Aristotle

1. TOPIC: ARISTOTLE
PRESENTED BY:
USMAN YASIR & CO
PRESENTED TO:
DR. TAHIR KHAN FAROOQUI
DEPARTMENT: DERA
UNIVERSITY OF OKARA

2. ARISTOTLE
NAME: Aristotle
OCCUPATION: philosopher
BIRTH DATE: c. 384 BCE
DEATH DATE: c. 322 BCE
EDUCATION: Plato's Academy, Lyceum
PLACE OF BIRTH: Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece
PLACE OF DEATH: Chalcis, Euboea, Greece

3.  He was a Greek philosopher and polymath. Also a
student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.
 His writings cover many subjects,
including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, musi
c, logic, rhetoric, linguistics,
politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.
 Aristotle's writings were the first to create a
comprehensive system of Western philosophy,
encompassing ethics,
aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.
BRIEF HISTORY

4.  Empiricism is a theory of knowledge which
states that knowledge comes only or primarily
from sensory experience.
 Aristotle is an empiricist because he thinks that
all knowledge comes to human beings from
and through sensation. Our minds start out as
blank slates and from sensation we get our
ideas or the so-called "contents" of our minds.
Aristotle as an empiricist

5.  Metaphysics (questions related to existence)
 Epistemology (questions related to
knowledge)
 Logic (theory of correct reasoning)
 Values (Ethics)
Branches of philosophy

6.  Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy
concerned with the study of "first principles"
and "being" In other words, Metaphysics is the
study of the most general aspects of reality,
such as substance, identity, the nature of the
mind, and free will. It is a study of nature and
the nature of the world in which man lives.
Aristotle and Metaphysics

7.  Aristotle’s Metaphysics has as its central theme
on an inquiry into how substance may be
defined as a category of being. According to
Aristotle, the being of any individual thing is
primarily defined by what it is, i.e. by its
substance. Substance is both essence (form)
and substratum (matter), and may combine
form and matter.
Cont’d

8. kinds of causes of things:
 the formal cause (the form of the thing)
 the material cause (what it is made of)
 the efficient cause (what made it)
 and the final cause (its purpose or end).
Cont’d

9.  Aristotle divided his Metaphysics into three parts
 Ontology: The study of being and existence; includes the
definition and classification of entities, physical or mental,
the nature of their properties, and the nature of change.
 Theology: The study of a God or gods; involves many
topics, including among others the nature of religion and
the world, existence of the divine, questions about
Creation, and the numerous religious or spiritual issues
that concern humankind in general.
 Universal science: The study of first principles, such as the
law of noncontradiction (logic), which Aristotle believed
were the foundation of all other inquiries.
Cont’d

10.  Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a
branch of philosophy that involves
systematizing, defending and recommending
concepts of right and wrong conduct.
 Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical
rather than theoretical study, i.e., one aimed at
becoming good and doing good rather than
knowing for its own sake.
Aristotle and Ethics

11.  Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the
proper function of a thing. An eye is only a
good eye in so much as it can see, because the
proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle
reasoned that humans must have a function
specific to humans, and that this function must
be an activity of the soul in accordance with
reason.
Cont’d

12.  The term "logic" came from the Greek
word logos, which is sometimes translated as
"sentence", "discourse", "reason", "rule", and
"ratio“.
 logic as the study of the principles of correct
reasoning.
 actually quite a controversial matter.
Logic

13.  Aristotle was the first to systematically study and
catalogue the rules of correct logical reasoning
 His logic is important because it dominated all
western thought, including scientific thought, until
the 19th
century CE; it also had enormous influence
on the development of Jewish, Christian and Muslim
philosophy. It is still influential today.
 Although other types of logical systems exist,
Aristotelian logic is still a powerful tool used to
teach reasoning skills in numerous academic
disciplines.
Logic and Aristotle

14.  In his logic, Aristotle explicitly established three laws
of logical thought.
Law # 1: law of identity: “each thing is inseparable
from itself and its being one just meant this” A
thing is just itself and not something else: e.g. a
soccer ball is a soccer ball and not a kitchen stove.
* Sometimes this is expressed as A = A.
 Note: the fact that we can use a book for a doorstop does
not mean it is not a book. Its use does not contradict the
law of identity. What a thing is and how it is used are two
different issues.
Cont’d

15. Law # 2: the law of contradiction: “the same attribute
cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the
same subject and in the same respect” . E.g. my cup
cannot be blue and not-blue at the same time
• A cannot be A and not-A at the same time in the same
way/respect.
Note: things may have and not have the same attributes in
different ways: e.g. man is the most intelligent creature
compared to animals but he is not intelligent compared to God.
So man is both intelligent (compared to animals) and not
intelligent (compared to God). There is no contradiction because
‘intelligent’ is being used in different ways.
Cont’d

16. Law # 3: the law of the excluded middle or excluded
third : “there cannot be an intermediate between two
contradictories, but of one subject we must either
affirm or deny any one predicate [statement]” .
• A statement about a topic must either be true or
false. It cannot be both, i.e. there is no middle
between them. It cannot be neither true nor false.
• Note: It is either true that Socrates is mortal or it is not true that
he is not mortal. He is not both. Nor can he be neither mortal
nor immortal.
• Another example: It is either true that there is a rubber duck in
my bath tub or it is not true. Nor can we say neither of these
choices is true.
Cont’d

17.  Epistemology is derived from the two Greek
words “episteme “knowledge and “logos”
science, and means the science of knowledge.
As employed in philosophy the word means the
science of the certitude of human knowledge.
Epistemology

18.  Aristotle defines soul as the Form of a natural body
that has the potential to possess life. This body then
must be furnished with organs: lungs, stomach etc.
Life then is the process of growth and nutrition.
 Sensation requires an external stimulus, to move the
potentiality to an actuality. In this case, the perceptive
organ, i.e. the eye, is potentially what the object is
actually. When having a sensation, the eye, which is
only logically distinct from the “seeing” of the eye, is
one in quality with the object of sight. So when looking
at a green wall, the eye becomes qualitatively green.
Aristotle and Epistemology

19.  Aristotle’s writings have been incredibly
influential, shaping philosophical, scientific,
and political thought for centuries.
 He made important contributions to logic,
criticism, physics, biology, mathematics,
psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and politics.
 He is considered one of the most important
thinkers in Western history.
 He was a student of Plato for twenty years but
is famous for rejecting Plato’s theory of forms.
SUMMARY

20. Thank You