Aristotle: the Philosopher

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

Aristotle Stagiritis

It is hard not to mention Aristotle when we talk about Greek philosophy. He pioneered a new mode philosophy which has become most eternal.

It is knowledge, truth and rationality which lift human thoughts to sublime loftiness that is why Aristotle left a profound heritage for us concerning all philosophical discussion. There is nothing like the lasting noble influence of Socratic integrity which went largely into the making of Aristotle.

The philosophies of Aristotle are briefly dealt with, just by way of introduction, in this article. Aristotle gives priority to rationality in the understanding of the universal scheme of things.

What is the relationship between rationality and the external world? How is knowledge attained and what is eternal truth?

Statue of aristotle - Thessaloniki, Greece.
Statue of Aristotle – Thessaloniki, Greece.

Perception

Aristotle offers need to the outside perceptible reality. For him, any understanding picked up by man at a specific minute is to be taken as reality. It appears as if, for Aristotle, the outside world was itself the everlasting truth. Aristotle was additionally induced of the presence of thoughts towards which all the ‘different physical structures’ are moving.

That ought not to be interpreted as meaning that Aristotle does not have faith in God, the Creator. Despite what might be expected, he had faith in a Supreme Being Who was in charge of the whole chain of circumstances and end results and could be alluded to as the Ultimate First Cause.

Be that as it may, as we follow the possibility of God talked about by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we see a continuous change in connection to their idea. Among the early rationalists, Aristotle emerges as a result of the whole progression of his impact over numerous a time of philosophical idea. Indeed, even today, there is no part of rationality which is by and large free from the impact of his commanding acumen.

In Tafseer-e-Kabir it is mentioned that many people have passed containing brains with no love in them which led to them not achieving anything in the world. Love has always been victorious, those who died without loving anything were useless.

Examples of those who loved and were successful are like Prophets who love their religion and they always get the highest status in the world. Many people like Aristotle have passed by in this world and people know a lot about their works, and try to copy him. But in the end, they all look like they haven’t had any food because they don’t have a pure religion and don’t like anything in this world except their work.

Aristotle was one of the greatest scientists and philosophers the world has ever seen. He was born in 384BCE in Greece and died in 322BCE. His father whose name was Nichomachus was a court physician to King of Macedon and he died while he was still a little boy. Proxenus was his guardian and he decided to send the boy aged 17 to Athens to complete his education in Plato’s academy.

Though a brilliant pupil, Aristotle opposed some of Plato’s teachings, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the academy but stayed there for 20 years and also became a teacher. Aristotle and Plato had a lot of arguments and disagreements. Although Plato believed that reality existed in ideas coherently only through inspiration. Aristotle saw definitive reality in physical objects.

He believed that every problem had a resolution. Aristotle left Athens to spend the next five years in Asia at the court of Hermeas, ruler of Atarneus in Mysia. He married Pythias and had an adopted daughter. Later in his life, he married a second time to a woman named Perpyllis, who bore him a son. He was so happy that he named the son after his dad.

Aristotle wrote an estimated 200 works most of them being in the form of manuscripts and drafts which shaded upon science and psychology. His student Theophrastus evidently looked after his writings and later passed them to his own student Neleus who stored them in a vault to protect them from getting moisturised.

Some of his books

Poetics is a methodical study of writing where Aristotle perceives and describes epic poetry. In poetry, the author uses language whereas in philosophy the author presents ideas.

Metaphysics, by Aristotle

The second book I am going to mention is called Metaphysics where Aristotle cleared out the dissimilarity amid matter and form. To Aristotle matter was the physical element of things while form was the unique nature of a thing that gave it its character.

In the book, Politics Aristotle focused on how the human behaviour changes in the setting of society and government. Aristotle was stuck on the idea of if the government exists it is there for peoples happiness and wellbeing. Politics also studies the theme of how cities came into existence, the role of politicians, class system, purpose of the political system, types of government and egalitarianisms and lastly the roles of slavery and woman in the household and society.

