And he approaches them from the point of view of the ratio of matter and form. If the form everywhere plays the role of a driving principle, then the soul, naturally, turns out to be a form, and the body - the "matter" of an organic being. More precisely, Aristotle defined the soul as "the first entelechy of the organic body" (On the Soul, II, 1, 412 b), that is, the vital principle of the body, which moves it and builds it as its instrument. Therefore, the purposeful activity of nature is most clearly revealed in living bodies.

Aristotle. Sculpture by Lysippos

According to its functions, the soul is divided into three kinds. The functions of nutrition and reproduction, available in any living creature, form a nutritious, or vegetable, soul. Feeling and movement inherent in animals form the sentient soul, or animal. Finally, thinking is carried out as the activity of an intelligent soul - it belongs only to man. The law is as follows: the higher functions, and accordingly the souls, cannot exist without the lower ones, while the latter, without the former, can.

Little concerned with plants, Aristotle writes much more about animals. The body of an animal, he believes, is made up of small particles - homeomerism (their difference from the atoms of Democritus is that homeomerism can endlessly divide). Of particular importance are the masses of "meat", acting, according to Aristotle, as carriers of sensations - the nerves were still unknown to him. The direct bearer of life - "soul" - is "pneuma", a source of vital warmth, a body akin to ether and passing into the body of a child from the father's seed. The organ that carries pneuma is the heart, in which blood is digested from the nutrients delivered through the veins. An important place in the teaching of animals is occupied by their classification, description of the development of the embryo, various methods of animal origin, including spontaneous generation, and so on.

A person who occupies the highest place in nature, according to Aristotle, differs from other animals by the presence of reason (rational soul). Both the structure of his soul and the structure of his body correspond to this higher position. It affects upright posture, the presence of organs of labor and speech, in the greatest ratio of the volume of the brain to the body, in the abundance of "vital warmth", etc. Cognition is the activity of the sentient and rational soul of a person. According to Aristotle, sensation or perception is a change that is made by the perceived body in the soul through the body of the perceiver. Only the shape of the object is perceived, and not its matter, so an imprint of the shape of a ring is reproduced on the wax, while the wax remains wax, and the ring remains a ring. A separate feeling perceives only a single one, and all such perception is true. General qualities, according to Aristotle, are no longer perceived by a separate feeling, but by all of them. The "general feeling" that arises as a result of their interaction is no longer a simple sum of individual perceptions, but a specially organized mental action, with the help of which one can compare and distinguish individual perceptions, correlate perceptions and their objects, be aware of the attitude of perception to the subject, that is, . to ourselves. The general feeling allows to reveal unity and plurality, size, form and time, peace and movement of objects. It can be true or false.

Aristotle, head of a statue by Lysippos

Perception of the soul directly. But if the movement that caused it in the organ of feeling persists longer than the perception itself, and causes a repetition of the sensory image in the absence of the object, then we have an act of imagination (fantasy). If the imaginary is recognized as a copy of the previous perception, then we have a memory. According to Aristotle, the functions of the animal (feeling) soul also include sleep, pleasure and displeasure, desire and disgust, etc. An intelligent soul adds reason or thinking (noys) to them. The ability to think precedes real thinking. Hence the image of the mind as an "empty board" on which thinking writes the results of its activities. Aristotle believes that thinking is always accompanied by sensory images, and therefore two sides are distinguished in the mind: the active mind, or the creative principle of the mind, everything that creates, and the mind that perceives and suffers, which can become everything (see: On the Soul, III, 5 , 430 a). The active mind is likened to the light, which “makes the colors that exist in the possibility real” (ibid.). In other words, the perceiving mind is "matter", the active mind is "form"; the perceiving - "possibility", and the active - "reality", entelechy.

This leads to one significant ambiguity regarding the posthumous fate of the soul. Aristotle believes that the vegetable and animal (nourishing and sensing) souls are unconditionally mortal, decaying together with the body. Apparently, the perceiving mind also arises with the body and perishes with it. But the creative mind is divine and therefore eternal. But does this mean the individual immortality of the soul? If Plato is already getting the idea of ​​individual immortality, then Aristotle's answer is completely unclear. The higher part cannot exist without the lower ones, which means that the creative mind cannot exist without the plant and animal principles of the soul and without the perceiving mind. And yet we find in Aristotle's work "On the Soul" the following statement: "nothing prevents some parts of the soul from being separated from the body" (ibid., II, 1, 413 a). And even more definitely: "the ability of sensation is impossible without the body, the mind exists separately from it" (ibid., III, 4, 429 b). In other words, the creative mind, being the entelechy in relation to the perceiver, is not the entelechy of the body, which means that it can exist separately from the body.

The underdevelopment and inconsistency of Aristotle's teachings in the creative mind served as the basis for numerous and ambiguous interpretations. Only in one aspect is its meaning, perhaps, clear. From the existence of the eternal and divine creative mind, Aristotle deduces the deity itself or the divine mind. Discussing the relationship of the soul to its objects, Aristotle wrote: “In the soul, the sensuous perceiving and cognitive abilities are potentially these objects, both sensuously cognizable and intelligible; [the soul] must be either these objects or their forms. But the objects themselves disappear, because the stone is not in the soul, but [only] its form. Thus, the soul is like a hand. After all, the hand is a tool of tools, and the mind is the form of forms, while sensation is the form of perceptible qualities ”(On the Soul, III, 8, 431 b). It follows from the above statement that the creative mind, the object and content of which are forms and only forms, is not only free and independent of real objects, but is logically primary in relation to them. He "creates" things by thinking them.

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PLAN

1. Aristotle

2. Aristotle on the soul

What abilities does the soul have?

5. Literature

1. Aristotle

Aristotle was born in 384. BC in the Greek city of Stagira. The deep provincial origin of Aristotle was compensated by the fact that he was the son of the famous physician Nicomachus. To be a doctor in ancient Greece meant to occupy a large social position, and Nicomachus was known throughout Macedonia. Aristotle, according to eyewitnesses, was a nondescript person from his youth. Thin, had thin legs, small eyes and lisped. But he loved to get dressed, wore several expensive rings and did an unusual hairstyle. Growing up in the family of a doctor, and therefore practicing medicine himself, Aristotle, however, did not become a professional doctor. But medicine remained for him for his whole life such a native and understandable area that later in his most difficult philosophical treatises he gives explanations using examples from medical practice. Arriving from the north of Greece, Aristotle entered the school of Plato at a very early age (at the age of 17). He was at first a principled Platonist, and later departed from strict Platonism. The first works of Aristotle within the walls of the Platonic Academy, where he enters, are distinguished by his penchant for rhetoric, which he subsequently studied all his life. In 364 BC. Aristotle meets Plato, and they communicated until Plato's death, i.e. for 17 years. Aristotle seemed to Plato as a zealous horse, which must be restrained by a bridle. Some ancient sources directly speak not only of the discrepancy, but even of hostility between the two philosophers. Plato strongly disapproved of Aristotle's inherent demeanor and dress. Aristotle paid great attention to his appearance, and Plato believed that this was unacceptable to a true philosopher. But Aristotle apparently also boldly attacked Plato, which later led to the creation of Aristotle's own school. For all these disputes, the good-natured Plato said that "Aristotle kicks me like a sucker foal to his mother." ... The name of Aristotle in world literature is directly related to the name of Plato. Let's try to consider the philosophy of Aristotle and relate it to the philosophy of Plato. The central idea of ​​Plato's philosophy - eidos - passed to Aristotle almost entirely. Neither Plato nor Aristotle thinks things without their ideas, or eidos. The whole philosophy of Socrates, and then of Plato, arose from practice and vital necessity, going into a purely theoretical area only in its highest manifestation - in the doctrine of ideas. According to Plato, the world of things, perceived through the senses, is not the world of truly existing: sensible things are continuously born and perish, change and move, there is nothing permanent, lasting, perfect and true in them. And yet things are not completely separate from the truly existing, they are all somehow involved in it. Namely: everything that is truly essential in them, Plato argues, sensible things owe their reasons. These reasons are forms of things that are not perceived by the senses, comprehended only by the mind, incorporeal and insensible. Plato calls them “species” or much less often “ideas.” “Types”, “ideas” are the forms of things visible to the mind. To each class of objects of the sensible world, for example, to the class of "horses" there corresponds in the disembodied world a certain "kind", or "idea" - "kind" of a horse, "idea" of a horse. This "view" can no longer be comprehended by the senses, like an ordinary horse, but can only be contemplated by the mind, moreover, by the mind, well prepared for such comprehension. These "ideas" or, "eidos" are not born, do not die, do not pass into any other state. There is a "kingdom of ideas"

1. Ideas of the highest in value categories of being. This includes concepts such as beauty, justice, truth.

2. Movement of physical phenomena - ideas of movement, rest, light, sound, etc.

3. Ideas of the categories of beings - the ideas of an animal, a person.

4. Ideas for objects produced by human efforts - the ideas of a table, bed, etc.

5. Ideas of science - ideas of numbers, equality, relationships. Principles of the existence of ideas:

a) the idea is made by the idea;

b) the idea is a model, looking at which, Demiur created the world of things;

c) the idea is the goal to which everything that exists aspires to the highest good. The world of things and the world of ideas are united by the soul of the Cosmos. It makes ideas present in things and vice versa. Between the world of things and the world of ideas - deity - Demiur.

