Aristotle in Plain and Simple English

Aristotle also made it clear that happiness is paramount, and that friendship, wealth, and power are fundamental – and that our happiness is impaired if we lack certain advantages. For example, a man who is born extremely ugly or has lost children and close friends early in life is severely lacking in the opportunity to be happy. This matters, according to Aristotle, because the potential to achieve the highest ‘good’ will be diminished if certain attributes are inadequate. The unfortunate man who is ugly, childless and friendless will find fewer ways of taking part in virtuous activity than the more fortunate. This seems to imply that Aristotle thinks our chances of achieving ‘eudaimonia’ depend on our whole fortune – but he elsewhere insists that the highest good (virtuous activity) does not simply come our way through chance – we share much of the responsibility for obtaining and using the virtues.

For Aristotle, there are two types of excellences of virtues – those of character and excellences of reasoning

Aristotle differs from his teacher Plato since Plato held the belief that our souls existed before we are born, and simply join us at birth, only to leave us when we die. But for Aristotle the pragmatist – souls could no more survive our bodies that such attributes as our skills and character. ‘Clearly, those principles whose actuality is corporeal cannot exist without a body – for example, walking without feet; hence they cannot come from outside – for they can come in neither alone (for they are inseparable), nor in some body.’

The term soul or ‘psuché as used by Aristotle does not match what we think of as a ‘soul’, however. He applies it to all living beings from prawns to pansies, to men and Gods. Rather than anything spiritual we should regard Aristotle’s ‘soul’ as more as a ‘force’ or ‘animator’ of a being – it is what gives an entity its life

The matter of substance – or the ‘substratum’ – is the stuff out of which it is composed. For example, the matter of the house are the bricks and timber – that is, whatever constitutes the ‘potential’ house, while the ‘form’ or ‘essence’ of the house is the ‘actual’ house. Thus, he brings into play the notion of ‘potentiality’ or what a thing is capable of doing or becoming, if the conditions are right. For example, the seed of a plant is potentially a plant, and the eyes possess the potentiality of sight

However, for Aristotle the scientist, primary substances are the actual physical entities we see around us – ‘this man’ or ‘that tree’. What makes them a substance is their primary form or essence.

For Plato reality could not be found in the world we perceive – the objects we see are only appearances, derived from the world of ideas or forms which are out of our scope. A particular cat is only ‘a cat’ as such, because there is an ‘ideal’ of ‘cattiness’ somewhere out from whence the cat takes its form

But Plato is the same man, remaining one substance throughout his life whether old or young – and this is a quality which only substances can have. Plato is somehow the object which persists throughout the change. ‘All change is a change of something.’

Aristotle believed that the universe was divided into two parts, the terrestrial and the celestial, and that all things in the terrestrial (Earth) region, were composed of four substances: earth, fire, air and water.

Aristotle presumed that all knowledge must be derived from things which are already known. So reasoning via syllogism uses a formal definition of validity which permits the deduction of new truths from already established principles. The aim is to provide an account of why things happen in a certain way, based on what we know already