The Golden Age of Philosophy
III. The Proms School
One day in 366 B.C., a young man came to Plato's talented academy, and his talent of the past and the present suddenly calmed down a class of full-fledged talents, and even plato, who was more than a year old, had to look at him with admiration and immediately accepted him as a disciple. This taciturn and well-mannered young man was aristotle, the greatest Greek philosopher of the future. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a physician from the Macedonian kingdom of northern Greece. At the age of 18, he went south to Athens under the name of Plato and studied with him for 20 years. After Plato's death, Aristotle did not want to stay in the academy, so he went out to travel the world. By chance, Aristotle was appreciated by the king of Macedon and was summoned to the palace to become a teacher for the 13-year-old prince Alexander. Aristotle's tutelage seems to have done little to the rough-natured, ferocious lion-like prince, though he sometimes respected Aristotle as if he were a father. Three years later, Alexander succeeded to the throne and immediately led a large army to conquer the west, unifying the Greek city-states and establishing the Alexander Empire spanning three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Aristotle, who was not very enthusiastic about the expansion of the war, saw that his political ideas could not be realized, and finally left Alexandria and returned to Athens, founding a school called Lucion, engaged in teaching and research activities.
The biggest difference from today's cramming classroom education is that Aristotle liked to walk on the densely lined paths while talking and discussing various academic issues with his disciples, so that people could increase their knowledge and gain knowledge in a leisurely state of mind. Later people called Aristotle's school the "School of The Getaways". Aristotle spent the most pleasant 13 years of his life at the Lycham School, and left hundreds of works for future generations, although some historians believe that some of them were not written by him, but the notes and lecture notes compiled by his disciples, etc., but because they belong to his name, and people can not verify, so they have to admit that they are his works. He studied a very wide range of fields, such as philosophy, aesthetics, logic, ethics, political science, history, rhetoric, physics, psychology, astronomy, biology, mathematics, etc. all left his footprints of exploration, in many fields have been pioneering and innovative, he is the first person to systematically study and sort out formal logic, the classification of science is also his first, he also pays great attention to experiments, has sent people to Europe, Asia, Africa three continents to conduct scientific investigations, collect a large number of animals, He also dissected more than 300 kinds of animal specimens by hand, and compiled them into a "Zoology" accordingly. Aristotle was a polymath who had never been seen before or since, and a well-deserved encyclopedic figure. In contrast to the idealist Plato, Aristotle was a realist. He never regarded himself as a messenger of God like a teacher, he was down-to-earth, married and had children, reproduced like ordinary people, and paid attention to human order. Plato did not regard slaves as human beings at all, and with the style of a great lord, Aristotle, although a son of nobility, was friendly to servants and slaves in the house, and later liberated them all as free men. This difference in style of life may indeed be closely related to the difference in their thinking.
Aristotle studied at Plato's academy for 20 years, and one might well imagine this as a carefree time: Look! What a romantic and wonderful picture it is for a brilliant master of thought and a brilliant disciple, like a loving peasant couple, working hand in hand in a blossoming philosophical garden. However, the reality is as we Chinese proverb: "One mountain cannot accommodate two tigers". If you think about it, can two geniuses of equal intelligence and different temperaments really get along like glue and paint day and night? Fortunately, the teacher was nearly fifty years older than the student, and Aristotle, who was still feathered, was still able to calmly commit himself to the famous Plato. But our old master didn't seem to be so polite, I don't know if he had already seen that the disciple had a backbone behind his head, and he sometimes mocked him. When the disciple first entered the garden, the teacher discovered his worldly talent, and indeed sincerely praised him as the wisdom star of the school. Aristotle was always generous in spending money on books, and his family collection was the first in Greece, and it is said that he founded the principle of book classification. Plato thus called his residence the "House of Reading", which seemed to be praise, but in fact mocked the nerdy of his disciples. In Plato's later years, a quarrel broke out between the two geniuses. In order to compete for the grace of philosophy, the ambitious student emerges with an "Oedipus complex" that rebels against his spiritual father, suggesting that philosophical wisdom will never die with Plato, while the elderly master likens his disciple to a foal who sucks his mother's milk dry and then throws himself at him.
