23 October, 2000

Up to now I have read closely only three of Aristotle’s works: the Nicomachean Ethics, On the Soul (De Anima), and Politics. I have also read Book XII of Metaphysics. My selection of these particular books will immediately indicate to the knowledgeable that my intent has been to learn from Aristotle, not necessarily of his logic which he is renowned for, but rather about his understanding of the "human condition." Of course, it is to be expected that through works on topics like ethics, politics and metaphysical conjectures the author will, perforce, reveal his or her own personal beliefs and values, and even something about his own character. It is thus that I feel I have come to know – deductively, from his turn of phrase – some things about Aristotle the man, and I am quite confident that my impressions of him would not change appreciably from the ones I hold at present, were I to read all of his other works.

In seeking to understand (if only in my imagination) what life was like for Aristotle and what he revealed of himself through his writing, I came also to appreciate for whom he was writing, and why he wrote as he did. He wrote for all human beings, because he saw their natures cast from the same mould everywhere. He wrote patiently, hoping to sway men, from kings to paupers, one by one, and bit by bit, to get on the virtuous road to the good life. Although he had little hope for success, he never abandoned hope that most men might one day be persuaded to follow his advice. That is when I realized that my somewhat sentimental quest for Aristotle the man in his writings had changed to a beholding of what he left for the posterity of man. He left us much more than mere philosophy. He left us a legacy which, unfortunately, has been spurned by Western civilization. So it is that I have changed my initial choice of title for this piece – Impressions of Aristotle – to the much weightier one of  Aristotle’s Spurned Legacy.

It has ever been so that those who would influence public opinion with respect to cultural mores, social behavior, and political practice (Aristotle was engaged in doing just that in his role as teacher and tutor) must be careful not to incur the displeasure of the citizens of the influential propertied middle-class – in Aristotle’s case, the oligarchs of the city-state. A healthy measure of prudence and tact must be exercised by the intellectual, the scholar, and the teacher in order to maintain popularity and reputation with the middle-class, on whose largesse he mainly depends for his social and material well-being. It seems logical to me that the man who, in the Nicomachean Ethics, stresses the virtues of wisdom, prudence, and temperance would himself have practiced these virtues. As it happened, Aristotle too, like the rest of us, did not escape the vicissitudes of life’s circumstances and changing fortunes, as will be told in greater detail below.

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE and raised in comfortable circumstances, the son of a physician to the Macedonian king. At the age of sixteen he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there until Plato’s death in 348. After departing from Athens, Aristotle was invited by Hermeias, ruler of Atarneus and a former member of the Academy, to found a philosophical community at Assus. While there, Aristotle married Hermeias’ niece. He was also tutor of Alexander (the Great), son of king Philip of Macedonia for a short time. There is no question that Aristotle spent many years studying and teaching on the fringes of the upper class society of the rich and powerful. Even after he returned to Athens in 335, as a resident alien, and founded the Lyceum, he maintained contact with his friend Antipater, who was Alexander’s viceroy. However, securing a comfortable livelihood by maintaining good relationships with the upper class (which a person who is engaged in intellectual or artistic pursuits is often obliged to do) does not make one a member of that class, nor a sycophant of that class.

As it was, Aristotle returned to Athens three years after the city-state had suffered a strategic defeat by Philip of Macedonia at Chareonea (338). Philip himself was killed the next year (337), and Antipater assumed rule as Alexander the Great’s viceroy. When Aristotle arrived in Athens two years later the city was in a sour mood. Demosthenes, a renowned Athenian orator, wished to preserve the independence of Athens and other city-states from Macedonian domination. He had been responsible for inciting the city-states to form an alliance and confront Philip on the field of battle; the result of it was the crushing defeat of the alliance at Chareonea. Philip had actually dealt very leniently with Athens after his victory, but Demosthenes persisted in agitating the Athenians to rise up against the Macedonians. It appears that Aristotle, therefore, had to run his Lyceum for more than a decade in an atmosphere of hostility toward Macedonia and suspicion of anyone who maintained cordial relations with the Macedonian rulers. When Alexander the Great died, in 323, Demosthenes intensified his agitation against the viceroy Antipater. For Aristotle, who was seen as a friend of Antipater, Athens now became a very hostile and dangerous place. He departed from Athens not to return again. He lived the few months left of his life in relative obscurity in Chalcis.