Aristotle strongly criticizes the fundamental separation of the idea of ​​a thing from the thing itself. The idea of ​​a thing, according to Aristotle, is within the very thing. The thesis about the presence of the idea of ​​a thing inside the thing itself is that basic and fundamental, which is the main difference between the Platonic and Aristotelian schools. The idea of ​​a thing, according to Aristotle, is necessarily some kind of commonality, i.e. eidos in every sense. But the eidos of a thing is not only the generalization of its individual elements. He is also something singular. This singularity of the given eidos of a thing differs from other eidos, and, consequently, from any other things. The eidos of a thing, being a kind of community and a kind of singularity, is at the same time a certain kind of wholeness. It is absolutely impossible to separate the general from the individual, the individual from the general. Those. by removing a single moment of wholeness, by doing so we eliminate the wholeness itself. Having removed, for example, the roof from a house, the house ceases to be integral, and, in fact, ceases to be a house. Aristotle expounded his doctrine of a thing as an organism many times and in different ways. He identifies four causes, or four principles of any thing understood as an organism. The first principle is that the eidos of a thing is not at all its behind the celestial essence, but such its essence, which is not in it itself and without which it is generally impossible to understand what a given thing is. The second principle concerns matter and form. It seems that matter and form are a usual and understandable opposition to everyone, and there seems to be nothing to talk about here. For example, the material of this table is wood. And the shape of this table is the kind that wood materials have taken, processed for a specific purpose. It seems that everything here is very simple and straightforward. Nevertheless, this problem was one of the deepest philosophical problems of Aristotle. For Aristotle's material is not just material. Aristotle's material already has its own form. Everything, even the most chaotic, disorderly, shapeless and chaotic, already has its own form. Clouds and clouds during a thunderstorm look absolutely shapeless. However, if the cloud did not really have any form, then how could it be for us some kind of knowable thing? Hence, Aristotle concludes that the matter of a thing is only the very possibility of its design, and this possibility is infinitely diverse. And nevertheless, without matter, eidos would remain only its abstract meaning, without any embodiment of this thought in reality. Only a complete identification of the matter of a thing with its eidos makes a thing a thing. Plato also knew how to distinguish eidos and matter, and identified them quite well, but what Aristotle did in this area is almost, one might say, a revolution in relation to Platonism. Of those philosophers of antiquity who distinguished form and matter, Aristotle was the deepest and most subtle identifier of them. Matter is not eidos in general, nor any eidos in particular. According to Aristotle, only the cosmic spheres above the Moon are eidetically complete. And what happens inside the lunar sphere, in the sublunar sphere, is always partial and imperfect. and sometimes quite ugly. If where is Aristotle and acts as a principled materialist, i.e. preaches matter as a principle of the living reality of the world existing around us, then only in his doctrine of matter in the form of the kingdom of chance. According to Aristotle, motion is a completely specific category and cannot be reduced to anything else. Thus, according to Aristotle, motion is the same basic category as matter and as form. Aristotle raises the question of the possibility of the very category of movement. He identified four principles of the existence of every thing as an organism: matter, form, and acting cause. The last principle of the existence of any thing according to Aristotle is the goal. The goal is a specific category, not reducible to anything else. Aristotle, with his theory of the four principle structure of a thing, proceeded solely from the fact that each thing is the result of creativity. And it doesn't matter if it's a good piece or a bad one. All the diversity of the material world, according to Aristotle, is based on different ratios of eidos (form, or idea) and matter in their cause-and-effect embodiment. The transition to the world of animate beings, we see in Aristotle and here in the foreground of the four principle structure. Aristotle distinguishes between three types of soul - plant, sentient (animal) and rational. An intelligent soul also has its own eidos, and its own matter, and a causal - purposeful orientation. The eidos of a living body is the principle of its life, i.e. his soul. And every soul that moves the body also has its own eidos, which Aristotle calls Mind. So the soul, according to Aristotle, is nothing more than the energy of the Mind. And the Mind is the eidos of all eidos. According to Aristotle, Mind is the highest degree of being. This Mind, being the highest degree of being as a whole, is in Aristotle, in short, the ultimate concept in general. He is the “eidos of eidos.” The mind taken by itself is already bound by nothing and depends only on itself. In this sense, he is eternally motionless. Aristotle believes that Mind, despite all the freedom from mental matter, contains its own purely mental matter, without which it would not be a work of art. No philosophers before Aristotle admitted the existence of matter in the Mind. No one so sharply and fundamentally opposed matter and Mind, as Aristotle did. Aristotle created three concepts of the Mind - the prime mover. The first concept is purely platonic. It boils down to the fact that Mind is the highest and ultimate being. The mind is nothing more than the kingdom of the gods - the ideas of the highest, or above the cosmic, lower, or stellar. In the second concept. Aristotle's mind is thinking, and thinking of himself, i.e. "thinking thinking". The mind contains its own mental matter, which gives it the opportunity to be eternal beauty (because beauty is the ideal coincidence of idea and matter). Aristotle's third concept is very different from Plato's. In Plato, the cosmos is ruled by the World Soul. For Aristotle, this is the Mind, which moves decisively everything, and therefore it is life as eternal energy. "If Mind, according to Aristotle, is a universal goal, and therefore everything loves him, then he himself, being a goal is not something that there is no one at all. loves, but since everything in general loves him, the Mind, undoubtedly, all the more must love itself. " Aristotle said: "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer." In his zoological treatises, Aristotle identifies and characterizes more than 400 animal species. He described 158 different Greek and non-Greek legislations. The entire V book of his main treatise "Metaphysics" is specially devoted to philosophical terminology, and each term appears in 5 - 6 meanings. Aristotle was a strong man. And when it turned out that there was nowhere to go, and they could deal with him, as before Socrates, he, as one might suppose, took poison. Thus ended the life of Aristotle. And yet his searches, his whole life testify to the unprecedented courage of a great man, for whom even death itself became an act of wisdom and imperturbable calmness.

2. ARISTOTLE "On the Soul"

What tasks of cognition of the soul sets Aristotle

First of all, it is necessary to determine to what kind (of being) the soul belongs and what it is; is it a certain something; Does it refer to what exists in the possibility. or, rather, there is some kind of entelechy - (Greek entelechia - having a goal in itself) - in Aristotle - purposefulness, purposefulness as a driving force).

It is also necessary to find out whether the soul is composed of parts or not and whether all souls are homogeneous or not. And the ate is not homogeneous, whether they differ from each other in kind or in kind. This needs to be clarified because those who speak about the soul and investigate it, apparently, consider only the human soul. it should not elude us whether one definition of the soul is like. for example, the definition of a living being is one, or the soul of each kind has a special definition, such as the soul of a horse, dog, man, God (a living being as a general is either something or something subsequent, the same is the case with any other expressed community. ) Further, if there is not a multitude of souls, but only parts of the soul, then the question arises: is it necessary to first investigate the whole soul or its parts? it is also difficult to determine with respect to parts which of them differ in nature and whether it is necessary to first investigate the parts or their types of activity (for example, thinking or mind, sensation or the ability of sensation). And so it is with respect to the other faculties of the soul. If, however, it is necessary to first investigate the types of its activity, then again it would be possible to raise the question of whether one should first consider what is opposed to them, for example: the sensation felt before the ability, the thinkable before the thinking ability.

What is the ratio of soul and movement

Aristotle understood the soul as a moving principle, but argued that the soul itself cannot move.

Aristotle distinguished four types of movement (change):

(1.) occurrence and destruction; (2) a qualitative change, i.e. property change;

(3) quantitative change, i.e. increase and decrease (growth, decrease); (4) moving, changing place. Actually, he attributes changes of the form (2) - (4) to movement, since a change in the form (1) is rather just a measurement consisting in the transition of one thing into another. Meanwhile, the philosopher argues, the emergence and annihilation take place relative to the essence; for her, "there is no movement, since nothing that exists is opposed to her."

Since there are four types of movements, the soul must have either one of these movements, or several, or all. If the soul does not move in an incidental way, then movement should be inherent in it by nature, and if movement, then place: after all, all the named movements occur in some place. But if the essence of the soul is that. that she moves herself. then the movement will be inherent in it in a non-incidental way.

If movement is inherent in the soul by nature. then it could be set in motion by an outside force, and if by an outside force, then by nature. It is the same with peace. After all, where a thing strives from nature, there it is at rest by nature. And in the same way: where does the thing move under the influence of an outside force. in the same place, under the influence of an outside force, she is at rest. Aristotle could not accurately explain the movement of the soul in its state of rest under the influence of an external force.

We say that the soul grieves, rejoices, dares, experiences fear, then that it is angry. feels, reflects. All this seems to be movements. And so one might think that the soul itself is moving. But this is not necessary at all. After all, if you grieve, rejoice, reflect on these movements, and all this means to be set in motion, then such a movement is caused by the soul (for example, anger or fear - because the heart starts moving like this; thinking, perhaps, means such a movement of the heart or something else; moreover, in some cases there is a movement, in others - a transformation). Meanwhile, to say that the soul is angry is the same thing. what to say - the soul weaves or builds a house. After all, it’s probably better not to talk. that the soul empathizes, or learns, or reflects. And this does not mean that the movement is in the soul. but means that it sometimes comes to her, then comes from her; so, the perception from such and such things reaches her. and recollection - from the soul to movements or to their remnants in the sense organs.

