Aristotle

1. Aristotle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0Uq08xXhY

2. Life, Legacy, and Times Aristotle’s father was court physician to Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Aristotle studied under Plato and his thought shared Plato’s concern over form though in opposition to Plato, form was located in time and space. Political order is related to understanding the purpose and end of being a human being.

3. Life, Legacy, and Times - Continued Aristotle did not take over Plato’s Academy, but he started his own school, the Lycaeum. His teaching method, peripatetics, involved walking about and talking. Aristotle became Alexander the Great’s tutor though his philosophy focused on the polis and Alexander embraced the vision of a cosmopolis.

4. Life, Legacy, and Times - Continued With Alexander’s death, anti-Macedonian riots broke out in Athens, and Aristotle fled lest “Athens commit the same crime twice.” We have over 2,000 pages of writings attributed to Aristotle including his great book, Politics.

5. Differing Views of Reality • Plato • Reality is there and communication reflects reality. • Aristotle • Reality is probably there and communication is a relationship with reality. • Gorgias • Reality is not there and communication creates reality.

6. Rhetoric, has its own Identity • A counterpart to dialectic not cookery • Not moral but pragmatic and scientific • A study of all the available means of persuasion • Functions to discover in each context the best way to by successful

7. Rhetoric’s Usefulness • Prevents fraud and injustice • Aids instruction • Makes us argue both sides • Helps in self-defense

8. Aristotle • Aristotle preferred the physical, concrete, material world, and the senses. • Biology was his primary subject. • Truth for Aristotle is changing, imperfect, and living. • Aristotle is called “The Father of Science”.

9. Aristotle • Humans are political and social beings. • Moral action is possible only in society and community of our fellow humans. • To be human is to live with other humans, and interaction. • The idea of goodness is part of everyday, practical activity of human life.

10. Aristotle • Aristotle’s approach is teleological, which means the connection between right action and the result or end of right action. • The good, is “that which everything aims” in art and science. • All of our actions have goals or aims. • The end goal for humans is happiness.

11. Aristotle • Happiness is an end in itself, never chosen as a means to something else. • Happiness is practical, understandable. • Happiness is final, self sufficient. • Happiness is both particular and universal.

12. Aristotle • Ideas, concepts, or forms do not exist outside of material objects. • Knowledge can be found in the world of the senses, natural world, physical/material world. • The unity of matter and the forms. • Ideas cannot transcend matter.

13. Aristotle • Principles and theories – knowledge of quality. (Abstract, universal) • Causality – why something happens (Scientific) explains 3. Senses and Experiences – particular, concrete, immediate

14. Aristotle • The world is constantly in a state of flux, change: motion/growth/decay/generation/corruption • Change is a natural process and product of life. Everything is in process of becoming and dying.

15. Aristotle • There are 4 causes: • Formal – what a thing is • Material – that of which it is made • Efficient – how and why it is made • Final – teleos – the end purpose or goal • For Aristotle there is no first mover or creator • Morality is developed out of everyday life.

16. Aristotle • “Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance to reason.” Actualizing your highest potential for good using reason • The soul is your mind or psyche • Two parts to the soul: rational and irrational • Irrational: nutrition, growth, common to all species – animalistic: connected with the body • Rational: seeks the best, obeys principles, self control, self discipline – reason, humanity:mind

17. Aristotle • Virtue: actualizing your highest potential for good using reason; deliberate choice in accordance with the mean; virtue is excellence, the best, the highest • There is deliberate choice which implies human responsibility

18. Aristotle • 2 types of virtue: Moral and intellectual • Moral Virtue: habits developed out of our nature through living life; adaptations: learn to do by doing: the practical everyday world; The mean between two extremes, habitual choice of actions between two vices: excess and deficiency

19. Aristotle • The Golden Mean is the mean between two extremes, may be relative for each individual. • Society sets our mean, by use of the law. • Acts which have no mean and are intrinsically bad in and of themselves: • Spite, Envy, adultery, murder, theft, lying

20. Aristotle • Intellectual virtue: philosophic contemplation & wisdom, thinking, knowledge, takes time, experience – understanding • A good life is a happy life, a good person is a morally virtuous person • The ultimate life is happy, moral, and philosophic

21. Aristotle • Aristotle recognizes deliberate choice in humans, which puts responsibility on humanity. • There are voluntary and involuntary acts. • Voluntary acts are acts based on deliberate choice and total human responsibility. • Involuntary acts are acts from ignorance, poor teaching, external compulsion, or avoidance of a greater evil.