Aristotle was one of the intellectual giants who lived toward the end of the golden age of Greece. Karl R. Popper remarks in his book Conjectures and Refutations, (Ch. 5, XI), that the development of Greek philosophy, especially from Thales to Plato, is "a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth." Aristotle could draw upon a lot of development of philosophical thought by his predecessors which was at that time still relatively fresh.

In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I, Popper also expresses admiration for the Greeks for their rapid development of the values system that makes up democracy and the open society. Popper sees this era as a significant turning point in the history of mankind. I quote a passage from Popper at length because it is a brilliant and concise statement on that glorious era:

. . . in the same generation to which Thucydides belonged, there rose a new faith in reason, freedom, and, as I believe, the only possible faith, of the open society. This generation which marks a turning point in the history of mankind, I should like to call the Great Generation; it is the generation which lived in Athens just before, and during, the Peloponnesian war. There were great conservatives among them, like Sophocles, or Tucydides. There were men among them who represented the period of transition; who were wavering, like Eurupides, or sceptical, like Aristophanes. But there were also the great leader of democracy, Pericles, who formulated the principle of equality before the law and of political individualism, and Herodotus, who was welcomed and hailed in Pericles’ city as the author of a work that glorified these principles. Protagoras, a native of Abdera who became influential in Athens, and his countryman Democritus must also be counted among the Great Generation. They formulated the doctrine that human institutions of language, custom, and law are not of the magical character of taboos but man-made, not natural but conventional, insisting, at the same time, that we are responsible for them Then there was the school of Gorgias – Alcimadas, Lycophron and Antisthenes, who developed the fundamental tenets of anti-slavery, of a rational protectionism, and of anti-nationalism, i.e. the creed of the universal empire of men. And then there was, perhaps the greatest of all, Socrates, who thought the lesson that we must have faith in human reason, but at the same time beware of dogmatism; . . . (p. 184)

These times of great intellectual, cultural and political achievement by the Greeks in the 4^th and 5^th centuries BCE were also times of almost constant tumult and warfare among the city-states. For most of the time, there was an on-going struggle between Sparta, who was the preserver of the culture of the old tribal society, and Athens, who was building a revolutionary mercantile empire based on, if not a democratic, then at least a timocratic model, and of a society which was receptive to outside cultural influences and was inclined to forget and abandon the old tribal traditions. In Athens, a new phenomenon appeared in society – division of the citizenry along ideological lines, which division has remained with us ever since. The division was between conservatives and progressives. The conservative oligarchs of Athens favored, by and large, the Spartan tribal culture and often conspired treasonously against the populist democrats of their own city. Those were politically and socially unpredictable and uncertain times. Reputations, offices, and thrones could be lost suddenly; so could also ones very life.

In order to evaluate Aristotle, the man, it is particularly important, therefore, to take into account the tumultuous times he personally lived in, and the equally tumultuous years before his birth which he had knowledge of from recent history. Karl Popper has a very negative view of Plato for expressing tribal and totalitarian sentiments in his works and for being a supporter of the reactionary oligarchs of Athens; and more so is Popper critical of Plato’s uncle Critias, who actually participated in the murder of people of the democratic opposition after Athens fell to Sparta. Popper similarly labels Aristotle, who, after all, was Plato’s disciple for many years, as a supporter of the oligarchs, but I think he is judging him too harshly.

It is true that Aristotle was not wild about democracy, or more accurately, about the extreme populist and anarchist forms of democracy. But it is clear from his own writings in Politics that Aristotle understood very well the good and the bad of every form of government known to men. After all, he lived in the laboratory where all the different kinds of governments had been or were being tried. He describes the pros and cons of numerous kinds of governments, citing in each case the places where they have been tried or are in force. In the passage below, Aristotle discusses democracy and oligarchy:

In the many forms of government which have sprung up there has always been an acknowledgement of justice and proportionate equality, although mankind fail in attaining them, as indeed I have already explained. Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal. Oligarchy is based on the notion that those who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal; being unequal, that is, in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely. The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things; while the oligarchs, under the idea that they are unequal, claim too much, which is one form of inequality. All these forms of government have a kind of justice, but, tried by an absolute standard, they are faulty; and, therefore, both parties, whenever their share in the government does not accord with their preconceived ideas, stir up revolution. (P/BJ, 1301a26-39)

That a state should be ordered, simply and wholly, according to either kind of equality [numerical or proportional], is not a good thing; the proof is the fact that such forms of government never last. They are originally based on a mistake, and, as they begin badly, cannot fail to end badly. The inference is that both kinds of equality should be employed; numerical in some cases, and proportionate in others. Still democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government. (P/BJ, 1302a03-15)