From the above, it is obvious that the soul cannot move. And if it does not move at all, then it is clear that it cannot move itself.

What is the ratio of soul and body

The soul is a cause as that whence movement, as a goal and as the essence of animate bodies.

The essence includes, firstly, matter, which in itself is not a definite something; secondly, the form or image. Thanks to which it is already called a certain something, and thirdly, that which consists of matter and form. Matter is a possibility, while form is entelechy, and precisely in a double sense, in this. as knowledge. and in this. as an activity of contemplation.

Apparently, mainly bodies, and, moreover, natural essences of essence. for they are the principles of all other bodies. Of the natural bodies, some are endowed, others are not. We call all food life. the growth and decline of the body. having a foundation in himself. In this way, every natural body. participle of life. there is an essence, moreover, the essence is composite.

But although it is such a body, i.e. endowed with life, it cannot be a soul. After all, the body is something belonging to the substrate, but rather itself is the substrate and matter. Thus, the soul is necessarily an essence in the sense of the form of a natural body that possesses life in possibility. Essence (as a form) is entelechy; therefore, the soul is the entelechy of such a body.

Entelechy, on the other hand, has a double meaning: either such as knowledge, or such as the activity of contemplation; it is quite obvious that the soul is entelechy in the sense of knowledge. Indeed, due to the presence of the soul, there are both sleep and wakefulness, and wakefulness is similar to the activity of contemplation, sleep is with possession, but without action. For one and the same person, knowledge in its origin precedes the activity of contemplation.

That is why the soul is the first entelechy of the natural body, which possesses life in possibility. And such a body can only be a body with organs. Therefore, one should not ask whether the soul and the body are one thing, just as one should not ask this about any matter and what matter it is. After all, although the one and being have different meanings, but entelechy is one and being in the proper sense.

The soul is the essence of being and the form (logos) of the natural body, which in itself has the beginning of movement and rest. This also needs to be considered in relation to body parts. What has been said about a part of the body must be applied to the entire living body. As part refers to part, so in a similar way the totality of sensations refers to the entire sensing body as sensing.

But what is alive in possibility is not that. what is devoid of a soul, but what possesses it. Just as the pupil and sight make up the eye, so the soul and body make up the living entity.

The soul is inseparable from the body; it is also clear that some part of it is inseparable if the soul has parts by nature, for some parts of the soul are the entelechy of the bodily parts. But of course, nothing prevents some parts of the soul from being separated from the body, since they are not the entelechy of any body in the same sense. in which shipman there is the entelechy of the ship.

A person who occupies the highest place in nature differs from other animals in the presence of a mind (rational soul). Both the structure of his soul and the structure of his body correspond to this higher position. It affects upright posture, the presence of organs of labor and speech, in the greatest ratio of the volume of the brain to the body, in the abundance of "vital warmth", etc. cognition is the activity of the sentient and rational soul of man. Sensation or perception is a change that is made by the perceived body in the soul through the body of the perceiver.

What kind of existence does the soul belong to?

Aristotle defined the soul as "the first entelechy of the organic body", i.e. the vital principle of the body, which moves it and builds it as its instrument. Therefore, the purposeful activity of nature is most clearly revealed in living bodies. According to its functions, the soul is divided into three kinds. The function of nutrition and reproduction, available in any living creature, forms a nutritious, or vegetable, soul. Feeling and movement inherent in animals. form the sentient soul, or animal. Finally, thinking is carried out as the activity of an intelligent soul - it belongs to man. The law is as follows: the higher functions, and accordingly the souls, cannot exist without the lower ones, while the latter can do without the first.

What parts of the soul does Aristotle highlight?

The soul is distinguished by the plant faculty, the sensory faculty, the thinking faculty, and movement. And whether each of these abilities is a soul or a part of a soul, and if a part of a soul, then is it so that each is separable only mentally or also spatially - some of these questions are easy to answer, while others cause difficulties. Just like in some plants, if you cut them, the parts continue to live separately from each other, as if in each such plant there is one soul in reality (entelechy), and in the possibility - many, just as we see that something similar occurs in dissected insects and in relation to other distinctive properties of the soul. Namely: each of the parts has a sensation and the ability to move in space; and if there is a sensation, then there is also an aspiration. After all, where there is sensation, there is sadness and joy, and where they are, there must be desire.

As for the mind and the ability to speculate, there is still no evidence, but it seems that they are a different kind of soul and that only these abilities can exist separately, as eternal - separate from the transitory.

And with regard to other parts of the soul, from what has been said, it is obvious that they cannot be separated from each other.

6. What abilities does the soul have?

The soul possesses the plant capacity, the capacity of sensation, the capacity for reflection and spatial movement.

Plants have only a vegetative ability, other creatures have both this ability and the ability to sense; and if the ability of sensation, then the ability of striving. After all, striving is desire, passion and will; all animals have at least one sense - touch. And who has sensation; that is also inherent in experiencing pleasure and sorrow, and pleasant and painful, and to whom all this is inherent, the desire is also inherent in that: after all, desire is the desire for the pleasant.

3. Basic philosophical views

If things do exist, then ideas of things necessarily exist; so that without an idea a thing does not exist, or the thing itself remains unknowable. There is no fundamental separation of the idea of ​​a thing from the thing itself. The idea of ​​a thing is within the thing itself. The idea of ​​a thing, being something singular, as the thing itself is singular, at the same time is a generalization of all parts of a thing, is a kind of generality. The commonality of a thing necessarily exists in each separate thing, and it exists each time in a different way; but this means that the commonality of a thing embraces all its separate parts and therefore is the wholeness of a thing. The integrity of a thing, when with the removal of one part of a thing, the whole thing also perishes, there is an organism of a thing, in contrast to the mechanism of a thing, when a thing remains integral, despite any removal of its individual parts and their replacement with other parts. An organism is such a wholeness of a thing when there is one or several such parts in which the integrity is present substantively. The four-principle structure of every thing as an organism:

1. Eidos (idea) of a thing is its essence, which is in itself, and without which it is generally impossible to understand what a given thing is.

2. The matter of a thing is only the very possibility of its design, and this possibility is infinitely varied. The eidos of a thing is not its matter, and the matter of a thing is not its eidos. Matter is only the possibility of realizing eidos.

3. If things move, and for the movement there must be some definite reason for the movement, then this means that it is necessary to recognize a certain self-movement, a certain reason that is the reason for itself. There is a self-motive cause in being, and this self-mobility is reflected in one way or another in the real dependence of the movement of one thing on the movement of another thing.

4. It is impossible to think of movement in an abstract form, that is, without the result that it gives. The movement of a thing implies the goal of movement, a specific category of a thing, which is neither its form, nor its matter, nor its cause.

The general formulation of the four-principle structure is that a thing is matter, a form, an effective cause and a certain purposefulness, that is, each thing is a reified form with a causal purpose.

Artistic and creative first principle:

1. The artistic role of matter - matter is not just the absence of any forms, but also an endless creative possibility. Matter manifests itself in the form of certain spatial and temporal forms.

2. Nature as a work of art - natural things and all nature, taken as a whole, is one or another semantic picture.

3. The soul is nothing but the principle of the living body. The soul is a substance as the eidos of the physical body, which in potency possesses life.

Artistic and creative principle at its completion:

1. Just as every material body is something, that is, it is one or another eidos, and just as the eidos of a living body is the principle of its life, that is, its soul, similarly, every soul that moves a body in one or another direction, also has its own eidos, called Mind, so that the soul is the energy of Mind.

2. The mind is the eidos of all eidos.

3. The mind, despite all its freedom from sensible matter, contains its own purely mental matter, without which it would not be a work of art.

4. Main political views

The state is political communication. Communication, which naturally arose for the satisfaction of everyday needs, is a family.

The state belongs to that which exists by nature, just as man is by nature a political being. He who belongs to his nature not to himself, but to another, and yet still a man, is by nature a slave.

In the best state, it is better for property to be private and its use shared. The state structure is a routine in the field of organizing state posts in general, and first of all, of the supreme power. State structures, having in mind the general benefit, are positive - it is the royal power, the power of a few, but more than one - the aristocracy, the power of the majority - politics. Deviations from these devices: from the royal power - tyranny, from the aristocracy - oligarchy, from politics - democracy. Of all types of government that deviate from the correct ones, the worst will be the one that turns out to be a deviation from the original and the most divine. Tyranny, as the worst of all forms of government, is farthest from its very essence; it is directly adjacent to the oligarchy, while the most moderate of the deviating types is democracy.

The right legislation should be the supreme authority, and officials should be decisive only in cases where the laws are unable to provide an accurate answer. The state, consisting mainly of people of average income, will have the best state system. The legislator must constantly attract average citizens when creating this or that state structure. In any state structure there should be three main parts: a legislative body, positions, judicial bodies. Inequality is the cause of the disturbance. The most important way to preserve the state system is education in the spirit of the appropriate state structure.

5. Literature

1. Aristotle. Compositions. M., "Thought", 1975

2. ZG Antipenko. "Dialectics of truth and beauty in the philosophical heritage of Plato and Aristotle". M., USSR Academy of Sciences, 1983

3. K. A. Sergeev, Ya. A. Slinin. "Dialectics of categorical forms of thinking". Leningrad State University, 1987

4. VA Bocharov. "Aristotle and traditional logic. Analysis of syllogistic theories." M., Moscow State University, 1984

5.R.A. Lukanin. "" Organon "Aristotle". M., "Science", 1984

6. Anthology of World Philosophy Moscow, 1969, vol. 1.

7. Bogomolov A.S. Ancient philosophy Moscow 1985

Similar documents

Aristotle is the son of a physician and a disciple of Plato. The first philosophy of Aristotle: the doctrine of the causes of the beginning of being and knowledge. Aristotle's doctrine of man and soul: the soul as a driving principle. The logic and methodology of Aristotle, set out by him in the collected works "Organon".

