Who was Aristotle?

Aristotle was a student of Plato as he studied in his Academy for close to 20 years. There, he learned everything about Plato's ideas and then deviated away from them in most if not all cases. Here he was also exposed to all the works of Greek philosophers before him which he helped preserve by talking and writing about them. Soon after Plato's death, Aristotle left the Academy to tutor Alexander the Great for a few years.

Aristotle definitely left a mark on the conqueror Alexander and spurred him on his conquest to the east from Greece to Persia and then beyond. However, as fate would have it, as Aristotle disagreed with his teacher Plato, Alexander eventually disagreed with his teacher Aristotle even though there was respect between them.

Aristotle is responsible for bringing us Greek Philosophy pre-dating Socrates as much we know about them is because of the surviving works of Aristotle. He is responsible for influencing one of the most significant conquerors of the world. He is also responsible for developing new ideas on existence, causation, ethics, and politics that prompted Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas to call him "The Philosopher", Muslim philosophers like Al-Farabi to call him the First Teacher, and others assigning him the title of "The Scientist".

Aristotle also established syllogistic logic and formalized the discipline but this course is not going to go into much depth into logic itself. We will not be covering this one portion of Aristotle’s works, but there will still be a summary in the later articles.

Substance and Essence

Let us move directly to his metaphysics. Plato thought that when we talk about what exists, there are two things, the material object and the underlying form present in the World of Forms. Aristotle said scratch that, and let us start over.

What is Substance

Aristotle sought to find an underlying reality that exists independently. He found the word ousia or Substance. Officially, Substance is that which cannot be predicated of anything, or said to be in anything. Meaning, I cannot say that I have substance or the apple has substance. It is not something to have; it is what exists. So what exists? Obama exists, the tree outside your house exists, and the table I am working on exists. All these are substances. Specifically, these are primary substances. Moreover, the idea is that underneath these items, Obama, a tree, a house, and a table, is the same underlying reality, the same building block called substance.

Aristotle differentiated between two types of substances. Firstly, we have primary substances that are specific items in existence such as a particular person, plant, or thing. However, collectively we can collect all particular persons in the category "humans", all particular plants into the categories of "trees", "flowers", and "shrubs", and all particular tables in the category of "tables". These represent the categories into which particular things fit. These categories are called secondary substances.

Aristotle said that secondary substances are dependent on primary substances, unless a particular thing exists, it does not make sense to make an empty category. So secondary substances come second. A human has to exist first for the category of humans to exist.

To summarize, what exists are substances. There is no other way to talk about this. I do not have substance; I am substance. Anything that exists must be a substance. However, since "humans" and "trees" are also substances, even if secondary, that means substances do not have to be material. Therefore, for Aristotle abstract concepts also exist, but they are not stored in the world of forms like Plato thought.

Why is one substance different from the other?

You might have asked the following question, if the table and I are the same substance, why can I move around, and the table just sits there since the underlying reality is the same.

Here comes essence. Essence represents a set of qualities that defines the substance and makes it different from others. So all substances have essence. The differences in essence create the outer difference we see between people, plants, and things. To put simply, substance is the property-less barren building block of reality, think of atoms that just exist and are completely bland of all properties. Essence is the complete set of properties that overlays on top of building blocks to give the object material, shape, color, thought, and even purpose.

To clarify, substance itself does not even have a material nature; substance itself without essence cannot be grasped. By putting essence on top of it, substance becomes something identifiable like Obama, or a tree, or something immaterial such as the category of mammals.

Aristotle and The Three Types of Souls

We have substance as the underlying building block, could be material, could be immaterial, and then we have essence as the set of qualities that give that substance defining characteristics. One of these qualities then has to be the ability to think. Because again, humans and rocks have the same underlying substance.

Aristotle conceived that in those set of qualities is also the quality of ‘the type of soul a substance has.’ This only applies to primary substances, and only living beings.

First, we have the vegetative soul as part of the essence, which gives the substance the ability to grow and reproduce separating it from non-living things like rocks. Plants have this vegetative soul.

Second, we have the sensitive soul as part of the essence, which gives a substance the ability to sense, and perceive their surroundings through eyes, nose, ears etc. and then move in those surroundings. Animals have the vegetative soul allowing them to grow and reproduce and the sensitive soul to perceive their environment and be mobile.

Third, we have the rational soul as part of the essence, which gives a substance the ability to make judgements on right and wrong, make intellectual claims, and perceive a higher purpose.

There is going to be an underlying theme of philosopher trying to figure out why humans are special and so far our two answers are that Plato thought we humans have different forms and Aristotle though we had rational souls separate from sensitive souls.

Look at the nuance here. Aristotle obviously saw similarities between plants, animals, and humans as separated from rocks. Plants reproduce and need water and sustenance and so do animals and humans. This is a similarity. Animal and humans both have similar organs, reproductive desires, and a desire to move around the earth. This is a major similarity.

Therefore, Aristotle claimed that plants only have vegetative souls. Animals have both vegetative souls and sensitive souls to they can reproduce like plants but also move around. Lastly, Humans have all three souls, vegetative, sensitive, and rational.

This is a remarkable idea for a time that relates humans and animals. Two thousand years later, the theory of evolution will redefine the relation between humans and animals, trying to justify why there are similarities between animals and humans.

What are Aristotle's Four Causes?

