A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

The individual consists of two aspects: (1) conceptual being, and (2) perceptual change.

These two aspects always stand in a relationship.

That relationship is developing purpose.

Here is the key to the teaching of Aristotle that seems to open the doors of its many chambers. In his metaphysics reality is the individual developing from possibility to actuality. In physics individual phenomena get a reality through their development from lower to higher types. In psychology the individual person is real when the particulars, the physiological and psychological states, develop toward the soul, which is their truth. So, too, in the great system of logic in which Aristotle was pioneer, he is simply trying to give the particular judgment a meaning by showing its linkage to the universal judgment. Everywhere the starting-point of Aristotle is the perceptual fact. Everywhere his purpose is to reëstablish it by showing its relation to abiding conception in the individual.

It may be well to remark, however, that Aristotle does not altogether succeed in constructing a consistent theory. In spite of his criticism of Plato’s transcendent Ideas, in many places Aristotle does not overcome Plato’s dualism. Frequently he differs from Plato more in words than in meaning. We shall observe some of his inconsistencies in their place. We shall see that Aristotle as he meant to be was different from Aristotle as he was. Aristotle as he meant to be—Aristotle as the opponent of Plato’s dualism—develops a philosophy from a single fundamental principle. Aristotle as he was, reverts at many critical points to Plato’s dualism.

Aristotle’s principle of development may appear atfirst blush very much like the modern principle of evolution. As a matter of fact it was very different. In all Greek philosophy after Socrates the study of morals was fundamental. The ideal of Socrates, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, and the later Schools was a moral ideal. Being moral it was fixed, and it fixed all the changes of life to it as a centre. Nature was to the Greek a museum of types oscillating around a perfect form. There was no evolution in the sense of progress. There was development within the individual—the boy becomes a man, the seed becomes a flower; but there was no evolution from genus to genus. Indeed, any variation of the individual from its type was considered a defect.

Aristotle’s Logic. Aristotle felt that there must be a science of the methods of science; and so successful was he in its formulation that it has practically remained as he transmitted it. We are struck by the way in which he divided science into the special sciences, each with its well-defined field. It was perfectly natural that he should also, with his great power of abstract reasoning, discuss the body of rules for legitimate thinking. In science there must be an art of investigation, just as in rhetoric there is an art of persuasion. At an early period these logical writings were collected under the name Organon, because the Lyceum regarded them so intimately connected with scientific procedure as to be the instrument or “organ” of all knowledge. Certain parts of Aristotle’s Organon are of doubtful genuineness. The important sections are the Analytics, a masterly logical groundwork of the conclusion and proof, and the Topics, which treats of the inductive methods of probability. Aristotle thereforemade logic a preliminary and separate study, as it should be. It became the preface to his scientific work.

We shall briefly discuss Aristotle’s logic, because it is an exemplification of his general philosophical principle. Among the subjects in the history of philosophy, logic is perhaps the only one that has had no internal history. Aristotle was the pioneer in the subject. He left it so finished that scarcely any changes of consequence could be made in it. The external history of the Aristotelian logic has, however, been notable. A portion of the Categories and De Interpretatione was most influential in the history of the Middle Ages. The Logic had been misunderstood and misapplied by Aristotle’s own School, so that when it came into the hands of the Schoolmen it had acquired the reputation of being only an abstract formal logic. As thus interpreted it was used by the Schoolmen and attacked by the philosophers of the Renaissance. Such a view of Aristotle’s logic is unjust to the author. He had conceived logic in its wholeness to be the true method to be used in investigating practical scientific problems.

The Sophists had proposed rules of practical value in the study of individual cases; Socrates had tried to fix upon some universal principle as the basis of knowledge; Aristotle made a comprehensive study of the regular forms of thought and the rules that govern the arrangement of these forms in right thinking. In true Platonic fashion he conceived physical events in nature to be due to some universal cause. If, therefore, logical procedure be scientific, it must follow the ways of nature: logic must deduce particular perceptions from some universal idea. The necessary thought-relations in whichthe particular stands will then appear. Deduction of the particular from the universal is the true scientific method, used in the explanation of nature-phenomena; so in proof the same deductive reasoning should be used. In scientific study we are trying to show the conceptual necessity of an empirical fact; in proof we are showing the conceptual necessity of the particular term. Whether we are explaining an event or proving a conclusion, we are employing the same logical process. Aristotle thus regarded his logic as the true scientific method for practical service, not as a merely abstract discipline in verbal hair-splitting.

Socrates and Plato confined themselves to the study of the concept or simple term. Aristotle also studied the concept. Indeed, he tried to find out what concepts are fundamental in our thinking, so fundamental that they are our thought reduced to its lowest terms. He names ten of these fundamental concepts and calls them categories. But Aristotle goes farther than Socrates and Plato, and makes his real point of departure the judgment. A single term does not express truth. For truth we must have two terms connected by the verb “is,” i. e. some relation must be shown between them. This is a judgment. Reasoning is still more complex. It is the putting together or showing the relation between two judgments. This process takes the form of the syllogism. The first task of deduction is to present the laws of the syllogism. These will then be the laws of scientific investigation. According to these, particulars can be derived with certainty from universal propositions, provided such universals are established. The syllogism is in the form of two premises and a derived conclusion. It contains three terms. The problem is to infer, fromthe relation that one of these terms bears to the two other terms, what the two bear to each other. The principle employed is that of subordination; and the differentiations of the syllogism can be many, depending on the quality and quantity of the premises and the distribution of the middle term. The working of the syllogism in inference has a certainty so great that Aristotle called it apodictic.