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Childhood and adolescence of Aristotle, education, personal life. Aristotle's attitude towards his slaves. His philosophical views and their difference from the philosophy of Plato. The doctrine of the world and man, organic nature, soul. The overall significance of his activities.

abstract, added on 08/18/2011


Brief biographies of Plato and Aristotle. Social situation during the life of Plato and Aristotle and their philosophical positions. The views of Plato and Aristotle on the structure of the state. Alternative communities as an analogue of the schools of Plato and Aristotle.

abstract, added 12/19/2011


Philosophical disputes between two outstanding philosophers of antiquity - Plato and Aristotle: Plato's doctrine of being (the problem of the status of eidos-ideas), soul and cognition; Aristotle's teachings about causes, about matter and form, the relationship between ideas and things. Differences in teachings.

abstract, added 03/20/2008


Brief biography of Aristotle. The first philosophy of Aristotle: the doctrine of the causes of the beginning of being and knowledge. Aristotle's doctrine of man and soul. Aristotle's logic and methodology. Aristotle is the creator of the most extensive scientific system of antiquity.

abstract, added 03/28/2004


The life and work of Aristotle. Ethics. The meaning of ethics for Aristotle. The doctrine of the soul. Virtue. About society and the state. Aristotle - the greatest of the ancient Greek philosophers, the founder of dualism, "the father of logic", a student and decisive opponent Plato

abstract, added on 10/01/2005


The difference between essence and phenomenon according to Plato. Matter as primary material, the potency of things according to Aristotle. Cosmology and the theory of knowledge in the teachings of Plato. The main content of the philosophical teachings of Aristotle. Aristotle's teachings about the soul and about man.

test, added 02/20/2010


Reflection of Aristotle's philosophical views on the soul in his treatise "On the Soul". The main types of the soul, the nature of its inherent sensations. The idea of ​​a complex perception of felt things with the help of several senses. The meaning of mind, reflection and imagination for the soul.

abstract, added on 12/06/2012


Biography of Aristotle. The doctrine of the generality and integrity of a thing, its idea and structure. Artistic and creative first principle. Political views and logic of Aristotle. Contradiction prohibition and excluded third laws. Ethics in the writings of Aristotle.

abstract, added 01/26/2011


Plato and Aristotle are two "peaks" of ancient Greek philosophy. The main ideas of Plato's philosophy. Aristotle's formal logic. The emergence of philosophical thought in Russia, its main representatives and theories. The meaning of human life according to various concepts.

Plato

Socrates

The turning point in the development of ancient philosophy was the views Socrates(469-399 BC). His name has become a household name and serves to express the idea of ​​wisdom. Socrates himself did not write anything, was a sage close to the people, philosophized on the streets and squares, and everywhere entered into philosophical disputes.

Craftsmanship dialogue. The invaluable merit of Socrates is that in his practice, dialogue has become the main method of finding the truth. If previously the principles were simply postulated, then Socrates critically and comprehensively discussed all kinds of approaches. His anti-dogmatism was expressed, in particular, in the rejection of claims to the possession of reliable knowledge. Socrates used the so-called obstetric art, called maieutics - the art of defining concepts through guidance. With the help of skillfully asked questions, he singled out false definitions and found the correct ones. Discussing the meaning of various concepts (goodness, wisdom, justice, beauty, etc.), Socrates, according to Aristotle, first began to use inductive proofs and give general definitions of concepts, which was an invaluable contribution to the formation of the science of logic.

The founder of dialectics. Socrates became famous as one of the founders of dialectics in the sense of finding the truth through conversations and disputes. The method of dialectical disputes of Socrates consisted in detecting contradictions in the reasoning of the interlocutor and bringing him to the truth through questions and answers. He was the first to see in the distinctness and clarity of judgments the main sign of their truth. In disputes, Socrates strove to prove the expediency and rationality of both the world and man. He made a turn in the development of philosophy, for the first time placing it in the center of his own. philosophizing a person, his essence, the internal contradictions of his soul. Thanks to this, knowledge moves from the philosophical doubt “I know that I know nothing” to the birth of truth through self-knowledge. Socrates elevated the famous saying of the Delphic oracle to a philosophical principle: "Know thyself!" The main goal of his philosophy is to restore the authority of knowledge, shaken by the sophists. The Sophists neglected the truth, and Socrates made her his beloved. His restless soul of an inimitable disputant strove with unceasing and persistent labor to the perfection of communication in order to understand the truth. The Sophists did not reckon with the truth for the sake of money and wealth, while Socrates remained faithful to the truth and lived in poverty. The Sophists claimed to be omniscient, while Socrates insisted: he only knows that he knows nothing.

Appeal to the spiritual world. The line between the spiritual processes inherent in man and the material world, already outlined by the previous development of Greek philosophy (in the teachings of Pythagoras, the Sophists, etc.), was more clearly defined by Socrates: he emphasized the originality of consciousness in comparison with material existence and was one of the first to deeply open the sphere of the spiritual as an independent reality, proclaiming it as something no less reliable than the being of the perceived world, and thus, as it were, laid it on the altar of universal human culture for the study of all subsequent philosophical and psychological thought. Considering the phenomenon of the soul, Socrates proceeded from the recognition of its immortality, which was linked with his faith in God.

In questions ethics Socrates developed the principles of rationalism, arguing that virtue flows from knowledge and a person who knows what good is will not do bad. After all, good is also knowledge, therefore the culture of the intellect can make people good: no one is evil of their own free will, people are evil only out of ignorance! Here you can argue to the great sage: why, even among people who are very educated and know perfectly well what is good and what is evil, so many do evil - sophisticated crooks, thieves, liars and murderers ?!

Socrates' political views were based on the conviction that power in the state should belong to the “best”, that is, experienced, honest, fair, decent and certainly possessing the art of government. He sharply criticized the shortcomings of contemporary Athenian democracy. From his point of view: "The worst is the majority!" After all, not everyone who elects rulers understands political and state issues and can assess the degree of professionalism of the elected, their moral and intellectual level. Socrates stood up for professionalism in management matters, in deciding who and whom can and should elect to leading posts.

At the end of his life, Socrates was prosecuted for the interpretation of the deity, which differs from the one accepted according to the tradition that existed in Athens, and also for allegedly “corrupting youth” with “seditious” ideas. As a result of various intrigues, he was ultimately sentenced to death. Refusing the opportunity given by his friends to flee, Socrates accepted death by drinking poison (hemlock).

Socrates, according to Vl. Solovyov, by his noble death, he exhausted the moral strength of purely human wisdom, reached its limit. This drama of the death of Socrates is the world's only supra-personal and supra-historical tragedy. Killed by Truth. The righteous is killed. He was killed not grossly by personal atrocity, not by self-serving betrayal, but by a solemn public sentence of the legitimate government, by the will of the native city.And it could still be an accident if the righteous man was lawfully killed for some reason, although innocent, but to an outsider of his righteousness. But he was killed precisely for her, for the truth, for his determination to fulfill his moral duty to the end.

If Socrates directed all his wisdom and his "service to God" to denounce the supposed human wisdom, it is because of the ideal of universal reason and divine wisdom, which he thus preached.

“Do you think,” says Socrates, “that there is something rational in you, and there is nothing rational outside of you? You know, however, that such a body contains a small particle of earth and moisture, which in themselves are so great and vast; you also know that it was made up of small particles of other great world elements. How do you think that you, by a happy coincidence, have accommodated the whole mind, which is nowhere else, that all that exists in its infinite magnitude and countless multitude is well-arranged by an unreasonable, blind power? In these words, which the biographer of Socrates Xenophon puts into the mouth of Socrates, there is a whole program of subsequent ancient philosophical thought, primarily the teachings of Aristotle about the universal mind.

Socrates, according to G. Hegel, is not only an extremely important figure in the history of philosophy and, perhaps, the most interesting in ancient philosophy, but also a world-historical personality. For the main turning point of the spirit, its appeal to itself, was embodied in the form of philosophical thought. From time immemorial, disputes, reflections, ideas from the treasury of his preserved inheritance bring us the image of the wise Socrates, who, although he laughed at the stupidity of people, but loved and respected them.

Plato(427-347 BC) - a great thinker who permeates the entire world philosophical culture with his thinnest spiritual threads; he is the subject of endless controversy in the history of philosophy, art, science and religion. Plato was in love with philosophy: all the philosophizing of this thinker is an expression of his life, and his life is an expression of his philosophy. He is not only a philosopher, but also a brilliant master of artistic words, who knows how to touch the subtlest strings of the human soul and, having touched them, tune in a harmonious way. According to Plato, the desire to comprehend being as a whole gave us philosophy, and “there has never been and never will be a greater gift to people, like this gift of God” (G. Hegel).

