Aristotelian thought

Aristotelian thought is or represents a good part of the backbone of Western thought.. It was consolidated in antiquity and accompanied the entire Middle Ages. In fact, not even modern currents have separated themselves from his philosophical revolution, which covered very diverse fields.

Aristotle He was a great thinker who is considered the father of formal logic, as well as an epistemologist, astronomer, naturalist, political theorist and literary critic. There is practically no area of ​​human knowledge in which Aristotelian thought has not left a mark.

It is believed that this philosopher wrote around 200 treatises, but only 31 of these survive. He lived between 384 BC and 322 BC. He was Plato’s most brilliant disciple and the living example that the student surpasses the teacher. Let’s look at some of the central approaches of Aristotelian thought.

Aristotelian thought and logic

Aristotle was one of the first to study logic and state its principles. He started from a unit called a syllogism: a form of reasoning that is based on two arguments from which a conclusion is drawn. The most classic example of a syllogism is: “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Consequently, Socrates is mortal.”

Aristotelian thought also introduced the principle of non-contradiction. This points out that an affirmation and its negation cannot be true at the same time and in the same sense. For example, “I am alive or I am dead”, in relation to life in the biological sense.

Likewise, Aristotle He discovered that there are apparently true reasonings, but that they are ultimately false; He called these “logical fallacies.”. A typical example of a fallacy is “whenever it rains, the ground in the yard gets wet. “The ground in the patio is wet, that is, it is raining.”

Aristotle departed from Plato’s teachings. The latter claimed that appearances were deceptive and that the truth could only be reached through ideas. Meanwhile, Aristotelian thought points out that reality can only be grasped through the senses and that appearance is variable, but essence is immutable.

A discussion between matter and form that would take as reference, for example, the philosophy of Kant to confront the ideas of empiricists such as David Hume.

Science and astronomy

For Aristotle, the universe was made up of five elements: water and earth -which tend to move towards the center of the universe-, fire and air -which tend to move away from the center of the universe- and ether, the substance that surrounds the universe. Based on this very particular periodic table, he managed to get very close to several principles of physics and chemistry.

This philosopher also He was the first to try to organize the sciences into several groups. For him, there were three great divisions in knowledge. The first was logic, which is the study of rational thought; then there is theoretical philosophy, composed of physics, metaphysics and mathematics; Finally there is practical philosophy, which includes politics and ethics.

Aristotle was also the creator of the geocentric theory, which dominated throughout the Middle Ages.. He pointed out that the Earth was a static planet and that the Sun, the planets and the stars revolved around it. He said that the universe was spherical and had limits. Although his approach was erroneous, it nevertheless contained a seed for understanding celestial mechanics.

Ethics and politics

Ethics is one of the axes of Aristotelian thought. For the Greek wise man, the virtues were divided into two groups: the ethical and the dianoetic.. The first serve to dominate the irrational part of the soul; the latter are the fruit of rationality.

Among the ethical virtues would be strength, temperance and justice. The dianoetic virtues would be prudence and intelligence. On the other hand, Those properties are virtues only if they remain in the middle pointwhich Aristotle calls “golden mediocrity.”

Regarding political theory, Aristotelian thought proposes six possible forms of government. Three of them represent the positive facet of a regime, while the other three are the degraded form of each system. From that point of view, the forms of government are the following:

Monarchy, or government of a single person. In its degraded form it is tyranny.Aristocracy, or government of a group of exemplary citizens. In its decadent form it is oligarchy, or rule by a group without merit.Democracy, or government of many people. In its degraded facet it is demagogy or imposition of the whim of the majority.

Undoubtedly, Aristotle has been one of the most brilliant minds that humanity has produced.. Aristotelian thought has been questioned, rejected and overcome, but it established a rationality that is at the foundations of our civilization.

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