INTRODUCTION TO ARISTOTLE

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1. Taking Stock
   • Philosophy as rational, fundamental, inconclusive
     • ideas have histories
     • presuppositions (Plato's "method of hypotheses")
     • frames of thought

   • Defining themes of Greek Philosophy
     • the One (the stuff of the universes)
     • the Many (change)
     • Oppositions
     • Form
       • structures
       • ratios
       • goals (things "striving to become")
     • Life:
       • gods
       • spirit
       • reason
       • the place of human beings

2. Aristotle
   • clues to his outlook
     • collecting & sorting
     • concrete individuals
     • middle course (SOPHROSYNE)

   • Aristotle's achievement in logic & methodology
     • variables
     • argument forms
     • theory of the Syllogism

   • "Wisdom:" knowledge & intuition (NOUS) of "the most valuable things," including:
     • univeral principles & causes: i.e., "being qua being, " or metaphysics
     • the soul (PSYCHE)
     • the gods

   • Aristotle's approach to science:
     • The Four Causes (Cp. ARCHE)
       • material: that from which
       • efficient: immediate source of motion or change
       • formal: the essence of the thing
       • final: that for the sake of which
     • change: from potentiality (DYNAMIS) to actuality (ENERGEIA.) Two kinds of potentiality:
       • receptivity (the ability to receive change)
       • potency (disposition: tendency or preparedeness to become active)

   • Aristotle on the soul
     • the parts of the soul
     • the sense organs
     • NOUS
     • the chain of being

   • Aristotle's metaphysics
     • the science of being qua being
     • OUSIA (being, "substance")
     • metapysics as theology
     • Unmoved Mover

   • Aristotle on the Good life
     • ethics
       • pleasure & happiness (EUDAIMONIA)
       • friendship
       • the life worth living
     • politics: the POLIS as presupposition of a satisfactory life

Revised November 9, 1996


Index to Study Guides to Aristotle

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