Space. About the relation of ideas to things. Plato says: “The world is not just a corporeal space, and not separate objects and phenomena: in it the general is combined with the individual, and the cosmic - with the human ”. Space is a kind of work of art. He is beautiful, he is the totality of singularities. The cosmos lives, breathes, pulsates, full of various potencies, and it is controlled by forces that form general laws. The cosmos is full of divine meaning, which is the kingdom of ideas (eidos, as they said then), eternal, imperishable and abiding in their radiant beauty. According to Plato, the world is by nature dual: the visible world of changeable objects and the invisible world of ideas are distinguished in it. Thus, individual trees appear and disappear, but the idea of ​​a tree remains unchanged. The world of ideas is true being, and concrete, sensually perceived things are a cross between being and non-being: they are only shadows of ideas, their weak copies.

Idea is a central category in Plato's philosophy. The idea of ​​a thing is something ideal. So, for example, we drink water, but we cannot drink the idea of ​​water or eat the idea of ​​bread, paying in stores with ideas of money: an idea is the meaning, the essence of a thing. In Plato's ideas, the whole cosmic life is generalized: they have a regulatory energeticity and control the Universe. They are characterized by a regulatory and formative force; they are eternal patterns, paradigms (from the Greek pararadigma - pattern), according to which all many real things are organized from formless and fluid matter. Plato interpreted ideas as some kind of divine essence. They were thought of as target causes charged with the energy of striving, while there is a relationship of coordination and submission between them. The highest idea is the idea of ​​absolute goodness - it is a kind of "Sun in the kingdom of ideas", the world Mind, it befits the name of Mind and Deity. But this is not yet a personal divine Spirit (as later in Christianity). Plato proves the existence of God by the feeling of our affinity with his nature, which, as it were, “vibrates” in our souls. An essential component of Plato's worldview is belief in the gods. Plato considered it the most important condition for the stability of the social world order. According to Plato, the spread of “wicked views” has a detrimental effect on citizens, especially young people, is a source of turmoil and arbitrariness, leads to violation of legal and moral norms, i.e. to the principle “everything is permitted”, in the words of F.M. Dostoevsky. Plato called for a harsh punishment for the "wicked."

Let me remind you of one thought by A.F. Loseva: Plato, an enthusiastic poet, in love with his kingdom of ideas, contradicted here Plato, a strict philosopher who understood the dependence of ideas and things, their mutual indissolubility. Plato was so smart that he understood the impossibility of completely separating the heavenly kingdom of ideas from the most ordinary earthly things. After all, the theory of ideas arose in him only on the path of understanding what things are and that it is possible to cognize them. Greek thought before Plato did not know the concept of "ideal" in the proper sense of the word. Plato singled out this phenomenon as something self-existent. He ascribed to ideas originally separate from the sensible world, independent being. And this, in essence, is a doubling of being, which is the essence objective idealism.

The idea of ​​the soul... Interpreting the idea of ​​the soul, Plato says: the soul of a person, before his birth, is in the realm of pure thought and beauty. Then she ends up on a sinful earth, where, temporarily being in a human body, like a prisoner in a dungeon, “remembers the world of ideas”. Here Plato had in mind the memories of what happened in his previous life: the soul resolves the basic questions of its life even before birth; when she is born, she already knows everything there is to know. She herself chooses her lot: her own fate, destiny, is already destined for her. Thus, the Soul, according to Plato, is an immortal essence, three parts are distinguished in it: rational, directed to ideas; ardent, affective-strong-willed; sensual, driven by passions, or domineering. The rational part of the soul is the basis of virtue and wisdom, the ardent part of courage; overcoming sensuality is the virtue of prudence. As for the Cosmos as a whole, the source of harmony is the world mind, a force capable of adequately thinking itself, being at the same time an active principle, a helm of the soul, governing a body, which itself is devoid of the ability to move. In the process of thinking, the soul is active, internally contradictory, dialogical and reflexive. “While thinking, it does nothing other than reasoning, asking itself, affirming and denying.” The harmonious combination of all parts of the soul under the regulatory principle of reason gives a guarantee of justice as an integral property of wisdom.

On cognition and dialectics. In his teaching on knowledge, Plato underestimated the role of the sensory stage of knowledge, believing that sensations and perceptions deceive a person. He even advised to “close your eyes and shut your ears” to learn the truth, giving room to reason. Plato approached knowledge from the standpoint of dialectics. What is dialectics? This concept comes from the word "dialogue" - the art of reasoning, moreover, to reason in communication, means to argue, to dispute, to prove something, and to refute something. In general, dialectics is the art of "searching thinking", while thinking is strictly logical, unraveling all kinds of contradictions in the collision of different opinions, judgments, and beliefs.

Especially in detail, Plato worked out the dialectics of the one and the many, the identical and the other, movement and rest, etc. Plato's philosophy of nature is characterized by its connection with mathematics. Plato analyzed the dialectic of concepts. This was of great importance for the subsequent development of logic.

Recognizing with his predecessors that everything sensual “eternally flows”, is constantly changing and insofar as it is not subject to logical comprehension, Plato distinguished knowledge from subjective sensation. The connection we make in judgments about sensations is not sensation: in order to cognize an object, we must not only feel, but also understand it. It is known that general concepts are the result of special mental operations, "the initiative of our rational soul": they are not applicable to individual things. General definitions in the form of concepts do not refer to individual sensory objects, but to something else: they express a genus or species, i.e. something that refers to a specific set of objects. According to Plato, it turns out that our subjective thought corresponds to an objective thought that is outside of us. This is the essence of his objective idealism.

About categories. Early Greek thought considered the elements as philosophical categories: earth, water, fire, air, ether. Then the categories take on the form of generalized, abstract concepts. This is how they look to this day. The first system of five main categories was proposed by Plato: being, movement, rest, identity, difference.

We see here together both the categories of being (being, movement) and logical categories (identity, difference). Plato interpreted the categories as consistently flowing from each other.

Views on society and the state. Plato justifies his views on the origin of society and the state by the fact that an individual person is not able to satisfy all his needs for food, housing, clothing, etc. In considering the problem of society and the state, he relied on his favorite theory of ideas and ideal. The “Ideal State” is a community of farmers, artisans who produce everything needed to keep citizens alive, warriors who guard security, and philosophers-rulers who govern the state wisely and justly. Such an “ideal state” Plato contrasted with ancient democracy, which allowed the people to participate in political life, to government. According to Plato, only aristocrats are called to govern the state as the best and wisest citizens. And farmers and artisans, according to Plato, should conscientiously carry out their work, and they have no place in government bodies. The state should be protected by law enforcement officers who form a power structure, and the guards must not have personal property, must live in isolation from other citizens, and eat at a common table. The “ideal state”, according to Plato, should patronize religion in every possible way, cultivate piety in its citizens, and fight against all kinds of wicked. The entire system of upbringing and education should pursue the same goals.

Without going into details, it should be said that Plato's doctrine of the state is a utopia. Imagine only the classification of the forms of government proposed by Plato: it highlights the essence of the social and philosophical views of the genius thinker.

Plato singled out:

a) the “ideal state” (or approaching the ideal) - the aristocracy, including the aristocratic republic and the aristocratic monarchy;

b) a descending hierarchy of state forms, to which he ranked timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny.

According to Plato, tyranny is the worst form of government, and democracy was the object of sharp criticism for him. The worst forms of the state are the result of the "corruption" of the ideal state. Timocracy (also the worst) is a state of honor and qualification: it is closer to the ideal, but worse, for example, than an aristocratic monarchy.

Ethical views. Almost all of Plato's philosophy is permeated with ethical problems: in his dialogues such issues as the nature of the highest good, its implementation in the behavioral acts of people, in the life of society are considered. The moral outlook of the thinker developed from “naive eudemonism” (Protagoras) - it is consistent with the views of Socrates: “good” as the unity of virtue and happiness, beautiful and useful, kind and pleasant. Then Plato goes on to the idea of ​​absolute morality (dialogue "Gorgias"). It is in the name of these ideas that Plato denounces the entire moral structure of Athenian society, which condemned itself for the death of Socrates. The ideal of absolute objective truth is opposed to human sensual drives: the good is opposed to the pleasant. Belief in the ultimate harmony of virtue and happiness remains, but the ideal of absolute truth, absolute goodness leads Plato to the recognition of another, supersensible world, completely naked from the flesh, where this truth lives and is revealed in all its true fullness. In such dialogues as "Gorgias", "Theetetus", "Phaedo", "Republic", Plato's ethics receives an ascetic orientation: it requires the purification of the soul, from the decision from worldly pleasures, from the secular life full of sensual joys. According to Plato, the highest good (the idea of ​​good, and it is above all) is outside the world. Consequently, the highest goal of morality is also in the supersensible world. After all, the soul, as already mentioned, received its origin not in the earthly, but in the upper world. And clothed in earthly flesh, she acquires a multitude of all kinds of evils and sufferings. According to Plato, the sensory world is imperfect - it is full of disorder. The task of man is to rise above him and strive with all the forces of his soul to become like God, who does not come into contact with anything evil (“Teetet”); in freeing the soul from everything bodily, focusing it on itself, on the inner world of speculation and dealing only with the true and eternal (“Phaedo”). It is in this way that the soul can rise from its fall into the abyss of the sensible world and return to its original, naked state.

This tendency does not exhaust the ethical doctrine of Plato, along with it expounds the reconciling eudemonic position, which later increasingly manifests itself in his dialogues (for example, Philebus and Laws), although it manifests itself earlier: in sensuality itself, Plato highlights eros, the desire for ideal in the highest beauty and eternal fullness of being.

