Aristotle

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521040549.004

Chapter 3 - Aristotle

from Part 1 - GREEK PHILOSOPHY FROM PLATO TO PLOTINUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Edited by

A. H. Armstrong

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Summary

Cosmology, Noetic and Psychology

From the consideration of a writing which might have been Aristotelian but could equally well have been Academic, we now pass to doctrines undoubtedly belonging to Aristotle. We concentrate mainly on those which seem to have been particularly controversial between pre-Plotinian Platonists and Aristotelians and single out six concerning: psychology, cosmology, noetic, cosmogony, ideas, and matter, and add a few words on his ethics and some special points.

Though probably not from the beginning, Aristotle denied the substantial character of the soul and, therefore, any pre- or post-existence of it, any kind of incarnation or reincarnation (transmigration). He also objected to any kind of astral psychology, i.e. to any doctrine teaching either the existence of a cosmic soul or the animation of celestial bodies. To those who did the latter he mockingly replied that the fate of a soul causing the rotatory motion of a celestial body by being present in it reminded him of the fate of Ixion. How, then, did he explain these motions? We find three answers in his writings; whether they are consistent will be left undecided. First, we find the notion that the circular movement of the celestial bodies is caused by their attraction to a being (or, if there were several independent motions, to beings) described by him as a changeless changer (or changeless changers), this circular movement being the way in which they could satisfy their attraction. Secondly, he attributed the circular motion to the nature of the body of which they consist, viz. ether, whose natural (physical) motion is circular, just as the natural motion of other elements is upwards and downwards. His third explanation, that the celestial bodies should be considered as animated, seems strangely out of tune with his criticism of Plato on this very score.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy , pp. 39 - 52

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521040549.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1967

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