There is an amazing amount of political wisdom in the above passages. First of all, Aristotle did not like the kind of democracy which "arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects." Today we would characterize Aristotle as a moderate conservative. Today, only a communist or hard-core socialist demands that people must be equal in all respects, i.e. materially equal. Aristotle certainly was neither of those. It is also clear that Aristotle favored a republican form of democratic government that has a bicameral structure (a lower and an upper chamber) because he recommends that "both kinds of equality should be employed." And, have not the people of liberal democracies concluded from their experiences in the 20^th century that "democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy?" Further, behold the most amazing of Aristotle’s remarks that "a government which is composed of the middle class [the bourgeoisie!] more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy." Is that not also one of the sacred canons of modern Western democracies? To cap it all, when Churchill said that democracy is a bad form of government, except that all the others are worse, did he say anything different from Aristotle’s remark that democracy "is the safest of the imperfect forms of government?"

I am of the opinion that slavery was one of the issues on which Aristotle had to walk the fine line. He is often criticized by modern scholars for condoning slavery. But, would a public renunciation of slavery by a teacher to the rich and powerful have had any influence in speeding the abolition of it? Hardly. However, it certainly would have been detrimental to the well-being of Aristotle himself.

Slavery has been practiced since the beginnings of civilization, and most likely even before that. Slavery has been a factor in the economy of many societies and states up to our present times. Slaves have been forced to do the dirty, physically exhausting, and dangerous work that needs to be done but that the free men are loath to do. Not so long ago, slavery was a state-run enterprise in the Soviet Union: Slaves (political prisoners) were used in uranium mines and to clean nuclear-powered submarines of radioactive waste.

In Aristotle’s Greece the owning of slaves was not only an economic but also a cultural practice. By and large, Aristotle’s pupils came from the upper strata of society, from prosperous oligarchs and kings. Ownership of slaves was indicative of social status; it showed that one was rich enough to afford to keep them. It would have been unthinkable for them not to own slaves. But I can’t imagine Aristotle upholding slavery on principle.

Through his lectures and writings on ethics and morals, Aristotle was constantly trying to persuade men that it is to their own benefit to live a virtuous life and to allow the next fellow to do likewise. At the same time, he had no illusions about the nature of man, expressed very directly in this statement:

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. (P/BJ, 1253a31-36)

Aristotle did not hold much hope that man (as a species) could be perfected into the "best of animals"; we must be content that some of us acquire a smattering of virtue. Towards the end of the Nicomachean Ethics he writes:

Perhaps however, as we maintain, in the practical sciences the end is not to attain a theoretical knowledge of the various subjects, but rather to carry out our theories in action. If so, to know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavour to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.

Now if discourses on ethics were sufficient in themselves to make men virtuous, ‘large fees and many’ (as Theognis says) ‘would they win,’ quite rightly, and to provide such discourses would be all that is wanted. But as it is, we see that although theories have power to stimulate and encourage generous youths, and, given an inborn nobility of character and a genuine love of what is noble, can make them susceptible to the influence of virtue, yet they are powerless to stimulate the mass of mankind to moral nobility. For it is the nature of the many to be amenable to fear but not to a sense of honour, and to abstain from evil not because of its baseness but because of the penalties it entails; since, living as they do by passion, they pursue the pleasures akin to their nature, and the things that will procure those pleasures, and avoid the opposite pains, but have not even a notion of what is noble and truly pleasant, having never tasted true pleasure. What theory then can reform the natures of men like these? To dislodge by argument habits long firmly rooted in their characters is difficult if not impossible. We may doubtless think ourselves fortunate if we attain some measure of virtue when all the things believed to make men virtuous are ours. (N/HR, 1179a34-1179b19)

So it is, then, that Aristotle himself thought that he was teaching the standards for human perfection to a mostly imperfectible bunch. Among other imperfections, Aristotle had to resign himself to the imperfection of slavery. When I read the following passage from Politics I can imagine in my mind’s eye Aristotle instructing a group of (probably youthful) students in what today would be called Economics 101. (I can even imagine that to Aristotle this was perhaps boring course material which he had to cover as part of the curriculum.) He is discussing rather mundane matters of household management. He says that the ability to manage a slave is a need of practical life; he is also hoping that the current attitude of master to slave can be improved, no doubt in order to better the lot of the slave (". . . seeking to attain some better theory of their relation than exists at present"). Note also that Aristotle uses here the non-committal, impartial expression (which he employed frequently) of "some are of the opinion"; not "I think", not "we believe," but an unspecified group of "some." That is how one keeps out of trouble with the powers that be.