22. Aristotle • 2 types of acts/choices: • Instrumental – acts done as a means for other ends, externalized • Intrinsic – acts done for their own sake, internalized

23. Aristotle’s Golden Mean EXCESS____mean________ DEFICIENCY moral virtue Honor/Vanity_proper pride__humility Confidence_____Courage____Fear Pleasure______temperance___Pain Give $_______liberality_____take $ Easy going_temperate__irascible/hot temper

24. Aristotle • “the right action at the right time, to the right person for the right reason” This is knowing when you are morally virtuous

25. Background to Political Teachings • Aristotle’s works are grounded in Greek traditions, and he acknowledged those with whom he disagreed in search of objective truth and validity. • Aristotle advised us “to love Socrates, to love Plato, but to love the truth more. • Aristotle’s political philosophy focused on the small-city state as the necessary arena for human excellences.

26. Aristotle’s Division of the Three Sciences

27. Problems of Politics and the State Do not expect to much certitude from political science since it is not like a theoretical science that cannot be otherwise. Ethics is the rule of ourselves over ourselves. Politics is concerned about the common good – the collective moral and intellectual flourishing of society. Aristotle’s ethical and political works are meant to be put into action.

28. Problems of Politics and the State - Continued • Aristotle did not believe human nature varied radically from place to place but believed his philosophy was universally valid. • Aristotle believed human beings are political animals and require the city to be “self-sufficient” and live “well.” • Nature (physis) is the standard for Aristotle’s thought. • This standard revealed the essences of things including human life.

29. Problems of Politics and the State - Continued • Human essence included the possession of a rational soul and cognition. • The end (telos) of a human being was a person of excellence just as the end of an acorn was fully developed oak tree. • Human essence implied limits such human beings are neither beasts nor gods. • Nature is always so regardless of what human will, custom, or agreement are.

30. Problems of Politics and the State - Continued • Logos, or the capacity for reasoned speech and how this enables us to think, judge, and make moral decisions is essential to human nature. • The law must be based upon the common good. • Politics enables human beings to cultivate logos. • Politics ministers to the life of the mind since that life deals with the highest, unchanging, and eternal things.

31. What Is the Common Good? Perhaps the common good of the political community can be illustrated by an analogy of a rowboat that develops a leak. The common good of all is served by making decisions, combining resources, setting priorities to fix the leak before the boat sinks. The common good also dictates that anyone who attempts to undermine the enterprise must be prevented from doing so through coercion if necessary. (This is a view that both Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas share.)

32. Aristotle’s Understanding of Nature (Physis) Essential characteristic – The essence of something that makes it what it is. This essential characteristic is discovered by logos or reasoned speech. Terminal and peculiar excellence of a thing: The developed form of that thing, its terminal excellence, the objective perfection of that things character-that is, its highest manifestation. The terminal and peculiar excellence of a thing is not necessarily what that thing actually is in its present condition, but how it ought to be in its perfected state.

33. Aristotle’s Understanding of Nature (Physis) - Continued Limitation on being: The limits or boundaries that distinguish one thing from another. Universal: Unchangeable, objective, timeless. Distinct from convention: Not merely the product of custom or human will or prejudice.

34. Man Is a Political Animal, From Politics, Book I, Chapter 2 Now , that man is more of a political animal than bees or an other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech… The power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

35. Nature of Politics and the Role of the State Aristotle’s Ethics examines a human being’s capacity or incapacity for self-governance. Ethics requires us to rule ourselves by an objective standard of right and wrong. Human happiness and flourishing require a high level of physical security, stable family life, friendships, education, and the enterprise of politics.

36. Question for Reflection What is the American sense of the good life that is the basis of our regime and political organization of office? Does the American sense of the good life tend to promote or undermine the public interest?

