Plato and Aristotle were very different thinkers. They came at the same fundamental philosophical problems from radically different directions. Rafael nicely characterized this in his famous “School of Athens” painting – Plato, ever the tutor, sternly pointing to the sky; Aristotle, the indignant pupil, gesturing reflexively toward the earth. But this image is somewhat deceiving. To anyone unfamiliar with the territory, you might walk away from the work thinking that Plato and Aristotle differed fundamentally, rather than merely instrumentally. Indeed, since the Enlightenment, this is the dominant story told about the thinking of the two men: Plato is the “idealist”, concerned with transcendent objects of pure thought, and disdainful of the material world. Aristotle is the “empiricist” (or, at least, “nominalist”), determined to derive his general understandings from the experience of his senses only, and unconcerned with vaporous notions of transcendence. But this characterization is somewhat misleading. Both men were in fact aiming at the same end, and nowhere is it more plain to see, than in their divergent approaches to The Good. Let’s explore why.
The following is not a sustained argument, so much as an exploration of impressions derived from the last few years of reading. There are arguments to be gleaned from it, but I must confess, they’re not entirely conscious efforts. The blind squirrel of my mind is finding a few nuts as he tries to feel his way out of the forest.
Plato and Aristotle had very different ideas about Justice. But I am less and less convinced that they disagreed about it, fundamentally. This is true for most of the systematic philosophy (as much as it can be so called, for Plato), from their metaphysics to their ethics and politics. It’s not really difficult to see why. Aristotle was a trained Platonist, after all. And both Plato and Aristotle were responding to the challenge laid down by Parmenides. Namely, that plurality could only be an illusion if unity could be proved, and as far as Parmenides was concerned, it was proved. Likewise, a world of becoming must also be an illusion if being could be conclusively demonstrated — and as far as Parmenides was concerned, that was also proved.
Aristotle’s understanding of the soul is derived from his theory of substance in The Metaphysics. By way of the hylomorphic combination of body-as-matter and soul-as-form, a unique individual is generated and equipped with the capacity to act in ways that living things act. Is this theory a “middle way” between the view of living things as purely material (where life is a sort of emergent property, dependent on matter), and dualism (the view that the body is is a dependent “container” of a Platonic Form)? If so, how successful is it at navigating that path? This essay will argue that Aristotle’s goal was not to thread a needle between Atomist materialism and Platonic dualism, but to provide a more accurate account of living things in general, regardless of either pole of opposition. However, this answer will also suggest that, weighed against both materialism and dualism, it is still a superior theory, despite its flaws.
In the first book of the Politics, Aristotle argues for the view that man is a ‘political animal’. To assess the claim properly, we must first understand what he means by the term, and we should understand the reasoning he uses to defend it. Thus examined, we will find his position interesting, but ultimately unsatisfactory. However, it may be possible to shore up his case.
Aristotle’s ‘political animal’ (zoon politikon) is not the creature we might expect today – a conventional construct enfranchised by legal edict and duty-bound only to his own individual happiness as a free agent in a democratic nation-state. Instead, what Aristotle had in mind was an animal that was best suited to realize his complete end or natural goal (his telos) in a community organized to that end as well. That community is known as a city-state (a polis). As an integrated part of a functional polis, man is a creature of the polis – a political animal.