And there is another element of a household, the so-called art of getting wealth, which, according to some, is identical with household management, according to others, a principal part of it; the nature of this art will also have to be considered by us. Let us first speak of master and slave, looking to the needs of practical life and also seeking to attain some better theory of their relation than exists at present. For some are of opinion that the rule of a master is a science, and that the management of a household, and the mastership of slaves, and the political and royal rule, as I was saying at the outset, are all the same. (P/BJ, 1253b13-1253b19)

However, Aristotle counters that statement immediately with a somewhat provocative assertion:

Others affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature, and that the distinction between slave and freeman exists by law only, and not by nature; and being an interference with nature is therefore unjust. (P/BJ, 1253b20-23)

Again, Aristotle sounds impartial on the subject – "others affirm", not "I believe." But, having mentioned the hypothesis that slavery might be an interference with nature, i.e. an unnatural relationship between men, he returns to the prevailing conventional wisdom which argues that a slave is, after all, a possession, and concludes with:

Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man who, being a human being, is also a possession. (P/BJ, 1254a14-16)

It is important to note the interjection of the otherwise redundant phrase "being a human being." I think that Aristotle is subtly challenging his students to contemplate the illogicality of the idea that any member of the human race could be thought of as a physical possession. If it can be said of one human being that it is possible for him to be a possession, it can be said of all human beings, even of Athenians. That is not a conclusion that would be welcome in the minds of any of Aristotle’s students.

Aristotle next proceeds to state the question of whether slavery is or is not a natural institution.

But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature? (P/BJ, 1254a18-19)

It is to be noted that Aristotle starts out with a categorical statement asserting that slavery is a natural thing, supposedly supported by reason and fact:

There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule. (P/BJ, 1254a20-23)

But his argument appears to be contrived, leading one to suspect, once more, that Aristotle is presenting this weak case only to please the consciences of his students and their elders, many of whom were from slave-owning families, rather than to please his own. He actually slides off the point, and spends lines 1254a24 to 1255a02 citing various natural instances of "rulers" and "ruled," which are really not instances of master and slave in the true sense, but are rather natural hierarchical and cause-effect relationships. After all, to state that in the natural world one will always find that something or someone is in charge – the master of the situation or process – doesn’t equate it with slavery. Aristotle could not present any proof of slavery in the natural world because he could not find any. Instances of actual slavery in the natural world are very rare; only a few have been found, mainly in the insect domain. Nevertheless, Aristotle states the conclusion that slavery is a natural thing. Aristotle, like many who came after him, had to conform with the "political correctness" of the time:

It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right. (P/BJ, 1255a02)

As if to confirm our suspicions that Aristotle has made the spurious argument for slavery in the natural world simply to please his patrons, he hastens to amend it. Just in case we are not quick enough on the up-take, he throws in an enigmatic reference to his own unstated personal opinion with the remark: "Even among philosophers there is a difference of opinion."

But that those who take the opposite view have in a certain way right on their side, may be easily seen. For the words slavery and slave are used in two senses. There is a slave or slavery by law as well as by nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of convention – the law by which whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors. But this right many jurists impeach, as they would an orator who brought forward an unconstitutional measure: they detest the notion that, because one man has the power of doing violence and is superior in brute strength, another shall be his slave and subject. Even among philosophers there is a difference of opinion. (P/BJ, 1255a03-11)

As I understand it, what Aristotle implies in the above quote is that there really is only one kind of slavery which consists of the subjugation of man by man by violent means, usually in war, but not exclusively in war. The practice of raiding other tribes which are considered to be less civilized than your own for slaves is also a violent act conducted with superior brute strength. The "slavery by nature" looks more and more like a phantom concept inserted into the argument by Aristotle in order that he might propitiate the beliefs of the ruling classes.

Finally, Aristotle recognizes the racial underpinnings of slavery. Men do not enslave their own kind, only people who they consider to be "barbarians," i.e. people who are racially, ethnically, or culturally greatly different from themselves. The "barbarians" turn out to be the "natural slaves." Aristotle can be faulted only for concurring (reluctantly, in my opinion, i.e. "it must be admitted") with the conventional belief (prevalent in the Greek world then and still prevalent in some parts of the world today) that certain alien ethnic and racial groups "are slaves everywhere."

