Explain Aristotle's ideas about cause and purpose in relation to God. Aristotle was an ancient Greek Philosopher who studied at Plato's University, The Academy. Aristotle was fascinated about the physical world and universe. Althought Aristotle completely admired his teachers works and ideas, Aristotle approached philosophy completely differently to Plato and he completely disregarded Plato's teachings of The World of the Forms and concluded his own theory. Aristotle wanted to explain the purpose of things existing as they do, and rejected the idea of Plato's 'perfect form' of objects.
Explain what Aristotle meant by Final Cause: [25] Aristotle’s Final Cause is his theory that all objects have a fundamental reason or purpose for its existence. He questioned why material was the way it was and looked beyond its physicality to what was its purpose and why it exists in our material world. Unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle believed in only the material world and opposed Plato’s world of the Forms. To him, the final cause was important as the material efficient and formal causes would be pointless without the end product. This is the final cause.
Plato recognizes matter and form as being separate entities. He believes that they are not together but separate ideas. Dualism for Plato is more of a formal property whereas matter is of physical sense and not as important. Plato believed that forms are everlasting ideas. According to him, form and matter are separate, therefore the when the body dies the soul will live on.
He also believes the philosopher is able, through using his intellect, to achieve true knowledge of the abstract Forms without using his senses. Plato’s theory of Forms can be seen as unconvincing to some who believe that abstract ideas e.g table, horse, beauty are actually names that have been invented to help people describe their experiences of the physical world. This is a materialistic view as it suggests that objects in this world are the real reality and our ideas can develop based on experience of things. Aristotle agrees with this and believes knowledge is gained through experience and that there is not an eternal World of Forms that is a priori to us. However, in Plato’s defence some believe that each variety of a Form shares a likeness for example each horse is slightly different yet they all share something that makes it resemble a horse.
Aristotle has a monist approach to the soul, unlike Plato he says that the soul cannot exist without the body. The soul is not a body but something that belongs in a body, comparable to the brain; it is necessary and is within all humans and it gives us reason, intellect and an innate sense of justice. This therefore can make his theory more convincing than Plato’s as the soul isn’t ‘immortal’ and dies along with the body, thereby eliminating the theory of reincarnation which is hard for anyone who isn’t Hindu to believe as it is contradictory to their religious views. Aristotle states that all reason is associated with the pure thought of the Prime Mover and the soul is what gives the body its shape and form; he argued that the soul is not a substance but the reason and shape behind the matter. Best described by using the example of a marble statue, as the marble stature is essentially a block of marble but it has a shape and form and like the body the soul, the shape and form cannot be removed from what the statue is, in the same way the body cannot be separated from the soul.
Socrates eventually leads Meno to the conclusion that the act of being virtuous is given to us by the gods. Virtue is a gift humans receive from the gods and therefore it cannot be taught by a person. Meno comes to an agreement with Socrates on the issue of virtue and acknowledges that he is not knowledgeable on the subject. Here is where Meno begins to head in the right direction in the search for wisdom. When you can admit your own short comings you open yourself to accept someone else’s knowledge on the subject you are unfamiliar with.
The first and most obvious place to look for Aristotle’s view on relativism is Metaphysics I’. Here, Aristotle is mostly concerned with the law of non-contradiction and those who deny it. He includes Protagoras with such thinkers based on his relativistic notions that x and not-x can both be true for different people. A consequence of the law of non-contradiction (Met I’3) is that, if x is contrary to not-x,
They both argued that the fact of motion needs a prior agency to motivate it and this mover itself would not need a further mover itself as it would be a prime mover, a necessary being. Aristotle said ‘the series must start with something since nothing can come from nothing’. Plato identified many different types of motion such a growth and decay so he argued that the power to produce motion is prior to the power to receive motion and pass it on, therefore there must be a first cause which itself is uncaused and is the origin of that movement. Aristotle separate the prime mover from the material world stating it must be good, perfect, non-spatial and eternal. A prime mover such as this could not fit in an ordinary chain of material causes.
a) Explain the Platonic Concept of ‘Forms’ Plato believed that behind every concept or object in the visible world there is an unseen reality which he calls its ‘Form’. These Forms exist in the world of the Forms separate from the visible world. Within the world of the Forms the pattern or the objects and concepts for the material world exist in a state of unchanging perfection. Plato was more interested in the Forms of concepts such as good, truth and justice, than he was in the Forms of material objects. The meaning of the word beauty would correspond to some external reality (Plato called it the Ideal Form).
He therefore rejected an infinite universe because he did not believe that it was a satisfactory explanation for its existence. Copleston supported Aquinas’ rejection of infinite regress on the grounds that an infinite chain of contingent beings could only ever consist of contingent beings, which would never be able to bring itself into existence. However, Bertand Russell opposed that the cosmological argument was evidence for the existence of God, he rejected the idea of contingency also, and he argued that a ‘necessary being’ has no meaning. Kant examined the argument of the existence of a supreme being as a first cause of the universe. He argued that cause and effect can only be applied to the world.