One of Aristotle’s most persuasive works is the Nicomachean Ethics, where he displays a hypothesis of joy that is as yet significant today, more than 2,300 years after the fact. The key inquiry Aristotle looks to reply in these addresses is “What is a definitive reason for human presence?” What is that end or objective for which we should coordinate the majority of our exercises? Wherever we see individuals looking for joy, riches, and a decent notoriety.

Be that as it may, while each of these has some esteem, none of them can involve the place of the main useful for which humankind should point.

To be an extreme end, a demonstration must act naturally adequate and last, “what is constantly alluring in itself and never for something unique” (Nicomachean Ethics) and it must be achievable by man. Aristotle asserts that almost everybody would concur that bliss is the end which meets every one of these prerequisites.

It is simple enough to see that we want cash, joy, and respect simply because we trust that these merchandises will make us glad. It appears that every single other great are a methods towards getting satisfaction, while joy is dependably an end in itself.

Contributions

Contributions to Philosophy

He additionally examined how data can be drawn about articles through findings and derivations. It was his hypothesis of derivation that was formed into “Syllogism” by current thinkers. The sets of recommendations were named as “Contraries” by him. Syllogism is a sensible contention in which the induction of the conclusion is drawn from at least two different premises of a specific frame. This was clarified by him in his work “Earlier Analytics” where he characterized the fundamental segments of thinking through selective and comprehensive connections. These were in later years appeared through Venn Diagrams.

His logic not simply furnished us with an arrangement of thinking yet it was additionally identified with morals. He had depicted an “ethical set of principles” what he alluded to as “great living” in Nichomachean Ethics. He likewise discussed Practical Philosophy where he viewed morals as a piece of viable instead of hypothetical examination. His work titled “Legislative issues”, tossed light on the city. As indicated by him city is a characteristic group. “Man is by nature a political creature” is what was expressed by him. He has been given kudos for being the most punctual one to ponder formal rationale. The well-known savant Kant said in his the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle’s hypothesis of rationale shaped the premise of deductive induction.

Contribution to Science

In spite of the fact that he can’t be named as a researcher by the present definition yet, science was of one of the circles that he broadly inquired about and contemplated particularly amid his stay at Lyceum. His conviction was that communication with physical items helps in picking up information. He likewise led inquire about in science. He arranged creatures into species based on blood. Creatures with red blood were significantly vertebrates and bloodless were named as cephalopods. There was relative mistake in this speculation yet was viewed as the standard framework for a long time. He nearly inspected sea life science also. He nearly analysed the life structures of marine creatures through dismemberment. It is intriguing to note here that not at all like his natural characterizations; his perceptions on marine life are very exact. His treatise “Meteorology” gives confirm that he likewise considered earth sciences. By meteorology, he basically didn’t just mean the investigation of climate. It additionally included broad investigation about water cycle, catastrophic events, mysterious occasions and so forth.

Contributions to Psychology

Numerous researchers consider Aristotle as the genuine father of brain science since he is in charge of the hypothetical and philosophical structure that added to brain research’s soonest beginnings. His book, De Anima (On the Soul), is likewise considered as the primary book on brain research. He was worried about the connection between the mental procedures and the basic physiological marvel. He proposed that the body and the mind exist as aspects of the same being, and the brain is essentially one of the body’s capacities. He proposed that keenness comprises of two sections: aloof brains and dynamic acumen. As indicated by him music, epic verse, satire, disaster and so on were imitative and fluctuated in impersonation by medium, way or question. His conviction was that impersonation was a characteristic piece of people and filled in as one of the principle points of interest of humankind over creatures.

Aristotle believed that slavery was a natural thing and for humans, it was necessary to be the two types slaves and non- slaves. He said that some people were born as slaves and some people were born to rule those slaves and treat them as property. He also said that natural slaves were slaves because they lacked certified abilities like properly think and make decisions therefore they needed a boss who could tell them of what to do. From this, we can make out that Aristotle believed that natural slaves were good because without a ruler they would not have known of how to run their lives. Aristotle doesn’t have method to work out natural slaves and without that some people will be made into slaves that are not fated to be some. There was also a group named legal slaves that was in his head which meant that some were made slaves through bad luck or if they were captured in a war. He said that if the world was fair the legal slaves would be freed and slaves who were born naturally in that rank should stay as they were.