When the teacher returned to heaven with his feet extended, the disciple stepped out of the garden gate with his legs, and set himself up as a portal, facing south and the king. We don't want to say that Aristotle was a disobedient disciple who would take revenge, but in fact he had great respect for his teacher. Their differences lie not only in temperament and intelligence, but also mainly from differences in thinking. One of his famous sayings reveals the truth: "I love my teacher, and I love the truth even more." The zeal for truth made it irresponsible for the camaraderie between teachers and students, and Plato's immortal death provided him with a great opportunity to show his talents. Aristotle's philosophy began with his reflection and critique of Plato's teachings. The "idea" is the central concept of Plato's philosophy, and Aristotle thus focuses on revealing the fallacy of this concept. In order to explain the reason for the existence of things, Plato created the "idea" thing, and decided that every kind of thing has an idea, and countless kinds of things are countless kinds of ideas. This approach is methodologically similar to Anaxagoras' "seed theory". This does not say anything except to tell people, "To plant melons to get melons, to plant beans to get beans," that there must be a father and a son, and that everything exists because of a certain idea. Introducing a number of ideas that have as many kinds of things does not help to understand the causes of things, but rather makes the events worse, just as doubling the number in addition to the already incalculable pile of numbers. Aristotle believed that the task of philosophy was to seek the causes of the existence, movement, and change of things, but Plato blocked this inquiry with the theory of ideas. Moreover, it makes no sense to think that everything exists "in part" ideas.
Things are concrete and prescriptive in many ways. For example, a cat, people can call it "white cat", "cat", or "animal", or even "object", so that according to Plato, the cat does not have several or even countless ideas? In addition, ideas are eternal and unchanging, so how can something that does not change lead to a change in all things? Aristotle pointed out to the point that the error of the theory of ideas is that it severs the relationship between individual things and general concepts, and transforms general concepts (universals) into things that can exist independently of concrete things, as if there were some kind of general houses in addition to concrete houses such as high-rise buildings and bungalow villas. Since the error was pointed out, it was necessary to correct it, and Aristotle therefore proposed his theory of substance in place of Plato's theory of ideas. Entities are concrete objects that exist independently of other things (such as ideas), that is, individual objects with shape, size, weight, and volume, a cat, a dog, a teacup, an apple, and Zhang Sanlisi, etc., are all entities; Aristotle also called concrete and individual things "first sexual entities", and regarded man's feelings (such as color, sound, taste, etc.) and concepts (abstract commonalities) to these entities as second-sex things, derived things, thus reducing the concept to something different from the first sexual entity." Secondary Sexual Entities". The secondary entity (i.e., the concept) cannot exist independently of the primary entity; it is subordinate to the latter.
For example, "man" (the second sexual entity) cannot exist without some specific person such as "Socrates" and "Plato" (the first sexual entity). To acknowledge the first existence of concrete things, that is, to exist without dependence on anything else, is to affirm the freedom of things and the inherent state of the whole world. This approach seems to have moved away from the ontological approach of seeking the essence (i.e., ontology) behind things since Thales and in favor of a natural materialism. However, the proposal of the first entity does not satisfy Aristotle's profound intellectual pursuit, and he still has to painstakingly explore the reasons for the formation, movement, change, and destruction of things, that is, to explain how the first entity exists and changes. When he plunged headlong into the problem, he was still an intrinsicist (i.e., an acknowledgment of the freeness and automaticity of things), but when he looked up at himself for thinking that he had solved the problem, he suddenly became an exogenous agent again, and seemed to be back on the path of ontology from which he had been withdrawn. Aristotle believed that anything must have four causes for formation and existence: material causes, formal causes, dynamic causes, and purpose causes. For example, when people build a house, they must first have raw materials such as bricks, tiles, sand, stone, ash and wood, which is the material cause, which is the origin and material cause of things; then, there needs to be a blueprint for the design of the house, that is, the form cause or the prototype, the original cause; secondly, there must be the builder of the house, which is the driving force that constitutes things, that is, the power source of the dynamic cause or the change of things; finally, there can be no purpose for building the house, that is, the purpose cause, the cause for the thing.
