Excerpt from Leonard Peikoffs History of Philosophy course, lecture 5: Aristotle Aristotle – Neither Skeptic Nor Mystic What about the possibility of a philosophy that would advocate one reality? There is one reality—this one. Objective knowledge is possible, of this world gained by logic operating on the senses. There is such a thing as an objective ethics; its standard is man’s happiness on earth, to be achieved by being rational here on earth. Plato was a great philosophic genius on three counts: • His originality • The depth and grandeur of his power of abstraction • His capacity for systematic integration Aristotle also was a great philosophic genius on the same three counts. However, where Plato had predecessors to draw from, Aristotle being the first of his approach was truly an innovator. There is a fourth bullet point for Aristotle which Plato did not share: • Aristotle’s philosophy, in its essentials, is true. This makes Aristotle a phenomenon without precedent in the history of thought. Dante, many centuries later, called Aristotle, “The Master of Them That Know.” In the medieval period when Aristotle’s work was re-discovered he was simply referred to as, “The Philosopher.” Aristotelianism is philosophy as a rational science versus philosophy as a rationalization for subjective whims or mystic trances. No matter his errors, and there were many, his is the philosophy on which every major human achievement has been built and without which none would have been possible. Whether you take the development of modern science, or the industrial revolution, or the creation of the United States of America. As Ayn Rand observed, the history of the West has, in a certain way, been a duel between Plato and Aristotle across all the centuries. Whenever Platonism was dominant, the results on earth were mysticism, regression, brutality, and suffering; whenever, and to the extent that Aristotelianism was dominant the results were reason, progress, freedom, human happiness.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 05:24:15 +0000