/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15869004]

>is wrong about almost everything
>is even wrong about his disagreements with Plato
>and not in such a way that his metaphysical theories are worse than Plato's
>but rather that most of his theories are nigh identical to Plato's, in-spite of Aristotle's own view that he might disagree with Plato when subsequently doesn't
>Aristotle is only original when he's wrong (his physics, his self-contradictory statement that the soul is not eternal but then that the intellect [higher self] IS eternal, and that Intellect is not the first cause nor the Good itself, etc,.)

[Anonymous No.15869082]

>>15869004
i thought that everything we have of him are left over lecture notes. we never recovered a complete work from him iirc

[Anonymous No.15869085]

>>15869004
>does the same thing Aristotle did with Plato, strawmaning the shit out of it
>tries to critique Aristotle ignoring the conversation he has with contemporary instances of psychology and how it's intertwined with ethics etc etc
>is a nigger

[Anonymous No.15869092]

>>15869004
Aristotle literally invented entire fields of science by himself you fucking faggot

[Anonymous No.15869134]

>>15869004
This feels like a coment from someone that has only read the Metaphisics. If it is like that, your interpretation of Aristotle is pretty fucking dumb

[Anonymous No.15869143]

Literally the most important philosopher in the world, the west was built on aristotle

[Anonymous No.15869148]

There are no forms.

[Anonymous No.15869162]

>>15869092
What do his observations have to do with his ideas?

[Anonymous No.15869196]

>>15869162
His Ethics are basically a development of what he understood were the fundamental elements of animal agency (which he took out of his observations). Those fundamental elements still hold up

[Anonymous No.15869206]

>>15869004
His embryogenesis theory is pretty good considering nobody even knew what cells were. Also his style of biological science is pretty close to how modern genomics conducts it's scientific research. Plus he distinguished aquatic mammals from fish and was even able to classify sharks and rays in a separate group from boney fish.

[Anonymous No.15869208]

>>15869196
I didn't ask about his moral and ethical views. These have nothing to do with him
>invent[ing] entire fields of science
I wanted to know why anon though that just because some of Aristotle's observations were accurate that that means we should automatically trust his metaphysical assertions.

[Anonymous No.15869234]

>>15869092
Lol this

[Anonymous No.15869252]

>>15869208
dude, you literally said "What do his observations have to do with his ideas?" his observations, which where the first step to the development of the sciences as we know them, are deeply related to his moral and ethic views. The whole "ζῷον πoλιτικόν" statement comes out of his observations about animals. It has everything to do with him.
Now, the whole "we should automatically trust his metaphysical assertions", that is another topic, although it is related, I would not trust his metaphysical assertions

[Anonymous No.15869297]

>>15869148
>aristotle believes in forms, even extra-hylomorphic forms
>>15869196
>>15869085
>doesn't know that aristotle's ethics is identical to Plato's

[Anonymous No.15869334]

>>15869092
The scientific revolution and its consequences has been a disaster for the philosophical race.

[Anonymous No.15869361]

>>15869004
His metaphysics is more similar to Plato's than is is given credit for, while it is more distinct than what you claim. The difference between them is not over the existence of essences, but where essences are located. Aristotle claims essences are located in the subject (primary substances), while Plato claims they exist outside of them (forms). His physics is actually more like natural philosophy in subject matter than contemporary physics. Potentiality/actuality and matter/form dichotomies are useful categories and possess explanatory power that the object matter of physics doesn't touch.

[Anonymous No.15869438]

>>15869252
But that's exactly what I'm getting at. Just because Aristotle made certain observations some of which still hold up that would go on to influence later people engaged in the observation of the world around them does not mean that his theories should not be subjected to scrutiny. Giving Aristotle a pass because he's a distant ancestor of science is foolish. Assuming he's some titanic superhuman of correctness (the reason the Medievals valued Aristotle so highly is his enormous body of work, much of which we now now was not actually done by him) and not just "some guy" like any other guy goes completely counter to the entire project of observing the world around you and theorizing reasons why it works the way it does.

Getting angry at people subjecting Aristotle to criticism solely because Aristotle is (for some reason) above criticism, as >>15869092, does, is giving the man and his entire life's work the middle finger.

[Anonymous No.15869554]

>>15869297
go and read a book

[Anonymous No.15869614]

>>15869297
How can you be so ignorant, my nigga?

[Anonymous No.15869641]

>>15869554
>>15869614

[Anonymous No.15869663]

>>15869438
oh, yes my dude, but he was a pretty smart guy, even if he was just "some guy". Some merit has to be given to the man, there is a reason that his influence can still be felt by people that aren't dumb and do recognize where he was just writing nonsense (that might have sounded comeling in other times)

[Anonymous No.15869695]

>>15869641
ohh, so you read one narrow interpretation that clearly states that Aristotle's views are from a line of Platonic topics but are not identical and just decide to identify them? bruh, go and read more about the discussion, Lloyd P. Gerson, whilst having a good (and not realy novel) approach, is not the final word on the topic.