The philosophical thought of Ancient Greece reached its greatest height in the creations of Aristotle(384-322 BC), whose views, encyclopedically incorporating the achievements of ancient science, are a grandiose system of concrete scientific and philosophical knowledge proper in its amazing depth, subtlety and scale. Educated mankind has studied, is studying, and for centuries will learn from him the philosophical culture.

Aristotle is a student of Plato, but on a number of fundamental issues he disagreed with his teacher. In particular, he believed that Plato's theory of ideas was completely inadequate to explain empirical reality. It is Aristotle who owns the saying: "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer!" He strove to bridge the Platonic gap between the world of sensible things and the world of ideas.

Matter and form (eidos). Potency and act. Proceeding from the recognition of the objective existence of matter, Aristotle considered it eternal, uncreable and indestructible. Matter cannot arise from nothing, nor can it increase or decrease in its quantity. However, matter itself, according to Aristotle, is inert, passive. It contains only the possibility of the emergence of a real variety of things, as, say, marble contains the possibility of various statues. In order to turn this possibility into reality, it is necessary to give the matter an appropriate form. By form, Aristotle meant an active creative factor, thanks to which a thing becomes real. Form is a stimulus and a goal, the reason for the formation of diverse things from monotonous matter: matter is a kind of clay. In order for various things to arise from it, a potter is needed - a god (or a mind-prime mover). Form and matter are inextricably linked, so that each thing in the possibility is already contained in matter and through natural development receives its form. The whole world is a series of forms that are in connection with each other and arranged in an order of increasing perfection. Thus, Aristotle approaches the idea of ​​a single being of a thing, a phenomenon: they represent the fusion of matter and eidos (form). Matter acts as a possibility and as a kind of substratum of existence. Marble, for example, can be viewed as the possibility of a statue, it is also a material principle, a substrate, and a statue carved out of it is already a unity of matter and form. The main engine of the world is God, defined as the form of all forms, as the summit of the universe. ,

Categories of philosophy. Categories are fundamental concepts of philosophy. Aristotle's consideration of the relationship between matter and eidos (form), act and potency reveals the energetic dynamism of existence in its development. At the same time, the thinker sees the causal dependence of the phenomena of existence: everything has a causal explanation. In this regard, he distinguishes between causes: there is an active cause - this is an energetic force that generates something in the flow of universal interaction of the phenomena of existence, not only matter and form, act and potency, but also the generating energy-cause, which, along with the active principle, has a target meaning: “for the sake of what”. Here we are dealing with such an extremely important position of Aristotle's philosophy as the semantic principle of all that exists, as well as the hierarchy of its levels - from matter as an opportunity to the formation of single forms of being and further - from inorganic formations to the world of plants, living beings, various species of animals and finally, to a person, a society. Therefore, in Aristotle, the principle of the development of beings played a huge role, which is organically connected with the categories of space and time, which for him appear not as substances, but as “place” and number of motion, that is, as a sequence of real and imaginable events and states. This approach is closer to the modern understanding of these categories than, say, Newtonian.

Aristotle developed a hierarchical system of categories in which “essence” or “substance” was the main one, and the rest were considered its features. Striving to simplify the categorical system, Aristotle then recognized only three categories as basic: essence, state, relation.

With his analysis of potency and act, Aristotle introduced the principle of development into philosophy. This was a response to the Eleans' aporia, according to which existence can arise either from existence or from non-existence, but both are impossible, because in the first case, the existence no longer exists, and in the second, something cannot arise from nothing, therefore , the emergence or formation is generally impossible and the sensible world must be attributed to the kingdom of “non-being”. Thus, Aristotle introduced into the circulation of philosophy the categories of possibility and reality, and this is potency and act.

God as the prime mover, as the absolute beginning of all beginnings. According to Aristotle, the world movement is an integral process: all its moments are mutually conditioned, which presupposes a single engine. Further, proceeding from the concept of causality, he comes to the concept) of the first reason. And this is the so-called cosmological proof of the existence of God. God is the first reason for movement, the beginning of all beginnings. Indeed, a number of reasons cannot be infinite or beginningless. There is a reason that determines itself, does not depend on anything: the cause of all causes! After all, a number of reasons would never end if the absolute beginning of any movement was not allowed. This beginning is the deity as a universal supersensible substance. Aristotle substantiated the existence of a deity by the discretion of the principle of the improvement of the Cosmos. According to Aristotle, deity is the subject of the highest and most perfect knowledge, since all knowledge is directed towards form and essence, and God is the pure form and the first essence. Aristotle's God, however, is not a personal God.

The idea of ​​the soul... Descending in his philosophical reflections from the abyss of the Cosmos to the world of animate beings, Aristotle believed that the soul, possessing purposefulness, is nothing more than its organizing principle, inseparable from the body; source and method of regulation of the organism, its objectively observed behavior. The soul is the entelechy of the body. Therefore, those who believe that the soul cannot exist without a body are right, but that it itself is immaterial, non-corporeal. What makes us live, feel and think is the soul, so it is a kind of meaning and form, and not matter, not a substrate: “It is the soul that gives meaning and purpose to life”. The body is inherent in a vital state that forms its orderliness and harmony. This is the soul, i.e. reflection of the actual reality of the universal and eternal Mind. Aristotle gave an analysis of various “parts” of the soul: memory, emotions, the transition from sensations to general perception, and from it to a generalized representation from opinion through concept to knowledge, and from directly felt desire to rational will. The soul discerns and cognizes things, but it “spends a lot of time in mistakes”. "It is certainly the hardest thing to achieve about the soul that is reliable in all respects." According to Aristotle, the death of the body frees the soul for its eternal life: the soul is eternal and immortal.

Theory of knowledge and logic. Cognition in Aristotle has being as its subject. Experience is based on sensation, memory and habit. Any knowledge begins with sensations: it is that which is capable of taking the form of sensibly perceived objects without their matter. Reason sees the common in the single. It is impossible to acquire scientific knowledge only with the help of sensations and perceptions due to the transient and changeable nature of all things. Forms of truly scientific knowledge are concepts that comprehend the essence of things. Having developed the theory of knowledge in detail and deeply, Aristotle created a work on logic, which retains its enduring significance to this day. Here he developed a theory of thinking and its forms, concepts, judgments, inferences, etc. Aristotle is the founder of logic.

Analyzing categories and operating them in the analysis of philosophical problems, Aristotle also considered the operations of the mind, its logic, including the logic of statements. He formulated logical laws: the law of identity (the concept should be used in the same sense in the course of reasoning), the law of contradiction (“do not contradict yourself”) and the law of the excluded third (“A is not true, there is no third”). Aristotle developed the doctrine of syllogisms, which examines all kinds of inferences in the process of reasoning.

It should be especially emphasized that Aristotle developed the problem of dialogue, which deepened the ideas of Socrates.

Ethical views. According to Aristotle, the state requires from a citizen certain virtues, without which a person cannot exercise his civil rights and be useful to society: virtuous is what serves the interests of society, which strengthens the social order. He divided the virtues into intellectual and volitional - virtues of character. Speaking of character, we do not call anyone wise or reasonable, but meek or moderate. Intellectual virtues are of decisive importance: wisdom, reasonable activity, prudence, in which a person manifests himself as a creature gifted with reason. Such virtues are acquired by assimilating the knowledge and experience of previous generations and are manifested in intelligent activity. Human happiness, according to Aristotle, is the energy of a completed life in accordance with completed valor. A person with a “slave way of thinking” cannot be considered happy. Ethical properties are not given to people from nature, although they cannot arise independently of it. Nature makes it possible to become virtuous, but this possibility is formed and realized only in Activity: by doing just, a person becomes just; acting in moderation, he becomes moderate; acting courageously - courageously. The essence of virtue is a combination of generosity and moderation. The general principle of the thinker's ethical teaching is the desire to find a middle line of behavior. An exclusive place in this teaching is occupied by the idea of ​​justice: one can be fair only in relation to another, and concern for the other, in turn, is a manifestation of concern for society.

About society and the state. Having carried out a grandiose generalization of the social and political experience of the Hellenes, Aristotle developed an original socio-philosophical doctrine. When studying socio-political life, he proceeded from the principle: “As elsewhere, the best way of theoretical construction would be to consider the primary education of subjects.” He considered this “education” to be the natural desire of people for living together and for political communication. According to Aristotle, man is a political being, i.e. social, and it carries an instinctive desire for "cohabitation" (Aristotle has not yet separated the idea of ​​society from the idea of ​​the state !. injustice. The first result of social life, he considered the formation of a family - husband and wife, parents and children ... The need for mutual exchange led to communication between families and villages. This is how the state arose. Having identified society with the state, Aristotle was forced to start looking for elements of the state. - he understood the dependence of the goals, interests and nature of people's activities on their property status and used this criterion in characterizing various strata of society. According to Aristotle, the poor and the rich “turn out to be elements in the state, diametrically opposed to each other, so that depending on the overbalances one or another of the elements is established and appropriate the current form of the state system ”. He singled out three main strata of citizens: the very wealthy, the extremely poor, and the average, standing between the one and the other. Aristotle was hostile to the first two social groups. He believed that at the heart of the life of people with excessive wealth lies an unnatural kind of profit from property. In this, according to Aristotle, not the striving for a “good life” is manifested, but only the striving for life in general. Since the thirst for life is irrepressible, the desire for means of satisfying this thirst is also irrepressible. Putting everything at the service of excessive personal gain, “people of the first category” trample on social traditions and laws. Striving for power, they themselves cannot obey, thus disturbing the peace of state life. Almost all of them are arrogant and arrogant, prone to luxury and bragging. The state is created not in order to live in general, but mainly in order to live happily. According to Aristotle, the state arises only when communication is created for the sake of a good life between families and clans, for the sake of a perfect and sufficient life for itself. The perfection of man presupposes the perfect citizen, and the perfection of the citizen, in turn, presupposes the perfection of the state. Moreover, the nature of the state is “ahead” of the family and the individual. This deep idea is characterized as follows: the perfection of a citizen is determined by the quality of the society to which he belongs: who wants to create perfect people must create perfect citizens, and who wants to create perfect citizens must create a perfect state. As a supporter of the slave system, Aristotle closely links slavery with the issue of property: in the very essence of things is rooted order, by virtue of which, from the moment of birth, some creatures are destined for submission, while others for dominion. This is a general law of nature - animate beings are also subject to it. According to Aristotle, who by nature does not belong to himself, but to another, and yet still a man, is by nature a slave.