Others, clinging, as they think, simply to a principle of justice (for law and custom are a sort of justice), assume that slavery in accordance with the custom of war is justified by law, but at the same moment they deny this. For what if the cause of the war be unjust? And again, no one would ever say that he is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave. Were this the case, men of the highest rank would be slaves and the children of slaves if they or their parents chance to have been taken captive and sold. Wherefore Hellenes do not like to call Hellenes slaves, but confine the term to barbarians. Yet, in using this language, they really mean the natural slave of whom we spoke first; for it must be admitted that some are slaves everywhere, others nowhere. (P/BJ, 1255a21-32)

In spite of the above concession to slavery, Aristotle by no means endorses it. It seems to me that Aristotle never abandons his belief that all men are basically the same, because they are members of the same species. A man is still a human being even when enslaved, and has the potential to be a friend and freeman. Indirectly, Aristotle hints that abolition of slavery is most likely to happen in a democracy. This point is addressed in the following passage from the Nicomachean Ethics:

For master and slave have nothing in common: a slave is a living tool, just as a tool is an inanimate slave. Therefore there can be no friendship with a slave as slave, though there can be as a human being: for there seems to be room for justice in the relations of every human being with every other that is capable of participating in law and contract, and hence friendship is possible with everyone as far as he is a human being. Hence even in tyrannies there is but little scope for friendship and justice between ruler and subjects; but there is most room for them in democracies, where the citizens being equal have many things in common. (N/HR, 1161b04-10)

I conclude my argument that Aristotle the ethicist and logician could not, in his heart of hearts, approve of slavery with this brief remark he made in Book VII of Politics:

. . . there is nothing grand or noble in having the use of a slave, in so far as he is a slave; . . . (P/BJ, 1325a25)

Aristotle is renowned for always exalting the grand and the noble. He is saying that those who own slaves and use them as slaves lack nobility of character.

Through the ages, most Western scholars have viewed Aristotle’s concept of God and the soul rather disparagingly. For Aristotle, they say, God is the distant and uninvolved Prime Mover and the soul is simply a property of something that is alive, and therefore it is as mundane and of no more consequence than a biological property of the living being. Aristotle’s concept has nothing in common with the immortal soul of man as envisioned by the three monotheistic religions which share the same roots in the Bible. It has been convenient for Western scholars, even those of agnostic or atheistic bent, to keep Aristotle’s concept of God and soul out of the picture, so to speak, because of course – and this whether one believes in the biblical God and soul, or does not – the biblical model is the one and only genuine transcendental model of God and the human soul that one is supposed to recognize as such. Any other philosophy about God and the disposition of the human soul is paganistic and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. This narrow-mindedness, this tunnel vision, has prevailed through the centuries to our day, much to the detriment of Western thought.

The consensus view of Aristotle’s understanding of God is stated very well by Frederick Copleston in A History of Philosophy, Vol. I :

The First Mover, being immaterial, cannot perform any bodily action: His action must be purely spiritual, and so intellectual. In other words, God’s activity is one of thought. But what is the object of His thought? Knowledge is intellectual participation of the object: now, God’s object must be the best of all possible objects, and in any case the knowledge enjoyed by God cannot be knowledge that involves change or sensation or novelty. God therefore knows himself in an eternal act of intuition or self-consciousness. Aristotle, then, defines God as "Thought of Thought." God is subsistent thought, which eternally thinks itself. (p. 316)

Aristotle may not have spoken of the First Mover as being personal, and certainly the ascription of anthropomorphic personality would be very far indeed from his thoughts, but since the First Mover is Intelligence or Thought, it follows that He is personal in the philosophic sense. The Aristotelian God may not be personal secundum nomen, but He is personal secundum rem. . . . there is no indication that Aristotle ever thought of the First Mover as an object of worship, still less as a Being to Whom prayers might profitably be addressed. And indeed, if Aristotle’s God is entirely self-centered, as I [Copleston] believe Him to have been, then it would be out of the question for men to attempt personal intercourse with Him. In the Magna Morlia Aristotle says expressly that those are wrong who think that there can be a friendship towards God. For (a) God could not return our love, and (b) we could not in any case be said to love God. (p. 317)

. . . Aristotle leaves out of account that Divine operation in the world . . . which is an essential element in any satisfactory rational theology. The Aristotelian God is efficient Cause only by being the final Cause. He does not know this world and no Divine plan is fulfilled in this world: the teleology of nature can be nothing more than unconscious teleology (at least this is the only conclusion that will really fit in with the picture of God given in the Metaphysics). (p. 319)

Aristotle’s conjectures about the character of God are described accurately enough in the above quotes from Copleston. However, Copleston shows that he is as hung up as any other Western scholar always has been on the dogmatic belief that a "satisfactory rational theology" must be based on Divine intervention in the world of man. By "rational theology" he means, of course, the three bible-based religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If there is no myth associated with it, if there are no religious rituals and objects, if God is not worshiped in a synagogue, church, or mosque, it is not "satisfactory rational theology."

