Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Aristotelianism
ARISTOTELIANISM, or PERIPATETICISM, the doctrine of philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotle attempted to steer a medium course between the ultraidealism of his master Plato, and the low sensationalism of the physical school of Elea. His genius was as wide as nature. He keenly combated the ideal theory of Plato, or that which expounded the deity as holding in himself the archetypal ideas after which the world was fashioned, and which it was the business of reason and science to discover. But while denying these ideas of his master, he nevertheless agreed with him in the view that knowledge contains an element radically distinct from sensation. He also differed from the Eleatics and the Epicureans, inasmuch as he denied that sensation could account for the whole of knowledge; but maintained, with them, that without this sensation, knowledge would be impossible. The celebrated maxim that "there is nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the sense," if not Aristotle's, at least well expresses a side of his doctrine; but, when he insists upon the distinction between the necessary and the contingent, the absolute and the relative, he rises altogether above the sphere of sensation, and takes emphatically his place with reason. Philosophy, according to Aristotle, is properly science arising from the love of knowledge. There are
two sorts of knowledge: mediate, and immediate. From immediate knowledge, which we gain through the experience of particulars, we derive mediate knowledge, by means of argumentation, whose theory it is the office of logic to properly expound. Logic is, therefore, the instrument of all science; but only quoad formam, for it is experience which supplies the matter to be worked upon. The formal part of reasoning he accordingly expounds better than any man either before or since his time. He, indeed, created logic, and this system stands erect through the changes of centuries. He most profoundly bases his logic upon the laws of contradiction, and he even recognizes that of sufficient reason as a regulative principle in the evolution of truth. After logic, he took up all the sciences, rational, empirical, and mixed, except one alone, viz., history.
He seems to have divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics, or into speculative and practical knowledge. (1) Speculative philosophy contemplates the real order of things, irrespective of human control; practical philosophy discusses affairs voluntary and accidental. Real substances are either invariable, or variable; while sublunary matters are variable, and perishable; the deity alone is imperishable, and unchangeable. Do men pursue the real in an abstract way? Then, metaphysics and mathematics emerge. Do they pursue knowledge as to its objects? Then physics, cosmology, psychology, theology emerge. (2) Practical philosophy again comprehends ethics, politics, and economy. A word or two on each of these heads; and first of speculative philosophy.
1. Physics, or natural philosophy. Nature is the sum of all existences, which are disclosed to us by our perceptive faculties. The knowledge of nature is properly the knowledge of the laws of bodies in motion. Nature, cause, accident, end, change, infinitude, space, time, and motion, are included in this science. In his "Cosmology," Aristotle discusses astronomy, using that term in its widest signification. It appears to us moderns obscure and inconsistent, and is by no means satisfactory. Physiology is indebted to Aristotle for its first essay. The soul is, according to him, the active principle of organized life. It is distinct from the body, yet, considered as its form or entelechy, it is inseparable from it. Its faculties are production, nutrition, sensation, thought, and will or impulse.
2. The ruling idea of his practical philosophy was that of a sovereign good, and final end or aim of action. This final end he denominated happiness, which is the result of the perfect energies of the soul, and is the highest of which our nature is capable. It arises from the perfect exercise of reason, and is ordinarily called virtue. This he describes as the mean between two extremes, which is the character of nearly the whole of his philosophy. He distinguishes the moral virtues into seven cardinal ones, of which justice, in a sense, embraces all the rest. Under the head of right, he distinguishes that belonging to a family from that belonging to a city. A perfect unity of plan prevails throughout his morals, politics and economics. Both of the latter have for their object to show how this perfect virtue, already described, may be attained in the civil and domestic relationships, through a good constitution of the state and the household. The principle of the science of politics is expediency, and its perfection consists of suitableness of means to the end proposed. By this principle Aristotle proves the legality of slavery; and all education he refers to the ultimate end of political society.