Accomplishments

Aristotle’s achievements as a logician (a term which in his chance implied as much researcher as savant) were uncommon, without a doubt the best in the Western custom. He imagined formal rationale. He basically concocted spellbinding science, material science, brain science, and near political foundations. In the fields of scholarly hypothesis, he composed the sharpest treatment in ancient times of talk and the main genuine hypothesis of poetics. In territories we would today depict as philosophical, he systematized mysticism, epistemology and political hypothesis and composed the absolute most contemplated work ever, the Nichomachean Ethics.

His Politics was the most impact treatment of political logic until the season of Machiavelli. He was among the best specialists in days of yore on the historical backdrop of theory. His compositions were the foundation of expressions of the human experience educational modules in Western colleges from the twelfth to the seventeenth hundreds of years.

The old Greek thinker Aristotle may appear the quintessential Dead White Male, yet in truth he is alive. Twenty-four centuries prior he established the frameworks of Western culture, and his thought bits of knowledge still direct basic highlights of our reality at this moment, from what we eat to what we see on the Internet. Disregard right mind/left brain: neuroscience exposed that hypothesis years back. Furthermore, even overlook Men From Mars and Women From Venus. The genuine split that shapes our lives, our connections, and our way of life is between our inward Aristotle.

Aristotle’s scholarly accomplishment is astounding. He was the main real researcher ever. He was the primary creator whose surviving works contain nitty-gritty and broad perceptions of common wonders, and he was the main thinker to accomplish a sound handle of the connection among perception and hypothesis in logical technique.

He recognized the different logical trains and investigated their connections to one another. He was the principal educator to sort out his addresses into courses and to dole out them a place in a syllabus. His Lyceum was the principal examine organize in which various researchers and specialists participated in shared request and documentation. At long last, and not slightest essential, he was the primary individual in history to develop an exploration library, a precise accumulation of attempts to be utilized by the world.

Statues of famous scholars
Trinity College library. Dublin

Proving that God is Omnipotent

The question arises, ‘Does God lose His energy or does He not?’. This question was addressed by Aristotle, who lived many thousands of years ago, was wiser than the scientists of today. He calculated philosophically and logically that because existence of anything is not possible without a first cause, that because the existence of created things is not possible because they lose energy – in action, we lose energy – hence, the first cause would be conceived in a manner such that it does not lose energy. That is exactly the Qur’anic vision of creation with the ‘word’, a concept that is also found in the Bible. The word is not action – the word is vision or wish for something. God is not created so He must have some attributes that are not created. Created attributes are not the attributes of the Creator. There is a divide between the two. If that is not true then the Creator must also have been created.

Logically if we begin with the concept of a Creator, He must be different from whatever He created. Our arguments are based on our experience of the creation. We do not know the nature of the creator. Hence, according to the Qur’an, the nature of the Creator is such that He visualises a thing and it begins to be and finally comes into being in its complete form – the energy is balanced in such a manner that nothing is lost. For instance, if you bring together matter and anti-matter, the result is zero. This, therefore, is a vision of God to create something out of nothing. Without losing His energy at all, He realises a thing in two separate areas out of non-existence and both are created in their own zone while no extra energy is required for their creation through their coming together. This, therefore, answers the philosophical question. God is indeed omnipotent, he does not require energy to create nor is it used up in any way.

CONCLUSION

Aristotle as I would like to think is the father of present-day learning and the best researcher who at any point lived. Despite the fact that he is best known as a thinker, he honed and added to various disciplines, from science and zoology to material science, cosmology and morals. He was one of the first to objectively inspect different marvels in light of regular circumstances and end results (experimentally) rather than ascribing the responsibility to divine beings and different gods. He even has some impact in the U.S constitution! To get into specifics would order a book. To me, his splendour in such a large number of regions set him apart from the other Greek huge 3 (the other two individuals being Socrates and Plato).

“Piety requires us to honour truth above our friends.”

Aristotle Stagiritis

Disclaimer

This article was originally published in the Annual Printed Edition of Majallatul Jamia

Arsalan Ijaz

Arsalan Ijaz

Student Jamia Ahmadiyya UK

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