Of these four reasons, the material is passive, amorphous, like a piece of marble that has just been plucked from the mountains. The form is positive, it transforms the material from possibility to reality, just as marble is carved into a statue. Since the form of agency is the driving force for the material to become reality, it becomes the dynamic cause, and at the same time it is also what the material pursues in this transformation, that is, the purpose to be achieved, and therefore it becomes the cause of purpose. In this way, the formal cause, the dynamic cause and the purpose cause are one, and the two most basic causes of the "four causes" are the material cause and the form cause. Material cause is the basis of things, without which things cannot be constituted, just as there is no brick or tile to build a house, and form is the essence of things, and the nature of things is determined by it, just as design drawings determine the finished building. The process of forming things is the process of transforming materials into forms, and it is also the process of turning potential into reality. For example, the process of making mud into bricks is the process of transforming material (mud) into form (bricks with a certain shape), in which mud becomes a brick of reality as a potential brick. Therefore, this process is also manifested as the process of material pursuit of form, which is pursuing the realization of its own essence. Of course, Aristotle believed that the relationship between form and material is not fixed, but relative: relative to brick, mud is material, brick is form; but relative to the house, brick is material, house is form; house is the material that constitutes the city... Wouldn't it be endless to go back in time? Aristotle did not want to be so erratic, and he finally came up with a "pure form" to truncate this relativist line of thought and give an ultimate reason.
At the end of the infinite series of materials pursuing forms, there exists a form without any material, which takes everything in the world as the material and is the highest purpose of the pursuit of all things, it is the form of all forms, so it is "pure form". Pure form itself has nothing to pursue, it does not move, but it is the driving force that drives all things to move in pursuit of their own ends -- that is, the first driving force. Such a mysterious plaything is synonymous with God. This "pure form" seems to be only one step away from Plato's idea of "goodness", starting from the critique of Plato's idea, and finally to the pure form, Aristotle also fell from the simple natural materialism to the theological idealism, and what led him to this quagmire was the metaphysical line of thought that seduced Thales, Parmenides and others to seek the origin of the world, hoping to find a separate and independent entity from all things, this strong intellectual demand, which led him to extract "pure form" from all things. This most general concept was later used by medieval theologians in order to prove the existence of God. In contrast to Plato's "Soul Recall Theory" theory of cognition, Aristotle tit-for-tat proposed the "wax block theory" epistemology of feeling. He criticized Plato, pointing out that knowledge is not innate, cannot be acquired by memory, but can only come from feelings, which are the basis of knowledge. The human mind is like a "wax block", and things are like a gold ring, and the imprint of the gold ring on the wax block is the feeling. However, sensation can only feel the form of things, and cannot recognize the material of things, just as the wax block is printed with the pattern of a gold ring, not the gold ring itself. Therefore, perceptual knowledge must develop into rational knowledge, and only reason can know the most universal and general things, the reasons for knowing things.
However, as mentioned earlier, since he separated form from matter, he insisted that it is precisely because sensation can only touch the form of things and cannot penetrate deep into their materials, that it is impossible for man to know things themselves. Obviously, Aristotle's materialist reflectionism is incomplete, even contradictory. In addition to the construction of ontology and epistemology, Aristotle has also made pioneering contributions in the fields of logic, political science, ethics, and aesthetics, he is known as the "father of logic", and at the same time he is one of the founders of Western aesthetic thought, and his definition of "man is a political animal" and its political science system have an important impact on the development of Western political science. Aristotle, as a master of ancient ideas, was good at doing eclectic and mixed-up kung fu, and his character was not hurried, his words were extremely measured, and he was never swayed by passion, so we would not be surprised that he advocated the middle way of life. Aristotle famously said that "moderation is virtue," and his ethics was built around this central principle. What is moderation? Neither excessive nor insufficient, no more, no less, and between the two extremes, is the so-called "moderation" moderation. Aristotle also referred to the "mean" as the "intermediary," the midpoint referred to in mathematics. Of course, it is not an accurate average calculated from an exact number, but a variable that varies according to the different forces of different objects, depending on the specific force contrast situation. If a person eats too much in one pound and too little in half a pound, then how much to eat depends on what he thinks is appropriate. Moderate things are always good because they are moderate, and there are too many examples of this in life.
