METAPHYSICAL

Gods?

 A concept of a single supreme god = an unmoved mover:

 a changeless cause of all the processes of the universe = the function of what is divine to
think and to use its intellect.
 Is more a concept of scientific theory than an object of worship.
 Form = F = Proverty. This common proverty exists in the things that have it.
 The proverty as a mysterious kind of thing
 Same proverty that is found in all cats?  to distinguish different categories.
 4 causes:
 The material cause
 The formed cause
 The efficient cause
 The final cause  a “teleological” view of whole universe.

HUMAN

 HB as one kind of animal, very special, capable of rational thought.

 Psyche = Soul = Mind  not thought of as a thing or substance at all. (khac Plao, Kito)
 Soul: “form” of a ling thing, what makes smt the fundamental sort of thing. = the formal cause.
 What do HB do or have that is extra to all this?  the facuty of “thought & intellect”
 Human soul or mind – be understood as a distinctive cluster of faculties, including reasoning.
 Soul of any ling thing X is the way that X lives, operates, functions.
 The soul cannot exist without a body because the soul is not a thing of any kind. It is a complex
property of living bodies.
 The soul is not a body, but a set of capacities of the living body.
 Parts or elements of the soul as one such capacity.
 To contrast 2 elements: possessing rational & nonrational
 A distinction within the rational part between our capacity for reasoning about nesscessary
proposition & our ability to delibrate about what to do.
 Social being (man is a political animal)
 Full development only when we live as members of organized society.
 Men & women= the superior & the inferior  “natural” – history – comon sense of time.
 Tobe innate differences between individuals in their ability to think & reason.
 “good birth”  be capable of higher forms of thought.
………………..  worker,…
 Slave by nature.
 Slavery: a distintion between just slaveholding & unjust ansalvement.

DIAGNOSIS

 Meaning of human life? Happiness or Fulfilment or Flourishing?

 A formulate
a. Human fulfilment consist in activity (excersise of our faculies)
 b. The use of our distinctively human rational capacity
c. This activity: excellence or virtue
d. To last over an extended lifetime

© Excellence of intellect and of character

Intellect: theoretical (academic & techne) & practical (phronesis: practical wisdom)

Ethics: to help people to become good  to help promote virtue: no substitude for a good upbringing: a
training in virtuous habits from childhood.

Virtue…2 extremes:

Courage, temperance, open-handedness, mildness, greatness of soul, munificence.

Justice? – not fit into the pattern of a mean between two extremes.

3 kinds of undesirable states:

1. Badness: opposite of virtue; formed through some combination of bad traming and wrong
choices.
2. Lack of self-control # Paul : grap between aspirations and deeds
3. Brushishness: inhuman – just weird

PRESCRIPTION

Đạt được fulfilment?

How society should best be organized?

Upbringing & education

Put it into practice is a matter of “political expertise”(polis)

Gods of Aristotle are intellectual beings.

To enlarge the scope of intellectual activity to include the creative arts.