ii. Oligarchy, aiming at the good of the few:
iii. Tyranny, aiming at the good of one.
Such is Aristotle’s practical philosophy, contained in his matured Nicomachean Ethics, and his unfinished Politics.
3. Production (ποίησις).—Production differs from practice in being an activity (ἐνέργεια; e.g. building) which is always a means to a work (ἔργον; e.g. a house) beyond itself. Productive science, or art, is an intellectual habit of true reasoning from appropriate principles, acquired from experiences, and applied to the production of the work which is the end of the art. All the arts are therefore at once rational and productive. They are either for necessity (e.g. medicine) or for occupation (e.g. poetry), the former being inferior to the latter. Rhetoric is a faculty on any subject of investigating what may be persuasive (πιθανόν), which is the work of no other art; its means are artificial and inartificial evidences (πίστεις), and, among artificial evidences, especially the logical arguments of example and enthymeme. Poetry is the art of producing representations; (1) in words, rhythm and harmony (ἁρμονία, “harmony” in the original sense); (2) of men like ourselves, or better as in tragedy, or worse as in comedy; (3) by means of narrative as in epic, or by action as in the drama. The cause of poetry is man’s instinct of representation and his love of representations caused by the pleasure of learning. Comedy is representation of men inferior in being ludicrous: epic is like tragedy a representation of superior men, but by means of narrative and unlimited in time: tragedy is a representation of an action superior and complete, in a day if possible, by means of action, and accomplishing by pity and fear the purgation of such passions (Poetics, 1449 b 24). Music is a part of moral education; and for this end we should use the most moral harmonies. But music has also other ends and uses, and on the whole four; namely amusement, virtue, occupation and purgation of the affections; for some men are liable more than others to pity and fear and enthusiasm, but from sacred melodies we see them, when they have heard those which act orgiastically on the soul, becoming settled by a kind of medicine and purgation (κάθαρσις), and being relieved with pleasure. Finally, art is not morality, because its end is always a work of art, not virtuous action: on the other hand, art is subordinate to morality, because all the ends of art are but means to the end of life, and therefore a work of art which offends against morality is opposed to the happiness and the good of man. Such is Aristotle’s productive science or art, contained in his Rhetoric and Poetics, compared with his Ethics and Politics.
Aristotle, even in this sketch of his system, shows himself to be the philosopher of facts, who can best of all men bear criticism; and indeed it must be confessed that he retained many errors of Platonism and laid himself open to the following objections. Two substances, being individuals, e.g. Socrates and Callias, are in no way the same, but only similar, even in essence, e.g. Socrates is one rational animal, Callias another. A universal, e.g. the species man, is not predicate of many individuals (ἓν κατὰ πολλῶν, Post. An. i. II), but a whole number of similar individuals, e.g. all men; and not a whole species, but only an individual, is a predicate of such individual, e.g. Socrates is a man, not all men, and one white thing, not all white things. Consequently, a species or genus is not a substance, as Aristotle says it is in the Categories (inconsistently with his own doctrine of substances), but a whole number of substances, e.g. all men, all animals. Similarly, the universal essence of a species is not one and the same as each individual essence, but is the whole number of similar individual essences of the similar individuals of the species, e.g. all rational animals. Consequently, the universal essence of a species of substances is not one and the same eternal essence in all the individuals of a species but only similar, and is not substance as Aristotle calls it in the Metaphysics, inconsistently with his own doctrine of substance, but is a whole number of similar substances, e.g. all rational animals which are what all men are. Hence again, the natural world of species and essences is not eternal, but only endures as long as there are individual substances. Hence, moreover, a natural substance or body as an efficient cause or force causes an effect on another, not by propagating one eternal essence of a species into the matter of the other, but so far as we really understand force, by their reciprocally preventing one another from occupying the same place at the same moment on account of the mutual resistance of any two bodies. The essence of a natural substance, e.g. wood, is not immateriate, but is the whole body as what it is. The matter of a natural substance is not a primary matter which is one indeterminate substratum of all natural substances, but is only one body as able to be changed by a force which is another substance able to change it, e.g. a seed becoming wood, wood becoming coal, &c. A natural substance or body, therefore, is not a heterogeneous compound of essence and matter, but is essence as what it is, matter as able passively to be changed, force as able actively to change. The simple bodies which are the matter of the rest are not terrestrial earth, water, air, fire, and a different celestial aether, but whatever elementary bodies natural science, starting anew from mechanics and chemistry, may determine to be the matter of all other bodies whatever. Nature does not aim at God as end, but God, thinking and willing ends, produces and acts on nature. Soul is not an immateriate essence of an organic body capable, but an immateriate conscious substance within an organic body. Sensation is not the reception of the selfsame essence of an external body, but one’s perception of one’s sentient organism as affected, and especially of its organs resisting one another, e.g. one’s lips, hands, &c., preventing one another from occupying the same place at the same moment within one’s organism. Intelligence does not differ from sense by having no bodily organ, but the nervous system is the bodily organ of both. Intelligence is not active intellect propagating universal essence in passive intellect, but only logical inference starting from sense, and both requiring nervous body and conscious soul. It is not always a true apprehension of essence, but often, especially in physical matter, such as sound or heat or light, takes superficial effects to be the essence of the thing. Aristotle did not altogether solve the question, What is, and scarcely solved at all the question, How do we know the external world?
