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Aristotle on Forms and the Four Causes in Philosophy

Explore Aristotle's approach to ontology, the concept of Forms, and the Four Causes. Learn about the material, efficient, formal, and final causes and their implications in ethics. Discover Aristotle's views on the Prime Mover and the doctrine of the Mean.

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Aristotle on Forms and the Four Causes in Philosophy

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  1. SIMON LANGTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL FOR BOYSSIXTH FORM Read through the following slides and then complete the four causes table

  2. 384 BC – 322 BC A student of Plato at the Academy, and a tutor to Alexander the Great Said: “Plato is dear to me, but the truth is dearer still” Aristotle

  3. Aristotle on The Forms • Aristotle took a different approach altogether in his ontology. Aristotle said that Cabbage-ness, for example, only exists because we see many cabbages. Plato, on the other hand, would maintain that things are cabbages only because Cabbage-ness, or, the Form of Cabbage, exists. Plato says that things are cabbages because they share in The Form of the Cabbage. For Aristotle, cabbages are first, the concept of The Cabbage is second.

  4. And… • We may see many blue things and build up a concept of blueness… but this is because we’ve seen blue things, not because there is a perfect Form of Blue existing prior to us seeing anything. • In this sense, Aristotle is very much an empiricist (Plato thought true reality could be known through intellectual contemplation of Forms.) Aristotle thought the world would be known through investigation, experiment and sense experience.

  5. The 4 Causes MATERIAL EFFICIENT FORMAL FINAL* *What is the Final Cause of a person and how does that inform his ethics? Was Aristotle right to believe that everything has an ultimate purpose (a telos) including people?

  6. The 4 Causes in Aristotle’s words… “A thing is called a cause if it is (1. Material) a constituent from which something comes to be (for example, bronze for the statue, silver for the goblet, and their genera); in another way, (2. Formal) if it is the form and pattern, that is, the formula of its essence, and the genera of this (for example, 2:1, and in general number, of the octave), and the parts present in the account; (3. Efficient) again, if it is the source of the first principle of change or rest (for example, the man who deliberates is a cause, and the father of the child, and in general the maker of what is being made and the changer of what is changing); (4. Final) again, if it is a goal – that is, that for the sake of which (for example, health of walking – Why is he walking? – we say: ‘in order to be healthy,’ and in so saying we think we have stated the cause); and also those things which, when something else has initiated a change, stand between the changer and the goal – for example, slimming or purging or drugs as instruments of health; for all these are for the sake of the goal, and they differ from one another in being some instruments and others actions.”

  7. Aristotle’s ‘God’ The Universe and stars were held in 40 concentric rings. Each ring moved by the next one. The 40th ring, though, is moved by the Prime Mover. But the Prime Mover acts like a Great Attractor, not acting in the world to move the 40th ring but attracting its movement. Because an unchanging Prime Mover can’t get involved in a mutable world. The Prime Mover is outside of time and radically different to anything in the world. Like Plato, Aristotle saw everything was moving and in a constant state of change… But change and movement can’t come from within the changing world – things can’t change or move themselves (remember Aristotle’s Efficient Cause) “must there or must there not be something unchanging and at rest outside whatever is changing, and no part of it? And must this be true of the Universe too? It would presumably seem absurd if the principle of change were inside it.” The matter of the physical world has always existed, but the Prime Mover makes something of it…

  8. “Aristotle's...views on [virtue] are bound up with one of the most celebrated and least useful parts of his system, the doctrine of the Mean, according to which every virtue of character lies between two correlative faults or vices..., which consist respectively of the excess and the deficiency of something of which the virtue represents the right amount. The theory oscillates between an unhelpful analytical model (which Aristotle himself does not consistently follow) and a substantively depressing doctrine in favor of moderation. The doctrine of the Mean is better forgotten.” ~ Bernard Williams

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