The Metaphysics of Aristotle
Metaphysics is the Philosophical study whose object is to determine the real nature of things - to determine the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is insofar as it is. In Aristotle's Metaphysics, the key concepts are substance, form and matter, potentiality and actuality, and cause. Aristotle develops what he called the science of first philosophy. These causes and principles are clearly the subject matter of what he calls 'first philosophy'. But this does not mean the branch of philosophy that should be studied first. Rather, it concerns issues that are in some sense the most fundamental or at the highest level of generality. Aristotle distinguished between things that are "better known to us" and things that are "better known in themselves," and maintained that we should begin our study of a given topic with things better known to us and arrive ultimately at an understanding of things better known in themselves. The principles studied by 'first philosophy' may seem very general and abstract, but they are, according to Aristotle, better known in them, however remote they may seem from the world of ordinary experience. Still, since they are to be studied only by one who has already studied nature (which is the subje
The word "cause" or, perhaps better, "explanation", Aristotle tells us, is "said in many ways." In one sense, a cause is "that out of which a thing comes to be, and which persists; e.g., bronze, silver, and the genus of these are causes of a statue or a bowl." A cause in this sense has been traditionally called a material cause, although Aristotle himself did not use this label. In a second sense, a cause is "the form... the account of the essence," traditionally called the formal cause. A third sense, traditionally called the efficient cause, is "the primary source of change or rest." In this sense, Aristotle says, an adviser is the cause of an action, a father is the cause of his child, and in general the producer is the cause of the product. Fourth is what is traditionally called the final cause, which Aristotle characterizes as "the end, that for which a thing is done." In this sense, he says, health is the cause of walking, since we might explain a person's walking by saying that he walks in order to be healthy - health is what the walking is for. Throughout his Metaphysics, he is concerned with a type of knowledge that he thought could be most rightly called wisdom. He begins his work with the statement that "All men by nature desire to know." Since man is a rational being who has the capacity to reason. The soul plays an important role in explaining man as a rational being. Aristotle defined soul in terms of functions. The soul of a plant was concerned with nutrition and reproduction, that of an animal with these and with sensation and independent movement, that of a man with all these and with rational activity. Men desire to know, according to Aristotle, not in the sense for men to do something or make something. In addition to these pragmatic motives, there is in man a desire to know certain kinds of things simply for the sake of knowing. An indication of this, according to Aristotle, is "the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves" inasmuch as our seeing "makes us know and brings to light many differences between things." Aristotle's concept of the Unmoved Mover did not mean the same thing as the first mover, as though motion could be traced back
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Approximate Word count = 1516
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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