For example, a perfectly shaped person should not be tall or short, not fat or thin; eating too full and hurting, too little hungry stomach, moderately best; a piece of music, too exciting to appear rough, too low and become weak, should be depressed, high and low. In moral life, moderation is a virtue that should be promoted. Anger, fear, joy and pain and other passions are too little or too much is not good, a virtuous person should know how to control their emotions, do not be overjoyed, unrestrained. In the same way, excessive moderation leads to abstinence, laissez-faire and indulgence, and it is virtue to be able to control one's desires and demands appropriately; generosity as a virtue between waste and miserliness, modesty between rudeness and humility, self-esteem between arrogance and inferiority, and so on. In short, evil deeds are characterized by excesses and inadequacies, while virtues are manifested in moderation and moderation. Aristotle believed that the ethical principles of moderation were equally applicable to socio-political life. For example, it is not good for the rich or the poor to hold state power, and only the middle class can maintain better equality. When the rich are in power, they tend to be tyrannical, trample on the law, care for the lives of the masses, easily degenerate into personal dictatorship and tyrant rule, and may also attract jealousy and even murder because of too much wealth, resulting in the instability of the regime. On the contrary, the empty-handed destitute, unlearned and uncultured, are only suitable for being ruled by others and do not know how to govern the country, and once they have authority, they are likely to use it to plunder other people's property, or to evolve into an extreme democratic regime similar to the dictatorship of the mob, plunging society into chaos. Unlike these two classes, the middle class is the class most suitable for power.
They are the most numerous and powerful, with both intellectual upbringing and modest property, and neither excessive ambition to embezzle the wealth of others nor murdered for being too rich, so they are suitable as the ruling class that coordinates the interests of different classes. The middle class in power can prevent the emergence of tyrants, but also avoid falling into extreme democratization, get the approval of the poor and the rich, and make the country stable and prosperous. This political theory clearly stems from the position of the middle slaveholder in which Aristotle was involved. However, it did not seem to have been achieved at that time, but in some modern developed countries, the phenomenon of middle-class power has generally emerged. This is probably something that Aristotle did not expect! In fact, long before Aristotle, the way of moderation as an ethical principle had not yet been clearly put forward, but the concept of harmony it contained was already a tradition of Greek thought. The "Seven Sages" of the 7th century BC, a symbol of the highest wisdom in the early days of ancient Greece, carved the motto "Everything must be reversed" on the temple of Apollo in Delphi, thus laying the foundation for the tradition of moderation. Heraclitus's emphasis on the unity and harmony of opposites permeated this tradition, and Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato also attached great importance to the concept of harmony, and in fact followed this tradition. Aristotle distilled the ethical principles of the middle way from tradition, enabling people to grasp the essence of its ideas more clearly. The moral ideal of moderation is also an important principle of ancient Chinese moral philosophy, and Confucius's grandson Si wrote the book "Zhongyong", so when Western philosophy was introduced to China in modern times, scholars naturally translated Aristotle's principle as "The Way of Moderation".
As a disciple, although Aristotle inherited many things from his teacher, his ideas were very different from Plato's, and if the latter was an idealist, then the former can be regarded as a realist. Raphael, a great painter of the Renaissance, created a famous painting called the "School of Athens". Plato and Aristotle are at the center of the painting, surrounded by a group of disciples, Plato holding his book Timeo (1) in his left hand and pointing his right hand straight to the firmament; Aristotle with his right hand stretched forward and his famous work Ethics in his left hand. Plato's image shows that the real world he pursued was in heaven, and in the conceptual world, the "Thermoy" in his hand symbolized the profound influence of his cosmology on the West, and his dual division of the world left a deep mark on European thought. Aristotle's outstretched right hand means that he believes that the real world is the ordinary world in which people step on it, rather than the distant and unfathomable realm of ideas, while the book Ethics shows that he is more concerned with the moral problems of people in concrete lives. Nevertheless, Aristotle's system in the Middle Ages, like Plato's thought, was brought in by theologians to argue the doctrine of Christianity.
His "first mover" was proved to be God, his "cause of purpose" was used to explain God's purpose in creating heaven and earth, and his logic became a powerful theoretical tool for the fathers to carry out rigorous and cumbersome arguments. As the master of Greek culture, Aristotle not only integrated many of the teachings of his predecessors and formed his own unprecedented theories, but also made many pioneering contributions in the study of various specific sciences. Therefore, his influence on Western academic thought is unparalleled. For more than 1,000 years after his death, his authority was almost as unquestionable as that of the Christian Church, which in turn constituted an obstacle to the further development of science and philosophy in many ways, and since the 17th century, almost every advance of knowledge must have begun with an attack on some doctrine of Aristotle. This is exactly the fulfillment of the proverb: "The emergence of a genius tends to stifle the thinking of generations." But isn't it? Aristotle, the great genius, kept European culture in the shadow of his ideas for two thousand years, and it was not until modern times that philosophers appeared to rival him.