomes vulgarity when it is not
exercised from a love of what is right and beautiful, but for displaying
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wealth. The wisdom and knowledge of human beings can be obtained by
learning, and virtue of being educated. Most moral virtues, and not just
courage, are to be understood as falling at the mean between two
accompanying vices. Aristotle believes that human virtue is the result of
education. In addition, Aristotle considers morality not only in human
behavior but on its rights as well. Human can only be considered to have
full virtue if he tries to reach wisdom - that is to become a philosopher.

7. Politics and Political Philosophy
Aristotle does not regard politics as a separate science from ethics, but as
the completion, and almost a verification of it. The moral ideal in political
administration is only a different aspect of that which also applies to
individual happiness. Humans are by nature social beings, and the
possession of rational speech (logos) in itself leads us to social union. The
state is a development from the family through the village community, an
offshoot of the family. Formed originally for the satisfaction of natural
wants, it exists afterwards for moral ends and for the promotion of the
higher life. The state in fact is no mere local union for the prevention of
wrong doing, and the convenience of exchange. It is also no mere
institution for the protection of goods and property. It is a genuine moral
organization for advancing the development of humans.
Aristotle examines the relationship between ideals, laws, practices and
properties in real cases. The family, which is chronologically prior to the
state, involves a series of relations between husband and wife, parent and

child, master and slave. Aristotle regards the slave as a piece of live
property having no existence except in relation to his master. He
recognized slavery but insisted that the owner should not abuse his
authority because the owner and slave had the same rights. Aristotle wrote
the "The Constitution of Athens" while the Lyceum Library's collection
consists of 158 copies of the Constitution of Greece and different countries.

8. The Soul and Psychology
Aristotle is the world's first biologist. Contrary to Plato's emphasis on
Mathematics, Aristotle collected a lot of animal and plant samples, learning
about the characteristics and related factors. In zoology, Aristotle argues
that a species continues to reproduce in the same pattern and has no
evolutionary way. He sees that "recognizing the human soul strongly
motivates the realization of all truths, especially awareness of the natural
world ".
When mentioning human, Aristotle argues that it is the cohesion of the soul
and the body, in which the soul plays the leading role of "the soul is the
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formula that determines the nature of things." According to Aristotle both
souls and bodies cannot exist without each other, but they are not identical.
He said: " That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question
whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask
whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or
generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter.”
Aristotle argues that humans are made up of shapes and materials. The soul
is the root of life. Aristotle argues that there are three types of souls:
1) Plant souls with the ability to nurture and reproduce themselves

2) Animal souls are able to touch the surroundings. Both of these souls are
classified as "physical souls" (they attach themselves organically and are
destroyed with the body)
3) The rational soul is the highest form of soul and exists only in humans,
which is the thinking and intellectual ability of man.
The objects of the senses may be either (1) special, (such as color is the
special object of sight, and sound of hearing), (2) common, or apprehended
by several senses in combination (such as motion or figure), or (3)
incidental or inferential (such as when from the immediate sensation of
white we come to know a person or object which is white). There are five
special senses. Of these, touch is the must rudimentary, hearing the most
instructive, and sight the most ennobling. The organ in these senses never
acts directly , but is affected by some medium such as air. Even touch,
which seems to act by actual contact, probably involves some vehicle of
communication. For Aristotle, the heart is the common or central sense
organ. It recognizes the common qualities which are involved in all
particular objects of sensation. It is, first, the sense which brings us a
consciousness of sensation. Secondly, in one act before the mind, it holds
up the objects of our knowledge and enables us to distinguish between the
reports of different senses.
Aristotle defines the imagination as "the movement which results upon an
actual sensation." In other words, it is the process by which an impression
of the senses is pictured and retained before the mind, and is accordingly
the basis of memory. The representative pictures which it provides form the
materials of reason. Illusions and dreams are both alike due to an
excitement in the organ of sense similar to that which would be caused by
the actual presence of the sensible phenomenon. Memory is defined as the
permanent possession of the sensuous picture as a copy which represents
the object of which it is a picture. Recollection, or the calling back to mind
the residue of memory, depends on the laws which regulate the association

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of our ideas. We trace the associations by starting with the thought of the
object present to us, then considering what is similar, contrary or
contiguous.
Reason is the source of the first principles of knowledge. Reason is
opposed to the sense insofar as sensations are restricted and individual, and
thought is free and universal. Also, while the senses deal with the concrete
and material aspect of phenomena, reason deals with the abstract and ideal
aspects. But while reason is in itself the source of general ideas, it is so
only potentially. For, it arrives at them only by a process of development in
which it gradually clothes sense in thought, and unifies and interprets
sense-presentations. This work of reason in thinking beings suggests the
question: How can immaterial thought come to receive material things? It
is only possible in virtue of some community between thought and things.
Aristotle recognizes an active reason which makes objects of thought. This
is distinguished from passive reason which receives, combines and
compares the objects of thought. Active reason makes the world
intelligible, and bestows on the materials of knowledge those ideas or
categories which make them accessible to thought. This is just as the sun
communicates to material objects that light, without which color would be
invisible, and sight would have no object. Hence reason is the constant
support of an intelligible world. While assigning reason to the soul of
humans, Aristotle describes it as coming from without, and almost seems to
identify it with God as the eternal and omnipresent thinker. Even in
humans, in short, reason realizes something of the essential characteristic
of absolute thought -- the unity of thought as subject with thought as object.