So now that the metaphysics side is somewhat established with substances, essences, and souls, the next step is to build a criteria that can be used to fully describe an object. What I mean by that is, to define an object we need to list down all the qualities it has as part of its essence. This would be exhaustive.

Instead, Aristotle gave a system to summarize the main points of existence into four categories called the Four Causes. These four causes are, Material Cause, Formal Cause, Efficient Cause, and Final Cause.

Therefore, when you have to understand a human, a tree, or a table, instead of randomly listing all their qualities, ask yourself four questions to fit into these causes.

MATERIAL CAUSE: First, ask what this is made up of. A table might be made up of plastic or wood, a tree of hardwood or softwood, and a man of flesh or machine parts.

FORMAL CAUSE: Second, ask what is the design or structure behind this thing, or, what the blueprint behind it is. Formal Cause is the design behind the object in question. This is the first similarity that comes from Plato. Design, structure, or blueprint is also just a fancy way of saying "Form". However, a key distinction here is that the forms Aristotle wants you to describe are not the ideal forms of that type of thing. Instead, the Formal Cause of a table is its design, and its design could be long like a dining table or a small cute bedside table. It is not the ideal form like Plato would have wanted.

To clarify, Aristotle thought that forms are unique and intrinsic to each object instead of sitting separately and applying to all objects of that type, each table has their own form unless they are identical. The form of a table would be its size, shape, number of legs, etc. For a man, it would be arms, legs, head, organs, skin, hair, and so on. For a tree, it would be roots, trunks, branches, leaves, fruits, and so on.

EFFICIENT CAUSE: The third question to ask is how this thing was made. This makes up the efficient cause. Other formulations would be "Who made this thing or how was this thing made?" and "What brought this thing into existence?"

For a table the efficient cause might be the carpenter and the tools that were involved in making it.

What is the efficient cause of a human? This is where it gets interesting. Let us take the example of the famous football superstar Lionel Messi. What brought Messi into existence? The answer should include all the things that shaped Messi to his current form. First, there is the biological part of human reproduction, and then comes the nature and nurture that raised him up, fed him, and then comes the moral and intellectual aspect of his life and he was given formal and informal education that transformed him.

Here is how to understand it, the efficient cause includes all external stimuli that “cause” change in the object. This would include the biological and social factors. In 2021, Messi had a long list of social factors from his careers and personal life that informed and shaped him. Then, winning the World Cup in 2022 would have changed him. Now this is subjective, but if winning the world cup changed his person in any sort of way, it becomes another part of the total efficient cause of Messi.

FINAL CAUSE: Finally, we get to the fourth question, what is the purpose of this substance? Everybody asks, “How are you?” nobody asks, “Why are you?” Except Aristotle.

What is the purpose of a table? To hold things. That is the final cause of that substance. Interestingly enough, none of these answers should be subjective. What is the material of a table? There is an objective answer. What is its structure or form of this table? We can objectively define its shape. What caused this table? We can tell the entire history of the table. Then, what is the purpose of this substance? Is there an objective answer to this question?

Existentialism is a modern philosophical approach that we will learn by the end of the course. A sneak peek from it is that we create our own purpose. The answer for why something exists is completely subjective in the modern world. 2300 years ago, that was not the case. Aristotle thought that like the other three causes, the final cause must also have an objective answer.

A table has the final cause of holding things. If you use it to sit on it, the table does not fully realize its purpose. Similarly, all humans have the following objective purpose according to Aristotle, "to achieve Eudaimonia" which for now let us simplify to living a good and virtuous life.

Eudaimonia leads directly to his ethics, which we will look at later. Let us finish his metaphysics first.

Teleology and Objectivity

Every philosopher has some first principles to which they are bound. For Plato it was the belief that forms must exist as abstract and immaterial things in the World of Forms. For Aristotle it was that all things have an objective purpose.

More than that, Aristotle believed in the dynamic movement of whole of reality, that everything has a purpose and the whole of reality is going somewhere. The next three articles are going to be about these three things, “why is the reality moving and where it is heading”, “what is Eudaimonia”, and “how to organize a political state”.

For all of these things, Aristotle not only believed that objective answers exist, but also that we can get to those objective answers. Aristotle mostly uses empiricism to get to those answers.

Aristotle's Empiricism

To get to the material cause and the formal cause, you need to use your senses to see and feel the object. Cut it open if necessary. That is the basis of empiricism where you rely on sense data to inform you.

The efficient cause is also established through empiricism where you need to use your senses to figure out the history of an object.

However, the final cause is tricky. Aristotle says that humans have the purpose of achieving Eudaimonia, which translates to living a good, fulfilling, and flourishing life. How does Aristotle come to this conclusion and is this rationalism or empiricism.

For context, Plato was rationalist because his internal thoughts, logic, combined with his innate ideas, would lead him to answer such a question. But it can be said that Aristotle 'infers' final causes by considering the purpose or function of things based on how they interact with and contribute to the 'natural order'. Meaning, Aristotle uses his senses to see how people and animals behave in the world. Then based on their actions make judgements about what sort of actions contribute to a better life and which are worse off. Al judgements and conclusions first require new sense data to get into Aristotle's brain so that he can process it.

Making decisions based on inference from observations, such as seeing people interact with the world and coming up with a conclusion on how people live, comes under empiricism and not rationalism.

That is all for this lecture which serves as the basis of all of Aristotle's philosophy.