37. Nature of Politics and the Role of the State - Continued • Aristotle had collected and classified 158 regimes or constitutions. • The city is a reflection of the inner purposes of its citizens. • Politic I, Chapter 2 deals with economics or management of the household. • Discussion of what is sufficient for the development of the human soul • Parental rule (royal rule) is a good that protects children from their unreasonable state. • Constitutional rule defines the relationship between husband and wife

38. The Polis as the Most Comprehensive Community From Politics, Book I, Chapters 1-4 When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end.

39. Nature of Politics and the Role of the State - Continued • Two Kinds of Slavery: • Slaves by law – Anyone captured by war even if they had the capability to govern themselves could become a slave by law. • Slaves by nature – A person lacking the capability of self-governance and requiring rule by others would be a slave by nature. • Difficult, dirty, dangerous work necessary for society’s survival created slavery in the ancient world. Aristotle speculated this institution could be done away with if machines could be invented to do this work.

40. Aristotle On Slavery, From Politics, Book I, Chapters 5-6 We see then that there is some foundation for this difference of opinion, and that all are not either slaves by nature or freeman by nature, and also that there is in some cases a marked distinction between the two classes, rendering it expedient and right for the one to be slaves and the others to be masters: the one practicing obedience, the other exercising authority and lordship which nature intended them to have. The abuse of this authority is injurious to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are the same, and the slave is a part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame. Hence, where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the reverse is true.

41. Question for Reflection Does Aristotle’s distinction between natural and conventional slaves cast doubt on the moral legitimacy of slavery as it was actually practiced in Athens? Has modern technology made the natural slave obsolete?

42. Nature of Politics and the Role of the State - Continued Aristotle criticized Plato’s community of wives and children as a tragedy of the commons. A citizen is ready to rule and be ruled. Law is reason without passion and is necessary to coerce the unruly. Justice is the virtue of human relationships and requires us to treat equals equally and unequals unequally.

43. Aristotle’s Critique of Plato, From Politics, Book II, Chapter 1-3 That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.

44. Nature of Politics and the Role of the State - Continued • Book V of Aristotle’s Ethics divides justice into two: • Legal Justice – any act that could affect others could be a proper object of law. • Special Justice: • Commutative justice – rendering what was due. • Distributive justice – rendering what is due in proportion to what is born for or contributed to the community. • Friendship is more important than justice for a polity

45. Aristotle’s View of Justice When a decision has to be made about awarding a Stradivarius violin-the rarest and very best kind of Italian Renaissance violins-what would be a just basis for determining who should receive it? Should the decision be based on ability to play? Family connections? Or talent alone? For Aristotle, what would it mean to treat equals equally and unequals unequally concerning talent for playing the violin? Using the principle, what do you think Aristotle’s position would be concerning affirmative action in higher education, which justifies special preferences for historically discriminated-against minorities?

46. The Six Forms of Regimes

47. The Best Possible Regime - Continued • The best regime could be an actual regime. • The polity would be the practically best regime since it was a mixed regime that included aristocratic and democratic elements. • Envy and greed are balanced in the mixed regime. • The mature man, spoudaios, plays a role in balancing these forces through the practice of the practical virtue of prudence.

48. The Best Possible Regime - Continued • A large middle class is also an important feature of the best regime. • The middle class would be a golden mean between the masses (envy) and the oligarchs (greed). • The mixed regime was favored by Cicero, Polybius, Aquinas, Montesquieu, and the American founders.

49. Middle Class/Mixed Regime, From Politics, Book IV, Chapters 8-11 …Wherefore the city which is composed of middle class-citizens is necessarily best constituted in respect of the elements of which we say the fabric of the state naturally consists. And this is the class of citizens which is most secure in a state, for they do not, like the poor, covet their neighbors’ goods; nor do others covet theirs, as the poor covet the goods of the rich; and they neither plot against others, nor are themselves plotted against others, nor are themselves plotted against, they pass through life safely. Wisely then did Phocylides pray – “Many things are best in the mean; I desire to be of a middle condition in my city.”

50. The Best Possible Regime - Continued Leisure for the higher things is a component of the best state. Aristotle states, “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only: if life only were the object, slaves and brute animals might form a state, but they cannot, for they have no share in happiness or in a life of free choice.”