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Aristotle’s Theory of Human Nature

Ken Jetter V. Catarman | CSS-A Eniac

January 30, 2023
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Life of Aristotle …………………………………………….…. …… 1

Work of Aristotle ………………………………….…….…….…….. 2

Body: Aristotle’s Theory of Human Nature ……………………………………… 3

Conclusion ……………………………………………..………………………….… 4

Reference ………………………………………………..………………………...… 5
 “Aristotle’s Theory of Human Nature”

Aristotle Life and Works

Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice, about 55 km (34 miles) east of
modern-day Thessaloniki. His father, Nicomachus, was the personal physician
to King Amyntas of Macedon. While he was young, Aristotle learned about biology
and medical information, which was taught by his father. Both of Aristotle's parents
died when he was about thirteen, and Proxenus of Atarneus became his
guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he
probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections
with the Macedonian monarchy.
At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his
education at Plato's Academy. He probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as
he wrote when describing the sights one viewed at the Eleusinian Mysteries, "to
experience is to learn". Aristotle remained in Athens for nearly twenty years before
leaving in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure records that he was
disappointed with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's
nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared the anti-Macedonian
sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato died. Aristotle then
accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor.
After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with his pupil Theophrastus to the
island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island
and its sheltered lagoon. While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermias's
adoptive daughter or niece. She bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias.
In 343 BC, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his
son Alexander.
Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During
Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander but
also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. Aristotle encouraged
Alexander toward eastern conquest, and Aristotle's own attitude towards Persia was
unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a
leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after
friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants". By 335 BC,
Aristotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as
the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years.
While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved
with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom he named after his
father, Nicomachus. If the Suda – an uncritical compilation from the Middle Ages – is
accurate, he may also have had an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.
This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have
composed many of his works. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments
have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for
the most part, intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be
lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises
include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul and Poetics.
Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics,
mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance,
and theatre."
Near the end of his life, Alexander and Aristotle became estranged over Alexander's
relationship with Persia and Persians. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected
Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is
an unlikely claim made some six years after the death. Following Alexander's death,
anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In 322 BC, Demophilus
and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for
impiety, prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, on Euboea, at
which occasion he was said to have stated: "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice
against philosophy" – a reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates. He died
in Chalcis, Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his
student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be
buried next to his wife.

The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval
manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as
opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within
Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization
of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition (Aristotelis Opera edidit
Academia Regia Borussica, Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient
classifications of these works.

Aristotle wrote his works on papyrus scrolls, the common writing medium of that
era. His writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric", intended for the public,
and the "esoteric", for use within the Lyceum school. Aristotle's "lost" works stray
considerably in characterization from the surviving Aristotelian corpus. Whereas the
lost works appear to have been originally written with a view to subsequent
publication, the surviving works mostly resemble lecture notes not intended for
publication. Cicero's description of Aristotle's literary style as "a river of gold" must
have applied to the published works, not the surviving notes. A major question in the
history of Aristotle's works is how the exoteric writings were all lost, and how the
ones now possessed came to be found. The consensus is that Andronicus of Rhodes
collected the esoteric works of Aristotle's school which existed in the form of smaller,
separate works, distinguished them from those of Theophrastus and other Peripatetics,
edited them, and finally compiled them into the more cohesive, larger works as they
are known today.
Body: Aristotle’s Theory of Human Nature

According to Aristotle, all human functions contribute to eudaimonia, 'happiness'.

Happiness is an exclusively human good; it exists in rational activity of soul
conforming to virtue. This rational activity is viewed as the supreme end of action,
and so as man's perfect and self-sufficient end. Again for Aristotle, the term episteme,
'science', indicates a special quality of knowledge, viz. truth as derived from premises
priorly known, and with greater clarity than the conclusion. This thesis argues that
scientific knowledge of man can be based on analysis of the exclusively human
quality of eudaimonia.

One's perception of a conjunction of vital operations found only in man is the starting
point for such episteme. Philosophy can also analyze the nature of virtue, a
specifically human form of habit. Taking all human activities and qualities into its
scope, philosophy can develop a scientific concept of the whole of human nature. But
only the operations of reason and the quality of virtue are immediate principles of
eudaimonia. A careful study of them reductively provides knowledge of the whole of
man. Within a eudaimonistic focus, human reason has two important functions. These
occur in the theoretical activity of contemplation and in the practical activity of
discerning the good for one's conduct. A mature human being can perform both of
these activities entirely on his own. Each activity is perfect and self-sufficient; each is,
therefore, evidence of the wholeness and self-sufficiency of human nature. Human
virtue connotes an ease of action; it facilitates the activity of theoretical and practical
reason.