If economic individualism takes over and jeopardizes the interests of the whole, the state must intervene in this area. Aristotle, analyzing the problems of economics, showed the role of money in the exchange process and in general in commercial activity, which is an ingenious contribution to political economy. He singled out such forms of government as monarchy, aristocracy and polity. Deviation from monarchy gives tyranny, deviation from aristocracy - oligarchy, from polity - democracy. Property inequality is at the heart of all "social upheavals. According to Aristotle, the oligarchy and democracy base their claim to power in the state on the fact that property wealth is the lot of the few, and all citizens enjoy freedom. Oligarchy protects the interests of the possessing classes: Aristotle emphasized that the relationship between the poor and the rich is not just a difference, but opposites.The best state is a society that is achieved through the middle element (by the middle element, Aristotle means the “average” between the slaveholders and slaves), and those states have the best system, where the middle element is represented in a greater number, where it is more important in comparison with both extreme elements.Aristotle noted that when in a state many persons are deprived of political rights, when there are many poor people, then in such a state there are inevitably hostile elements. in democracies, and in oligarchies, and in monarchies, and under any other kind of state system, the following should be the general rule: no citizen should be given the opportunity to excessively increase his political power beyond the appropriate measure. Aristotle advised to watch over the ruling persons so that they do not turn public office into a source of personal enrichment.

"The root of the doctrine is bitter, and its fruits are sweet," said Aristotle. And he knew a lot about teaching!

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was born in 384 BC. in Stagir (therefore he received the nickname Stagirite) in the family of a doctor. Father was the first teacher of Aristotle. As a teenager, he was orphaned, but his guardian Proxen did everything for the inquisitive young man to continue his studies.

Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great. He founded the Lyceum (Lyceum), or peripatetic school... It was called so from (from the Greek. Περιπατέω - to walk, to stroll) - as Aristotle, while giving lectures, walked with his students.

Aristotle was the first thinker to create a comprehensive system of philosophy that embraced all areas of human development: sociology, philosophy, politics, logic, physics.

He divides sciences into theoretical, the purpose of which is knowledge for the sake of knowledge, practical and "poetic" (creative). The theoretical sciences include physics, mathematics and "first philosophy" (it is also theological philosophy, it was later called metaphysics). Practical sciences include ethics and politics (it is also the science of the state).

It is very interesting to get acquainted with all the teachings of Aristotle. But in this article we will only talk about his teaching about the universe.

Aristotle's cosmology

Cosmology (space + logos) - a section of astronomy that studies the properties and evolution of the universe as a whole. The basis of this discipline is mathematics, physics and astronomy.

The figure shows the structure of the Universe according to Aristotle. The numbers indicate the spheres: earth (1), water (2), air (3), fire (4), ether (5), Primary engine (6). Out of scale.

According to Aristotle, the universe is divided into two parts: lower (sublunar) and upper (supra-moon). The sublunary region consists of four elements: earth, water, air, fire. This area is fluid, it cannot be described in the language of mathematics. The supra-moon region is unchanging and eternal, corresponds to the ideal of perfect harmony. It consists of ether, a special type of matter that is not found on Earth. Each type of matter has its own place in the Universe: the earth is in the center of the world, then comes water, air, fire, ether. The frailty of the earthly was proved by the fact that the movement there proceeded along vertical lines and had a beginning and an end. The element of the sublunary world always strives for its place, for this he cited evidence: if you raise a handful of earth in your hand, it will fall down, and if you kindle a fire, then it will strive up.

The elements of earth and water, tending downward, were considered absolutely heavy. The elements of air and fire, striving upward, were considered absolutely light. And when the elements reach their natural place, their movement stops. Hence the conclusion followed: the Universe is finite, emptiness cannot exist, the Earth is motionless, the world exists in a single copy.

Aristotle considered the heavenly bodies to have a divine nature (although he did not call them gods), since for their constituent element, ether, uniform movement in a circle around the center of the world is characteristic; this movement is eternal, since there are no boundary points on the circle.

The Earth, which is the center of the Universe, is spherical. This is the geocentric system of the world. Aristotle proved this by the nature of lunar eclipses, in which the shadow cast by the Earth on the Moon has a rounded shape at the edges, which can only be provided that the Earth is spherical. Using the calculations of ancient mathematicians, Aristotle considered the circumference of the Earth to be 400 thousand stages (for us, an insufficiently defined unit of distance measurement, presumably from 185 to 195 m).

Aristotle was the first to prove the sphericity of the moon, based on the study of its phases.

Aristotle's geocentric cosmology survived until Copernicus. He considered the firmament and all the heavenly bodies to be spherical. But Aristotle proved this thought incorrectly: he deduced the sphericity of the heavenly bodies from the false view that the "sphere" is the most perfect form.

According to the teachings of Aristotle, the stars are fixed in the sky and revolve with it, and the "wandering luminaries" (planets) move in seven concentric circles. God is the cause of the heavenly movement.

Now the doctrine of Aristotle about the universe seems ridiculous to us, but do not forget what time he lived and what were the achievements of science at that time. But we should also listen to this conclusion of Aristotle: "As a horse is born for running, a bull for plowing, and a dog for searching, so a man is born for two things - for understanding and action." By "comprehension" Aristotle understood a continuous craving for knowledge.

The largest ancient thinker was also a disciple of Socrates Plato(427-347 BC), who created an integral and consistent philosophical system of objective idealism and became the founder of his famous school - Platonic Academies.

The doctrine of being... There are two types of being: genuine - the higher "world of ideas" and not genuine - the lower, derivative "world of things" (the world in which we live). He argued that the material body of a person is mortal, and the soul (the idea of ​​life) is immortal. The body is the temporary abode of the soul. Having created souls, the gods placed them on the stars. The number of souls, like the number of stars, is finite. Souls are not created again, but pass from body to body after the death of a person (dialogue "Phaedrus")

An idea is a pattern, the spiritual essence of a thing (eg; idea of ​​a tree, idea of ​​a house). When idea and matter combine, a thing is formed. The reality of the ideal, the supersensible is the great discovery of Plato, which determined the path of development of Western European philosophy up to the present day. Central to his philosophical system is the doctrine of the world of ideas (or eidos). This world is intelligible, spaceless and timeless, unchanging and eternally existing - a complex hierarchical integrity, which is crowned, united and completed by the idea of ​​Good. All ideas are involved in the Good, therefore they are "good". His ideas are:

The patterns by which all nature is created,

The reasons and source of the existence of things,

The goals towards which everything that exists,

General concepts of the meaning and essence of the subject.

His cosmology (the doctrine of the origin of the cosmos) consists in the assertion that the Demiurge (creator), having matter (“chorus” - a corporeal, formless, changeable, but receptive beginning), and “eidos” (ideas), created a sensually-concrete cosmos from chaos. The world soul acts as a mediator between the world of ideas and the visible world. It unites the world of ideas and the world of things, including humans. The soul of the world makes things imitate ideas, and ideas are present in things. On the whole, it ensures the expediency and regularity of the cosmic system. The soul is the source of reason in the human soul, which makes it possible to cognize the world of ideas. Plato endows only the world of ideas with the status of true being. Matter, by virtue of its lack of quality and passivity, is declared non-existence, and the world of sensually concrete things - the world of eternal becoming (it is imperfect and exists in time).

Theory of knowledge(memories) is inextricably linked with his ontology. Only the world of ideas can be the subject of true knowledge. The concrete-sensory world can only be the object of a person's opinion or representation. Knowledge is not the result of sensory perception, since it precedes perception. Knowledge is the result of spiritual contemplation or remembering. The theory of knowledge as recall (anamnesis) is associated with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis). The soul, being in the world of ideas, directly imprints them. Then, getting into the body, she forgets about what she saw, but, being among sensually concrete things, she begins to recall what she saw earlier. The way to induce to remember is dialectical conversation - reasoning. True knowledge ("episteme") includes intellectual and intuitive knowledge. At the same time, intuitive, purely contemplative knowledge, perceived by the mind in the world of ideas directly, is the highest level of knowledge of the truth and is accessible only to sages who have passed the stage of initiation. Philosophizing is an absolutely free activity.