9. Natural philosophy and other
Aristotle argues that the natural world is the whole thing, the process
always moving in relation to each other and is made up of a physical being.
Movement cannot be destroyed and also inseparable from natural things
and processes. There are six modes of movement: arising, destroying,
changing status, increasing, decreasing, changing positions. Aristotle
stopped at the notion of the natural movement of matter, but accepted that
God outside of the natural world was the divine origin of all movements
occurring in the natural world.
Aristotle also studied the movements of celestial bodies and explored
changes when an object was created or destroyed. Aristotle also believes
that the earth is the center of the universe, made up of four substances:
earth, air, fire and water.

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10. Evaluation
•

•

•

•

Advantage
Aristotle's theory can be
defended because it is made

up from his studies of the
natural world, reliable.
Strong compared to Plato's
forms which are not
observable in the physical
world.
The four causes can be
applied to things that exist
within the world as a way of
explaining them.
There are no anomalies to
contradict the argument so not
much opposition e.g. God or
the big bang.

•

Disadvantage
Rely on experience. this is
unreliable because experience
changes from person to
person (We cannot be sure
that chairs look the same to
every person)

•

Has no concrete evidence that
the material world is the
source of knowledge.

•

Perhaps things don't exist for
a reason, some things happen
by chance

•

If the prime mover cannot
interact with the world, it is
very different from the
Judaeo-Christian
understanding of God.

III. ARTS, POETICS AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT
Art is considered to be the entire physical activity of people and its
products. "The art of speaking, Aristotle emphasizes - in some cases
completing things that the natural world cannot do, in some other cases,
simulations." He particularly emphasized the function of simulating the
natural world of art.
Among Aristotle's art forms is particularly poetic, considering it a language
in general. It covers both epic comedy, tragedy ... each art form has a
different form and nature of simulation.
Aristotle has profound economic views. C. Mac called him a great
researcher, for the first time in history understood the form of exchange.
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Aristotle also studied the phenomena of social life such as division of labor,
goods, exchange, distribution ... he also found a link between exchange
with division of labor, divided into primitive families into small families.
When studying exchange, Aristotle approached two forms of ownership:
natural and unnatural; At the same time, they also deliberately unified the
duality of value ... monopoly ideology and monopoly prices also appeared
in his economic theory.

IV. WRITING
Aristotle wrote about 200 works, mostly in the form of notes and
manuscripts. They include dialogues, documents through scientific
observation and systematic works.
His pupil, Theophrastus, oversaw these works, then transferred them to
Neleus students - who stored them in a crypt to avoid moisture until they
were taken to Rome and given by scholars there. use. Of about 200 works
by Aristotle, only 31 are still being preserved. Most were written during
Aristotle's time at Lyceum.
Aristotle's main works on logic include: Categories, On Interpretation,
Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. In it, he discussed his reasoning
system and his sound argument development system.
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Aristotle also composed a number of works of art, including "Rhetoric",
and scientific work such as "On the Heavens", then "On the Soul", in which
he moved from discussion of astronomy to study human psychology. His
writings on how people perceive the world continue to be the foundation
for many principles of modern psychology.

V. DEATH AND HERITAGE
In 322 BC - just one year after he fled to Chalcis, Aristotle became ill with
digestion, then died.
The following century, his works were no longer used, but were revived in
the first century. Over time, they became the foundation of philosophy for
more than 7 centuries. Only in terms of influences on philosophy,
Aristotle's works influenced the ideas from the late ancient period to the
Renaissance.
The influence of Aristotle on Western thought in the humanities and social
sciences is largely regarded as having no second person, except for his
previous contributions of Plato, and Plato's teacher is Socrates. The
interpretation and debate of Aristotle's philosophical works has continued.
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VI. CONCLUSION
Aristotle is the greatest encyclopedia, philosopher of Greek and Roman
times. Heren remarked on his writings: "contains all human notions,
Aristotle's wisdom refers to every aspect and every realm of the real
world." Although his conceptions were inconsistent, wavering between
materialistic and idealistic stance, he was the one who laid the foundation
for European and world philosophy, and was the one who opened the
direction for research. a series of specialized humanities and social sciences
such as politics, economics, ethics, aesthetics, psychology ... and especially
the logic of formology to this day and the latter is still valid.

VI. REFERRENCE
• “A History Of Philosophy Volume 11: Medieval Philosophy” Frederick Copleston, S.J.
• />

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