Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/352

Rh 331 ARISTOTELES. cally ; he seizes upon the individual stops of con- sciousness, from the impression on the senses to the highest exercise of reason, and exhibits the internal wealth of intellectual life. He sets out, therefore, from the individual, the concrete individual exist- ence of the apparent world ; and this is the empir- ical side of his philosophy. The beginning of his philosophical investigations is external. But the end in view manifests itself in the course of them. For, while in this way he begins with the external, he steadily endeavours to bring into prominent and distinct relief the intrinsic nature of each sepa- jate thing according to the internal formative principles which are inherent in it, and essentially belong to it. Next to this starting-point, an essential part of his method is the exhibition and removal of the difficulties which come in tJie way in tlie course of the investigation {airopiai^ Su(rx^pfMi^ Comp. Metaph. iii. y ^. 40, 20). "For," saj-s Aristotle, "those who investigate without removing the difficulties are like persons who do not know whither they ought to go, and at the same time never perceive whether they have found what they were seeking or not. For the end in view is not clear to such a person, but is clear to one who has previously ac- quired a consciousness of the difficulties. Lastly, that person must necessarily be in a better condi- tion for judging, who has, as it were, heard all the opposing doctrines as though they were antagonist parties pleading before a tribunal." Hence he everywhere has regard to his predecessors, and endeavours carefully to develop the foundation and relative truth of their doctrines. {^Metaph. 1. 3, Top. i. 2.) In this manner Aristotle proceeds with an impartiality which reminds one of the epic re- pose in Homer, and which may easily give him a tinge of scepticism and indefiniteness, where the solution does not immediately follow the aporia, but occurs in the progress of the development. Intimately connected with his endeavour to set out with that which is empirically knovn, is his practice of everywhere making conceptions of the ordinary understanding of men, manners, and cus- toms, proverbs, religious conceptions (comp. Metaph. xii. 8, xiv. 8, de Caelo, ii. 1, de Generat. Anim. i. 2), and above all, language, the points on which to hang his speculative investigations. The Ethics in particular give abundant proofs of the last. Thus, advancing from the lower to the higher, from the more imperfect to the more perfect, he constantly brings into notice the enteleclieia (ivTeKex^ia), or that to which everything, according to its pecu- liarity, is capable of attaining ; whereupon, again he also points out in this entelecheia the higher principle through which the entelecheia itself be- comes a potentiality (Srivaixis). In this manner he exhibits the different steps of development in na- tural existence in their internal relation to each other, and so at last arrives at the highest unity, consisting in the purpose and cause, which, in its creative, organizing activity, makes of the manifold and different forms of the universe one internally connected whole. With all this, however, we must bear in mind, that this method did not lead Aristotle to a perfect and compact system. The philosophy of Aristotle is not such. In every single science he always, so to say, starts afresh from the commencement. The individual parts of his philosophy, therefore, sub- sist independently side by side, and are not com- ARISTOTELES. bined by the vigorous self-development of the idea into one whole, the several members of which ar? mutually connected and dependent. This, the de- monstration of the unity of idea in the entire uni- verse of natural and spiritual life, was a problem which was reserved for after ages. The composition of Aristotle's writings stands in close connexion with the method of his philoso- phizing. Here the object of investigation is always first laid down and distinctly defined, in order to obviate any misunderstanding. Thereupon he gives an historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto treated by earlier philo- sophers (Ph?/s. i. 2, &c., de Anima, i. 2, Metaph. i. 3, &c., EiL Nic. i. 3, Magn. Mor. i. 1, Polit. ii.); and indeed it may be remarked generally, that Aristotle is the father of the history of philosophy. The investigation itself then begins with the exhi- bition of the difficulties, doubts, and contradictions which present themselves (oTropIat, dnopi^/JUTa). These are sifted, and discussed and explained on all sides (JSiairopciv), and the solution and recon- ciliation of them (Ai'ifl-is, cvnopeiu, in opposition to dwopeiu) is given in the course of the investigation. {Metaph. i. init. p. 40, Brandis, Phys. iv. 4, p. 211, 1. 7, ed. Berol.) In this enumeration of the various views and apories, Aristotle is not unfrequently explicit to a degree which wearies the reader, as it is continued without any internal necessity. V. Relation op the Aristotelian Puilo- soPHY to the Platonic. In the Platonic philosophy the opposition be- tween the real and the ideal had completely de- veloped itself. For while the opposition and con- tradiction in the ideal — in the v/orld of thought — was conquered by Plato's dialectics, the external and sensible world was looked upon as a world of appearance, in which the ideas cannot attain to true and proper reality. Between these two, the world of ideas and the visible world of appear- ances, there exists, according to Plato, only a passing relation of participation (fxfde^is) and imitation, in so far namely as the ideas, as the prototypes, can only to a certain extent rule the formless and resisting matter, and fashion it into a visible existence. Plato accordingly made the ex- ternal world the region of the incomplete and bad, of the contradictory and false, and recognized ab- solute truth only in the eternal immutable ideas. Now this opposition, which set fixed limits to cog- nition, was surmounted by Aristotle. He laid down the proposition, that the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is powerless, and has only a potential existence, and that it becomes a living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of its own energy. {Metaph. xii. 6, p. 246. 8., Brandis.) The transition of the ideal into the real, however, Aristotle ex- plains by means of the pure idea of negation {aTcpT](ns). That is to say, ideality and reality are not opposed to each other, as existence and non-existence, according to Plato's view ; but the material itself contains in itself the opposition, the negation, through which it comes to have a kind of feeling of want, and strives after the ideal form, as the ugly strives after the beautiful. The giving it a definite form does away not with the matter, but with the negation which is inherent in the matter, and by that means the material is fashioned so as to assume a definite existence. Thus matter