Greece & Rome · 335 BCE – c. 200 CE (and long after)
Aristotelianism
Forms are not in a separate heaven but in things themselves; to understand anything is to grasp its matter, form, source of change and purpose.
What is it for a thing to be, and how do we explain it?
Aristotle studied in Plato’s Academy for about twenty years but came to doubt that separate Forms explain the living, changing world he loved to observe. After tutoring the young Alexander the Great, he founded the Lyceum in Athens in 335 BCE, where the “Peripatetics” pursued research in logic, biology, physics, ethics and politics.
A separate Form of Horse explains nothing about why this foal grows into a horse. Better to say that each substance is matter shaped by form, explained by four causes: what it is made of, what it is, what started it, and what it is for. Humans also have a function, rational activity, and living it out excellently over a whole life is happiness (eudaimonia).
- Substances are matter informed by form; forms are in things.
- Explanation needs four causes, including purpose.
- Happiness is virtuous rational activity over a whole life.
His logic ruled for two thousand years, and through Arabic and Latin commentators he became simply “the Philosopher” for Averroes and Aquinas; virtue ethics and biology still draw on him.
Thinkers
384–322 BCEAristotlePlato’s student, Alexander’s tutor, founder of the Lyceumc. 371–287 BCETheophrastusAristotle’s successor at the Lyceum and founder of botanyKey texts
Where it came from
Grew out ofPlatonismAristotle kept Plato’s search for universal essences but rejected separately existing Forms, placing form within individual things.
What it led to
Borrowed byNeoplatonismPlotinus built Aristotle’s self-thinking divine intellect into his second level, Intellect, and Porphyry made Aristotle’s logic the standard introduction to Platonism.Borrowed by
Patristic & Augustinian philosophyBoethius translated and commented on Aristotle’s logical works, which for six centuries were nearly all of Aristotle the Latin West knew.Borrowed by
ScholasticismThe recovery of Aristotle’s full corpus in the 12th–13th centuries gave the schools their logic, physics and metaphysics.Carried on by
Falsafa (Arabic Aristotelianism)The falāsifa saw themselves as continuing Aristotle, “the First Teacher”, working from Arabic translations of nearly his whole corpus.Opposed by
British empiricismBacon’s Novum Organum (“new instrument”) was named against Aristotle’s logical Organon, replacing syllogism with methodical induction from experiment.Opposed by
Early analytic philosophyFrege’s logic of quantifiers replaced Aristotle’s subject–predicate syllogistic, which had ruled logic for two thousand years.Carried on by
Virtue ethics revivalThe revival returned directly to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimonia, human flourishing.