Aristotle's First Principles (Clarendon Paperbacks)
Terence Irwin
Language: English
Pages: 720
ISBN: 0198242905
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Exploring Aristotle's philosophical method and the merits of his conclusions, Irwin here shows how Aristotle defended dialectic against the objection that it cannot justify a metaphysical realist's claims. He focuses particularly on Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics, stressing the connections between doctrines that are often discussed separately.
discussions of method are meant to be practically useful. Aristotle is not simply concerned, however, with the practising inquirer. He also wants us to evaluate different methods, so that we know what to expect from different branches of inquiry (Pol. 1282a3–7). Competence in such evaluation is a product of education (paideia), rather than of professional expertise in any special science: For it is characteristic of the educated person to be able to judge suitably by a good estimate (eustochôs)
natural kinds (second substances) to which the first substances belong (e.g. man, tree), and the items (e.g. colour, height, or shape) that belong in non-substance categories. The treatment of the predicables, the categories, and of other dialectical concepts rests on these ontological views. An account of these dialectical concepts is useful for gymnastic and peirastic, since it may allow us to identify errors in the opponent's argument; it is useful to point out that he asks questions about
‘prior by nature’, and when we have found them they will also be ‘prior to us’; for then we will recognize that they are more basic and primary than the principles we began from.5 The first principles we find will include beliefs and propositions. But Aristotle also regards things—non-linguistic, nonpsychological, non-propositional entities—as first principles. We come to know, e.g., that there are four elements, and this proposition that we know is a first principle; but the four elements themselves
The pale, musical builder builds the house because he is a builder, not because he is pale or musical. This general conception of coincidental causation explains how lucky events are caused. A lucky event, as such, is the coincidental result of thought, and therefore is only coincidentally for the sake of some end, which is different from the result that is actually reached (196b20–1, 29–30). For X came into the market with quite a different purpose (196b34–6).14 The cause of X's being in the
suggests an appropriately ad hominem argument against Empedocles. He does not himself accept Empedocles' view of the non-teleological origins of beneficial teeth. But for present purposes, he does not challenge it; he does not say that the past could never have been as Empedocles says it was. In failing to challenge Empedocles' version of natural history, he suggests that this version itself supports the view that the uniform or frequent occurrence of beneficial teeth has a final cause. He does not