[Anonymous No.15869704]

>>15869695
>is not the final word on the topic.
yet

[Anonymous No.15869719]

>>15869004
Oh yes, please, tell us how Aristotle was even worse. Tell us anon. What have you read of Aristotle? The Wikipedia page of the Nichomachean Ethics for your compulsory Philosophy 101 course?
Now sit, shut the fuck up and listen: Aristotle was one of those minds that are so smart you should be afraid of them. And I mean this literally. I mean that the average citizen from Athens would have had walked away shaking in pure terror after talking with Aristotle. Now I want you to imagine a world was most people are fucking peasants and believe in Gods who look like humans and transform into things, they believe that if you put a woman on a tripod and you make her smoke a lot she will tell you the future in one of her trips. I want you to figure out a world were believing this stuff is common. Do you know that feeling you got the first time you heard that there are still flat earthers in 2018? Now imagine a city were the basic level of understanding of the world is inferior to that of a flat earther and imagine that the people of that city are among the most educated on the planet you are on.
And then in the middle of all this stupidity - stupidity so deep and embedded in thousands of years of repeating the same fucking stories about naked women running in the woods and transforming into trees and shit - imagine that a man comes and he has such a superior intelligence that he formulates the basic rules of logic. He formalizes for the first time the rules to make a valid argument. Can you fucking imagine the level of abstraction it would take? Can you fucking imagine the intelligence it would take? You are unable to do that and you are probably in your prime, living in the middle of a storm of information Aristotle would have gladly killed to have at his disposition. You know he was the first guy to actually build something like a university library in Western history? Books were copied on fucking scrolls by slave and transmitting and preserving even the most banal information was extremely difficult, and yet he managed to come out with something like the formalized rules of classical logic. I gave you ten thousand years and you knew nothing about logic, you wouldn't be able to formalize shit. You know why? Not because you are fucking stupid, no. You are probably average. But Aristotle was so much of a genius that he can barely be considered human.

[Anonymous No.15869735]

Do you want to debate his contribution to biology and science? Well there was no fucking science before Aristotle. People were not observing natural phenomena with his constancy. Of course, some of them were looking at the stars: but that's pretty easy, stars are regular. They always do the same things. Aristotle was looking at plants, animals, seaweeds. And you know what? Either him or some of his students must have had super-human sight, because some of the details he described about insects were confirmed only in modern times, when they invented the fucking microscope. So not only superhuman mind, but superhuman senses.
Do you want to debate his contribution to metaphysics? Well there was no fucking metaphysics before Aristotle. And let us be clear, anon, there would have been no scientific inquiry AT ALL without Aristotle first setting the fundamental questions about what does "being" mean, and how does causality work.
Can you imagine doing that? Can you imagine extending that pathetic brainlet you have to embrace both the first causes of the universe and the detail of the wings of a bee? Can you imagine researching literally EVERYTHING your mind could set itself onto in a world where the most common solution to a certain problem was “let us sacrifice to Athena and see what happens?” You have libraries and internet and everything and yet you can’t concentrate enough on this fucking post. Now imagine a mind that is able to concentrate on literally every aspect of the world. Imagine the kind of experience it would be, to have that mind. You are a monkey, anon. A fucking monkey compared to Aristotle. And you’ll always be. You should thank whatever rational force is there in the universe every fucking day, if there is anything of the sort, that such a man could not only live, but write, and that some of his writings survived to our age for you, a fucking hairless monkey on which the benefit of language is forever wasted, to read.

[Anonymous No.15869744]

>>15869704
u gonn kill every other commentator or sumthing?
boyyyyy, lemme tell u somthin 'bout history nd shiet, dis b an ancient topic without and end my nigga

[Anonymous No.15869745]

>>15869719
Aristotle is wrong in every way, because where ever he is right (90% of the time) he's then merely paraphrasing Plato.

[Anonymous No.15869752]

>>15869745
Plato's a bitch that cared more about his back than making sound arguments

[Anonymous No.15869760]

>>15869334

[Anonymous No.15869772]

>>15869752
Why make "real arguments" when 1500 + last 20 years of thought after you will do it for you and prove your divinely inspired statements are indeed correct?

[Anonymous No.15870040]

>>15869004
Ah Aristotle, the man of whom everything spoke and knew nothing

[Anonymous No.15871249]

>>15869361
Plato believed in the soul as well.

[Anonymous No.15871273]

>>15869735
>Well there was no fucking science before Aristotle. People were not observing natural phenomena with his constancy.

Anaxagoras