The doctrine of man... The idea of ​​a person is his soul. It consists of three parts - wishing created by the lower gods), strong-willed (driven by passions and feelings) and reasonable (created by the demiurge-creator). The lower, lustful part of the soul is a slave to the body; it interferes with the higher, spiritual way of life. The meaning of a person's existence, his fate depends on who will master whom - the lusting part of the soul (which merges with the body) or the rational one. A person's virtues (moderation, courage, wisdom) correspond to the parts of his soul, and the virtue that unites them is justice. The soul is eternal, after the death of a person it returns to the world of ideas. Virtuous souls can contemplate the ideas of this world. After a while, the souls again return to human bodies. Only a person striving for virtue, driven by love for beauty, can become a philosopher.

The doctrine of society... Plato developed a project for an "ideal state". Its population is divided into three classes: philosophers (rulers), warriors (guards) and producers (artisans and farmers). Belonging to an estate is determined by the degree of development of the parts of the soul with their virtues, the fate of the soul during its last stay in the world of ideas. The positions and rights of the estates are fundamentally different. In order to achieve a better embodiment in the next life, a person must provide his soul with the best opportunities for the period of its stay in the world of ideas. The path to this is virtue. Plato criticized democratic forms of political governance, was a supporter of the slave aristocracy. In an ideal state, there is no private property that turns people against each other, destroys the integrity of the state. In an ideal state, everyone lives together.

Aristotle(384-322 BC) - a student of Plato, who for 20 years was a student of his Academy, but later became an opponent of his views, claiming: "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer." Aristotle is the founder of his philosophical school - Lycea(or schools of peripatetics, which means "to walk" in translation, since the training took place during walks).

The doctrine of being... Instead of the Platonic concept of "idea", Aristotle uses the term "form" (the essence of things). In addition to form, there is also substance, or matter (that which a thing consists of). The word matter means everything corporeal and material, that which is perceived by the senses. When the highest essence - form - is infused into a meaningless piece of matter, a sensually perceived thing of the physical world appears, which has size, color and other qualities. The entire universe is a shaped substance, transformed by ideal essences - forms. In any thing there is both matter and form, and their indissoluble unity is the thing. For Aristotle, the world of forms and the world of matter form a single whole, but the decisive role in the existing one belongs to forms. Without them, matter is nothing. They bring matter to a state of orderliness and world harmony. Matter is only a building material, the possibility of being, while form creates reality from it. There is no matter outside of form, just as there is no form without matter. Only one form exists by itself - this is the mind, which is the prime mover, the cause and the beginning of everything.

Along with the formal and material foundations (causes) of things, Aristotle also singled out a driving cause or "creative principle" (things are in a state of movement, change, but its source is a motionless "first engine") and a target reason - "that for which a thing arises "(any change is directed towards a specific goal). The concept that presupposes the pre-established expediency of all phenomena and events in the world is called "teleology".

The creation of the doctrine of the immutable and immovable essence of the world, different from the world itself, meant Aristotle's departure from dialectics.

Theory of knowledge... The cognitive process begins with sensory perception, but comprehension of the essences and laws of the world is available only to the mind.

The doctrine of man... The form of a person is his soul, which includes vegetative (vegetable), feeling (animal) and rational parts. The rational part of the soul consists of a perceiving mind and an active mind. Man is the unity of soul and body. The vegetable soul (inherent in plants, animals and humans) provides nutrition and reproduction, the animal soul (available in animals and humans) - movement and sensations, reasonable (inherent only to humans) - cognition and creativity. The soul is the life-giving principle.

Aristotle solved the question of the immortality of the soul in a fundamentally different way from Plato. He considered the vegetable and animal parts of the soul, as well as the perceiving mind, to be mortal. Only an active mind, from his point of view, possibly has immortality. Man, according to Aristotle, is a social being, a “political animal”. Life in society is the natural essence of a person, since the state (identified with society) naturally arises from the family.

State doctrine... Aristotle equated society and the state. Citizens of the state are divided into three groups on the basis of property, and the middle strata are of particular importance for the prosperity of the state. Like Plato, Aristotle supported aristocratic forms of government. But unlike Plato, he argued that the ideal state is based on private property and slavery.

Teaching about morality(ethics). The state requires certain virtues from citizens:

Dianoetic - associated with mental activity and formed through training;

Ethical - related to character and arising from habit.

An important principle of moral behavior is avoiding extremes ("Nothing too much"). The principle of "golden mean" of Aristotle is the moral rule of every person. So, for example, virtuous is courage - avoiding the extremes of recklessness and cowardice - and generosity - the middle between avarice and wastefulness.

Aristotle was also engaged in the philosophy of nature, carried out the classification of sciences, developed the foundations of logic.

The final teachings of ancient philosophy:

stoicism, skepticism and neo-Platonism

Stoicism- one of the largest trends in ancient philosophy. It has existed since the 4th century. BC. until the VI century. AD Representatives of Stoicism: Zeno, Chrysippus, Seneca (tutor of Emperor Nero), Emperor Marcus Aurelius, etc. The main idea of ​​the Stoics is liberation from the influence of the outside world. The achievement of this goal is carried out in the process of constant self-improvement, and the ideal is a sage who has risen above the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The Stoics singled out three main parts in their teaching - physics, logic and ethics, considering it to be the substantiation of moral principles as the main task of philosophy.

The doctrine of being and nature(physics). The foundations of being are passive matter and active principle (world mind, logos, creative fire). These beginnings are present in every thing. Everything in the world is subject to strict necessity, everything is predetermined. In human life, such predestination appears as fate.

The doctrine of knowledge(logics). The basis of knowledge, the source of true knowledge is sensory perception. They leave imprints - impressions in the soul, on the basis of which concepts are formed that are fixed in words. With their help, rational thinking is carried out. The Stoics, especially in the early period, attached significant importance to the analysis of the word and its original meaning (lekton).

Teaching about man and morality(ethics). A characteristic feature of their philosophy is the recognition of virtue as the highest good, and vice as the highest evil. Hence the recognition of official laws and state power only if they are virtuous. The Stoics advocated non-participation in the life of the state (self-withdrawal), ignoring laws and traditional culture if they serve evil. The highest good, happiness - is to live in harmony with nature, and therefore, to obey natural laws, predestination, fate. The meaning of life is to achieve complete peace of mind. Therefore, for a wise person, everything that is determined by fate and does not depend on it should be indifferent (life and death, fame and dishonor, wealth and poverty, etc.). It depends on the person, he freely chooses only virtue or vice. Thus, freedom is about gaining spiritual independence, about giving up emotions and passions, choosing virtue over vice.

Stoic Seneca formulated the "golden rule of morality": "Treat those below you as you would like to be treated by those above you," or, in other words: do not do to another what you do not want yourself. During the period of creativity of this Roman thinker, man began to be viewed as a helpless being, subject to the fear of death. However, there is no life without death, the latter is a kind of payment for life. Moreover, as Seneca argued, than living badly, it is better to die, voluntary death is one of the manifestations of freedom.

Representatives skepticism- Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus and others - focused on the question of knowledge of the world and actually gave a negative answer to it. They consistently substantiated the idea that both the senses and the human mind are imperfect, and therefore cannot give knowledge that corresponds to reality, embrace the majestic and incomprehensible nature

From this it followed that any truth is relative and, therefore, a person should be skeptical, that is, doubtful about any, and, above all, philosophical knowledge, not to defend any opinions that claim to be true. The skeptical attitude extended to reality itself - “if I don’t know something, then it doesn’t exist”. Therefore, a person's vital task was to achieve absolute calmness and indifference ("ataraxia") in relation to all the events taking place around him.

The final stage in the development of ancient philosophy manifested itself in creativity neoplatonists Dam, Iamblichus, Proclus.

The basis of neoplatonism is Trinity doctrine One, Mind, and Soul. The absolute beginning of being is the One. One can be convinced of its existence only on the path of apophatic (denying) theology. The One is neither being, nor thought, nor life. This is Super-being, Super-thought, Super-life. One is a "good" that creates itself. Everything that exists comes from the One. To represent the One, the Neoplatonists use the image of light that illuminates everything around and is a source of emanation (radiation). By producing all that exists, the One does not lose anything. The One also has a second hypostasis - Mind or Spirit, or thinking thinking of itself. The Mind, turned to the One, is one, turned away from the One - the Mind is multiple. The content of the Mind is revealed in ideas. The third hypostasis of the One is the Soul. Its difference from the One and Mind is that it exists in time. Directly the world Soul comes from the Mind, and indirectly - from the One. It has two sides: its upper side is directed towards the Mind, and the lower side - towards the sensible world, generating single things and acting as the source of any movement. Matter is darkness, the source of evil, the result of the extinction of the luminescence of the One. It is not an independent beginning. Evil is only a lack of good.

Everything that exists strives for the One, but this striving is consciously manifested only in a person. Unity with the One in man occurs in a state of ecstasy, when the soul is separated from the body and merges with the One as God. It was this aspect that Neoplatonism had the greatest influence on the development of Western European philosophy in subsequent eras.

So, in antiquity, philosophy is separated from myth and is formed as an independent area of ​​knowledge. It was during this period that fundamental otological, epistemological and anthropological problems were formulated. Most ancient authors claim that being is one, the world is cognizable, and bliss is achievable. The concepts developed in antiquity were so diverse and so rich in worldview ideas that the solutions put forward were subjected to further analysis and rethinking in subsequent periods of the development of philosophy in new historical conditions.

MEDIEVALISM