As for the soul, Copleston’s remarks on De Anima in Chapter XXX of the History are also true to Aristotle’s views. For Aristotle the soul is "the vital principle of living things"; it is "the cause and principle of the living body, (a) as a source of movement, (b) as a final cause, and (c) as the real substance (i.e. formal cause) of animated bodies." There are different types of soul, the lowest being the nutritive or vegetative soul, the highest the human soul. The human soul has all the attributes of the lower souls and in addition it has the power of intellect. Aristotle thought that of the several parts of the soul, all others die when the body dies, but "the active intellect is immortal."

The immortal "active" intellect part of the soul has been translated into English as "mind"; the pertinent passage from De Anima reads:

Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more; this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while the mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks. (DA/JAS, 430a22-25)

When I read the above passage for the first time, I immediately thought of the philosophical consistency in Aristotle’s conjectures about both God and the human soul (the part which he called the "active intellect"). The consistency is demonstrated by the following passage from the Metaphysics:

Is it not the case that what has no matter is indivisible, like human intellect, or even that which is thinking of a composite object in an interval of time? For it does not possess goodness in this part or in that part but possesses the highest good in the whole, though it is distinct from it. It is in this manner that Thinking is the thinking of Himself through all eternity. (M/HGA, 1075a07-10)

It was a pleasant surprise to me to realize how compatible is Aristotle’s concept of God and soul as immaterial entities with my own belief in the immaterial Creator God - "a being that which no greater can be thought of" after Anselm, and my belief in the immaterial soul, after Popper and Eccles, in The Self and Its Brain. Aristotle and I are separated by a gap of 2400 years in knowledge and understanding of the Creator’s universe. Consider what Aristotle had to work with as the prevailing hypothesis of the universe, described by Copleston in A History of Philosophy:

Aristotle maintained the view that the earth, spherical in shape [at least it was not flat!, G.I.], is at rest in the centre of the universe, and that around it lie the layers, concentric and spherical, of water, air and fire or the warm. Beyond these lie the heavenly spheres, the outermost of which, that of the fixed stars, owes its motion to the First Mover. Assuming from Calippus the number thirty-three as the number of spheres which must be presupposed in order to explain the actual motion of the planets, Aristotle assumed also twenty-two backward-moving spheres, interposed between the other spheres, in order to counteract the tendency of a sphere to disturb the motion of the planet in the next encompassed sphere. (p. 326)

I cogitate on how Aristotle would re-define his First Mover, if, instead of struggling with the heavenly spheres, he had our knowledge and understanding (incomplete, but surely better than what was known and understood 2400 years ago) of the composition of matter down to its smallest particles and of the indistinguishability of matter from energy at these levels; and if his conjectures were based on our current hypotheses about the creation and the structure of the universe and on our observations of the on-going dynamic processes within it. I am convinced that Aristotle would propose a First Mover very similar to the Creator-God I believe in.

I share Aristotle’s belief that the soul is the vital principle of living things, and the only difference in our respective beliefs is that I consider the human soul (and all other souls of living things) to be indivisible unities whereas Aristotle divides the soul into parts. I believe that the immaterial soul can survive the physical death of the body, but Aristotle believes that only the active intellect, or the "mind" part of the soul survives – one might say that the Aristotelian "active intellect" unites, appropriately enough, with the "Thought of Thought." Aristotle is also known for his scientific investigations, particularly in biology. I’m sure that today Aristotle would have no difficulty in modifying his ideas on the several parts of the soul to fit our modern knowledge in molecular biology. For example, Hugh Lawson-Tancred notes in his translation of De Anima (p. 164) that many scientists agree that the "formal cause" function of Aristotle’s soul presages the role of DNA in modern biology.

A proper and fair assessment of a person’s philosophy – particularly concerning transcendental matters – should be based, first of all, on the person’s major philosophical premises. The details surrounding these premises are of secondary importance; they are bound to reflect the conventional knowledge and understanding of the time. I understand Aristotle’s major premises to be: (a) God is the Supreme Being, encompassing all that is good, (b) living things have a soul, and (c) there is a natural common-sense code of ethics and morals which men should live by in order to approach the state of goodness of the Divine.