Thus virtue makes it easier to live well as a human being and so to be happy. As a
well established inner quality, virtue is a permanent occasion of the activity proper to
man. With reason and virtue as immediate principles, Aristotle's man is capable of
self-constitution. In light of these main results a generally compelling scientific
knowledge of man is possible. Some tangential results concern the relations between
philosophical, medical and sociological/psychological knowledge of man, problems
with a function-oriented axiology, and the seminal influence of Aristotle on Western
concepts of the person.

Theory of Human Nature: The Soul as a Set of Faculties, Including Rationality –

Plato was a dualist who believed that we are composed of two substances, a material
body, and an immaterial mind. Aristotle rejects this. As a biologist, Aristotle
recognized that living things include plants as well as human and non-human animals.
[He says that plants have a vegetative structure (a way of functioning) which is
primarily about taking in nutrients, reproducing, and the like. Non-human animals
have this structure plus a sensitive structure that uses senses to interact with the
environment and initiates desires. Human animals add to this a rational structure
which makes them unique.] Each different thing then has a different structure or form.
This is its formal cause in his language. Thus some things have a richer or more
complex form than other things.
Thus the form of something does not exist independently; it is not an entity in itself.
Rather it is the specific pattern or structure or form of a thing which defines how it
exists and functions. [It is different to be structured like a rock, tree, dog, or human.]
Thus for Aristotle, it makes no sense to talk of a soul or mind without a body, for the
essence of a person is embedded and intertwined with their matter. You can’t take it
out of the body. [And to think Roman Catholic natural law theory is Aristotelian
through and through.]

The only exception is that divine intellectual functioning may take place without a
body. Yet it is hard to see how this could be the case. For example, even if computers
think without bodies their thought still depends on material components. A
disembodied thought is conceptually problematic, although many Christians and
Islamists who followed Aristotle welcomed the possibility. As for ordinary embodied
human beings, Aristotle’s major distinction is between their rational component and
their emotions and desires. He also distinguished
between theoretical and practical reasoning.

Aristotle also held that humans are social and political creatures who have activities
common to all. He also thought that we can only reach our full development in
societies. However he does not think that women are rational creatures, and his
remarks are quite disparaging toward them. Perhaps worst of all, Aristotle advocated a
doctrine of natural slavery—the idea that some are natural slaves. He thinks this is the
status of non-Greek barbarians. Still, we should not reject the rest of Aristotle’s
thought because he was a misogynist, racist, and imperialist. [Aristotle’s doctrine of
natural slavery heavily influenced the Catholic Spanish conquerors of the new world,
many of whom used it to justify their horrific treatment of the people of the new
world. For more see the disputations during that time, particularly those held at the
University of Salamanca.]
Conclusion

Aristotle's theory of human nature holds that the human being is a rational animal,
possessing both a material body and an immaterial soul. The soul, according to
Aristotle, is the source of the human being's consciousness, thoughts, and desires,
while the body provides the means for the soul to interact with the physical world.
Aristotle believed that the soul is capable of continuous development, and that it is the
purpose of the human being to cultivate their soul through a life of reason and
virtuous action. He saw happiness as the ultimate goal of human life, and believed
that it could be achieved through the cultivation of the soul and the cultivation of
moral virtues.

Aristotle's theory of human nature has had a lasting impact on Western philosophy
and continues to be studied and discussed by philosophers today. It provides a
nuanced view of the human being as both a material and immaterial being, and
emphasizes the importance of reason, ethics, and moral virtue in the cultivation of the
human soul. His ideas continue to shape our understanding of what it means to be
human and to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life.

Alexander the Great was taught by Aristotle, a Plato disciple who lived from 384 to
322 BCE. In contrast to mathematician Plato's rationalism—truth discovered
primarily by reason—Aristotle, who studied biology, was more of an empiricist—
truth discovered primarily by the senses. Aristotle attended Plato's academy but later
established his own school, the Lyceum. [Both schools would have existed for
between 500 and almost 1000 years, in some cases intermittently.] Among the many
subjects Aristotle wrote about were logic, metaphysics, physics, epistemology,
astronomy, meteorology, biology, psychology, ethics, politics, law, and poetics. More
than any other thinker in history, we may say that Aristotle had a lasting impact on a
greater number of subjects. Our discussion will center on the Nicomachean Ethics,
using lecture notes from his students as a guide. His scientific ideas were accepted as
truth for 2000 years, and his logic is still applied today.
Reference:

Aristotle - Wikipedia.” Aristotle - Wikipedia, 21 Jan. 2023,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#:~:text=His%20most%20important%20treatises%20i
nclude,On%20the%20Soul%20and%20Poetics.