We might continue to object. But at bottom there remains the fundamental position of Aristotelianism, that all things are substances, individuals separate though related; that some things are attributes, real only as being some individual substance somehow affected, or, as we should say, modified or determined; and that without individual substances there is nothing, and nothing universal apart from individuals. There remains too the consequence that there are different substances, separate from but related to one another; and these substances of three irreducible kinds, natural, supernatural, human. Aristotelianism has to be considered against the philosophy which preceded it and against the philosophy which has since followed it. Platonism preceded it, and was the metaphysical doctrine that all things are supernatural—forms, gods, souls. Idealism has since followed it, and is the metaphysical doctrine that all things are mind and states of mind. Aristotelianism intervenes between ancient Platonism and modern Idealism, and is the metaphysical doctrine that all things are substances, natural and supernatural and human. It is a philosophy of substantial things, standing as a via media between a philosophy of the supernatural and a philosophy of mind. There are three alternatives, which may be put as questions which every thinker must ask himself. Are the things which surround me in what I call the environment,—the men, the animals, the plants, the ground, the stones, the water, the air, the moon, the sun, the stars and God—are they shadows, unsubstantial things, as formerly Platonism made all things to be except the supernatural world of forms, gods and souls? Or are they, as modern Idealism says, mind and states of mind? Or are they really substances separate from, though related to, myself, who am also a substance? The Aristotelian answer is—“Yes, all things are substances, but not all supernatural, nor all mental; for some are natural substances, or bodies”; and by that answer Aristotelianism stands or falls.
Literature.—The Aristotelian philosophy is to be studied first in Aristotle’s works, which are the best commentaries on one another; the best complete edition is the Berlin edition (1831-1870), by Bekker and Brandis, in which also are the fragments collected by V. Rose, the scholia collected by Brandis, and the index compiled by Bonitz. After reading the remains of the Peripatetic school, the Greek commentators should be further studied in this edition. The Latin commentators, the Arabians and the schoolmen show how Aristotle has been the chief author of modern culture; while the vindication of modern independence comes out in his critics, the greatest of whom were Roger and Francis Bacon. Since the modern discovery of the science of motion by Galileo which changed natural science, and the modern revolution of philosophy by Descartes which changed metaphysics, the study of Aristotle has become less universal; but it did not die out, and received a fresh stimulus especially from Julius Pacius, who going back through G. Zabarella to the Arabians, and himself gifted with great logical powers, always deserves study in his editions of the Organon and the Physics and in his Doctrinae Peripateticae. In more recent times, as part of the growing conviction of the essentiality of everything Greek, Aristotle has received marked attention. In France there are the works of Cousin (1835), Félix Ravaisson, who wrote on the Metaphysics (1837-1846), and Barthélemy St Hilaire, who translated the Organon and other works (1844 seq.). In Germany there has been a host of commentaries, among which we may mention the Organon edited (1844-1846) by F. Th. Waitz (not so well as by Pacius), the De Anima edited (1833) by F.A. Trendelenburg and later by A. Torstrik, the Historia Animalium by H. Aubert and F. Wimmer (1868), the Ethics by K.L. Michelet (1827), the Metaphysics by A. Schwegler (1847) and (best of all) by H. Bonitz (1848), who is the most faithful of all commentators, because to great industry and acumen he adds the rare gift of confessing when he does not understand, and when he does not know what Aristotle might have thought. With Aristotle’s works before one, with the Index Aristotelicus, and the edition and translation of the Metaphysics by Bonitz on one side, and Zeller’s Die Philosophie der Griechen, ii. 2, “Aristoteles” (trans. by Costelloe and Muirhead), on the other side, one can go a considerable way towards understanding the foundations of Aristotelianism.
In England scholars tend to take up certain parts of Aristotle’s philosophy. Grote indeed intended to write a general account of Aristotle like that of Plato; but his Aristotle went little further than the logical writings. From Cambridge we have J.W. Blakesley’s Life of Aristotle, E.M. Cope’s Rhetoric, Dr Henry Jackson’s Nicomachean Ethics, v., S.H. Butcher’s Poetics, Hicks’s De Anima, J.E. Sandys’s Athenian Constitution, Jebb’s Rhetoric (ed. Sandys). Oxford in particular, since the beginning of the 19th century, has kept alive the study of Aristotle. E. Cardwell in his edition of the Nicomachean Ethics (1828) had the wisdom to found his text on the Laurentian Manuscript (Kb); E. Poste wrote translations of the Posterior Analytics and Sophistici Elenchi; R. Congreve edited the Politics; A. Grant edited the Nicomachean Ethics; E. Wallace translated and annotated the De Anima; B. Jowett translated the Politics; W.L. Newman has edited the Politics in four volumes; Dr Ogle has translated the De Partibus Animalium, with notes; R. Shute wrote a History of the Aristotelian Writings; Professor J.A. Stewart has written Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics; Professor J. Burnet has issued an annotated edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, and W.D. Ross has translated the Metaphysics. All these are, or were, Oxford men; and it remains to mention two others: I. Bywater, who as an Aristotelian scholar has done much for the improvement of Bekker’s text, especially of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Poetics; and F.G. Kenyon, who has the proud distinction of having been the first modern editor of the Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία.
(T. Ca.)