I am certain that Aristotle was a good man, fair and law-abiding. He had to be to be the author of the Nicomachean Ethics. There is one passage in the Ethics that I find particularly expressive of Aristotle’s major premises. The following is from a mix of translations by W. D. Ross, J.A.K. Thomson and T. Irwin:

Now we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be the soul's activity and actions that express reason, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these. Each function is completed well when its completion expresses the proper virtue. Therefore, the human good turns out to be the soul's activity that expresses virtue. And if there are more virtues than one, the good will express the best and most complete virtue. (N, 1098a13-18)

Aristotle repeated the same advice in Politics, when he was making the point that in order to have a good political community, there must first of all be good citizens:

Accordingly, since the soul is indeed more honorable then the body or external possessions, both without qualification and to us, the best position of the soul, too, is of necessity analogously related to the best position of the body or of those possessions. Further, external goods and those of the body are chosen by nature for the sake of the soul and should be so chosen by all men of good judgment, but the soul is not chosen for the sake of these goods. Now let us acknowledge that the extent to which we become happy corresponds to the extent to which our virtues and prudence and the actions according to these are present, and let us acknowledge as a witness also God, who is happy and blessed not because of any external goods but because of Himself and His kind of nature. (P/HGA, 1323b16-25)

Aristotle states that God is eternal and encompasses all that is good; good that we only attain on occasion and never as perfectly as God does:

If, then, the manner of God’s existence is as good as ours sometimes is, but eternally, then this is marvelous, and if it is better, this is still more marvelous; and it is the latter. And life belongs to God, for the actuality of the intellect is life, and He is actuality; and His actuality is in virtue of itself as life which is the best and is eternal. We say that God is a living being which is eternal and the best; so life and continuous duration and eternity belong to God, for this is God (M/HGA, 1072b25 – 1072b30).

However, even though men are but animals, Aristotle exhorts them to never cease, through the power of their reason, to live a good and virtuous life and to bring forth that Divine goodness which is in them in order to achieve immortality of their soul:

If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and being mortal, of mortal things, but must so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best things in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. (N/WDR, 1177b29-1178a02)

It seems to me that Aristotle’s ideas about God were in a state of flux. That does not surprise me, in view of the unreal and even childish hypotheses of the universe which prevailed in his time. In Book XII of the Metaphysics Aristotle struggles with the cumbersome "heavenly spheres" and their "Prime Mover." In the above passage from the Nicomachean Ethics, where he deals with human emotions and values, he is thinking of God as the embodiment of ideal goodness which men must strive to emulate. Which leads me to wonder what heights of development this Aristotelian concept of God could have reached in the subsequent 2400 years up to our day, had it not been smothered and superseded by the dogma of the biblical God.

If Aristotle’s thoughts, as expressed in his lectures and writings, are evaluated while keeping in mind the political and social circumstances in which he had to try to make a good life for himself while upholding his standards of virtue, then one can conclude that Aristotle made a marvelous job of it. He understood the nature of man and knew that man was capable of being the worst of all animals, as has already been noted. Aristotle also knew how difficult it is to habituate men to live a good, virtuous life, but he never stopped trying to convince them to do so. Toward the end of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle discusses the problem and even recommends the use of the law, if necessary, to compel parents and teachers to provide the right up-bringing to children:

Now some think that we are made good by nature, others by habituation, others by teaching. Nature’s part evidently does not depend on us, but as a result of some divine cause is present in those who are truly fortunate; while argument and teaching, we may suspect, are not powerful with all men, but the soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble joy and noble hatred, like earth which is to nourish the seed. For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? And in general passion seems to yield not to argument but to force. The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and hating what is base. But it is difficult to get from youth up a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law. (N/WDR, 1179b20-35)

The Nicomachean Ethics is a truly awesome achievement by one man. It is the only practical and purely secular (and therefore the only worthwhile one, in my opinion) framework for a moral and ethical code of conduct. No one can testify to this with more authority than Mortimer J. Adler, who is a life-long student of Aristotle and who has used the Aristotelian framework to create just such a code for our own modern times. In Adler’s words, from The Time of Our Lives:

. . . the Nicomachean Ethics is a unique book in the Western tradition of moral philosophy. As Aristotle is uniquely the philosopher of common sense, so his moral philosophy is uniquely the ethics of common sense. It is the only ethics that is both teleological and deontological, the only ethics that is sound, practical, and undogmatic, offering what little normative wisdom there is for all men to be guided by, but refraining from laying down rules of conduct to cover the multifarious and contingent circumstances of human action. In the history of Western moral thought, it is the only book centrally concerned and concerned throughout with the goodness of a whole human life, with the parts of this whole, and with putting the parts together in the right order and proportion. As far as I know, its only parallel is to be found outside of Western culture in the moral teachings of Confucius, which address themselves to the same problem and which offer a solution to it that also refines the wisdom of common sense. (p. 236)

Let me now repeat what I understand Aristotle’s major premises to be: (a) God is the Supreme Being, encompassing all that is good, (b) living things have a soul, and (c) there is a natural common-sense code of ethics and morals which men should live by in order to approach the state of goodness of the Divine. I will be bold enough to claim that even if Aristotle expressed these premises somewhat differently, in line with the knowledge of his time, today he would re-state them in words very similar to mine.

I have stated the three main premises in their conventional hierarchy of precedence. But, curiously enough (and I feel that Aristotle would agree with me), the third one which posits a natural moral and ethical code for men is the most important of the three. Because, if men cannot first of all decide on what they must do to make themselves human, contemplation about whether God and soul exist or not becomes as unnecessary for man as it is for other animals.

The above sets the stage for my argument about Aristotle’s legacy to mankind which mankind has chosen to spurn. Let’s first recall Copleston’s remarks about the lack of Divine operation in the world in Aristotle’s philosophy about God, and that this lack excludes Aristotle’s view of God from the classification of "satisfactory rational theology." In my opinion, the dubious "satisfaction" and the fraudulent "rationality" of the theology that Copleston is talking about, i.e. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, are based on the fact that morals and ethics are dictatorial edicts laid down by God; they are to be practiced by men not – as Aristotle claims – because men’s common sense and reason tells them that it is good to do so, but because God commands them to do so. This God was conceptualized by an obscure tribe of the middle East. In order to flatter their own ego and please their own (very natural and human) selfish wants, they further conceived of this God as their Father, and themselves exclusively as His children. This God was paternal, tribal, and also personal; He protected the individual and the tribe from danger, and provided for their material needs. With this paternalistic God to back one up, one could compete fiercely with other tribes and other gods in the game of "my god is better than your god."

This God, being like a father to you, also loves you personally, and because He loves you, He will forgive you for breaking His moral commandments, if you worship Him, plead with Him, pray to Him, ask for His forgiveness, etc. It is on this very point that Aristotle’s moral code is unpalatable to the believers in the biblical God.

Aristotle says that there is something of the Divine in men and asks men to use their common sense and their natural ability to tell good from bad and right from wrong, so that they may live a good life and strive to be as good as God is. The onus is entirely on man. If man acts contrary to the code, he acts contrary to the natural code for man’s behavior. There is no one to forgive him for breaking it; therefore, he cannot act contrary to the code again and again and, having in each case shown the proper contrition, still feel that he is a good man living a good life. But that is precisely how man can misuse, usually to some selfish advantage, the moral code prescribed by the very personal and paternalistic biblical God; he can still feel that he is a good man even after any number of evil deeds, because he has asked for God’s forgiveness after committing the evil deeds.

The biblical religions offer what Aristotle cannot: a personal and paternal God who loves one and forgives one’s immoral and evil acts, and, in the later development of these religions, promises one immortality in heaven or paradise. The biblical religions are religions of convenience, whereas Aristotle offers no convenient ways to evade moral responsibility, nor a convenient route to immortality. Therefore, it is not surprising that Western man chose the biblical God as his model and turned away from the philosophical model of the natural God (a non-dogmatic concept open to further development, understanding, and perfection) which was taking shape in the Greek civilization.

Thus was Aristotle’s legacy of a code of morals and ethics and his incipient hypotheses about God and the soul spurned by Western civilization. It was a great mistake to do so. One need only tune in to the latest news from the middle East to realize how great was the mistake.

Other works:

Conjectures and Refutations, by Karl R. Popper; Routledge, 1989

The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl R. Popper; Vol. I; Princeton U. Press, 1986

The Self and Its Brain, by Karl R. Popper and John C. Eccles; Routledge, 1995

A History of Philosophy, by Frederick Copleston, S.J.; Vol. I; Newman Press, 1950

The Time of Our Lives, by Mortime J. Adler; Fordham U. Press, 1996