07 - Story of Aristotles Philosophy by Will Durant

In this engaging little Blue Book No. 39, renowned author Will Durant explores the life and teachings of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), a brilliant Macedonian thinker who was once a student of Plato and later became the mentor of Alexander the Great. While Alexander set out to conquer the world, Aristotle returned to Athens to establish the Lyceum, where he made groundbreaking contributions to biology, logic, literary theory, ethics, and political science. Rejecting the abstract ideals of his teacher Plato, Aristotle focused on the natural world, famously studying the development of the chick embryo. He viewed the universe as a dynamic interplay of matter in motion, with God as its initial driving force. Contrary to the belief that social evils stem from private property, Aristotle argued they arise from the inherent flaws of human nature. He believed that while we find catharsis in tragic theater, real life necessitates a pursuit of balance, reason, dignity, and the golden mean in all aspects. (Pamela Nagami, M.D.)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter six of the Story of Aristotle's Philosophy by Will Durant.
This librovox recording is in the public domain recording by
Pamelinagami Psychology and the Nature of Art, aristotle psychology is
marred with a similar obscurity and vacillation. There are many

(00:22):
interesting passages. The power of habit is emphasized and is
for the first time called second nature, and the laws
of association, though not developed, find here a definite formulation.
But both the crucial problems of philosophical psychology, the freedom
of the will and the immortality of the soul, are

(00:45):
left in haze and doubt. Aristotle talks at times like
a determinist. We cannot directly will to be different from
what we are. But he goes on to argue against
determinism that we can choose what we shah shall be
by choosing now the environment that shall mold us. So
we are free in the sense that we mold our

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own characters by our choice of friends, books, occupations, and amusements.
He does not anticipate the determinists ready reply that these
formative choices are themselves determined by our antecedent character, and
this at last by unchosen heredity and early environment. He

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presses the point that our persistent use of praise and
blame presupposes moral responsibility and free will. It does not
occur to him that the determinists might reach from the
same premises a precisely opposite conclusion, that praise and blame
are given that they may be part of the factors

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determining subsequent action. Aristotle's theory of the soul begins with
an interesting definition. The soul is the entire vie idal
principle of any organism, the sum of its powers and processes.
In plants, the soul is merely a nutritive and reproductive power.

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In animals, it is also a sensitive and locomotive power
in man. It is as well the power of reason
and thought. The soul, as the sum of the powers
of the body, cannot exist without it. The two are
as form and wax, separable only in thought, but in reality,

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one organic whole. The soul is not put into the body,
like the quicksilver inserted by Daedalus into the images of
Venus to make stand ups of them. A personal and
particular soul can exist only in its own body. Nevertheless,
the soul is not material, as Democritus would have it,

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nor does it all die. Part of the rational power
of the human soul is past. It is bound up
with memory and dies with the body that bore the memory.
But the act of reason, the pure power of thought,
is independent of memory and is untouched with decay. The

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act of reason is the universal as distinguished from the
individual element in man. What survives is not the personality
with its transitory affections and desires, but mind in its
most abstract and impersonal form. In short, Aristotle destroys the

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soul in order to give it immortality. The immortal soul
is pure thought, undefiled with reality, just as Aristotle's God
is pure activity, undefiled with action. Let him who can
be comforted with this theology. One wonders sometimes whether this

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metaphysical eating of one's cake and keeping it is not
Aristotle's sol way of saving himself from anti Macedonian hemlock.
In a safer field of psychology, he writes more originally
and to the point, and almost creates the study of esthetics.
The theory of beauty and art. Artistic creation, says Aristotle,

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springs from the formative impulse and the craving for emotional expression. Essentially,
the form of art is an imitation of reality. It
holds the mirror up to nature. There is in man
a pleasure in imitation, apparently missing in lower animals. Yet
the aim of art is to represent not the outward

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appearance of things, but their inward significance. For this, and
not the external mannerism and detail, is their reality. There
may be more human verity in the sternly classic moderation
of the Oedipus Rex than in all the realistic tears
of the Trojan women. The noblest art appear to the

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intellect as well as to the feelings, as the symphony
appeals to us not only by its harmonies and sequences,
but by its structure and development. And this intellectual pleasure
is the highest form of joy to which any man
can rise. Hence, a work of art should aim at form,
and above all at unity, which is the backbone of

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structure and the focus of form. A drama, for example,
should have unity of action. There should be no confusing subplots,
nor any digressive episodes. But above all, the function of
art is catharsis purification emotions accumulated in us under the

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pressure of social restraints and liabel to sudden issue and
unsocial and destructive action are touched off and sluiced away
in the harmless form of theatrical excitement. So tragedy, through
pity and fear, affects the proper peration of these emotions.
Aristotle misses certain features of tragedy, for example, the conflict

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of principles and personalities. But in this theory of Catharsis
he has made a suggestion endlessly fertiled in the understanding
of the almost mystic power of art. It is an
illuminating instance of his ability to enter every field of
speculation and to adorn whatever he touches. End of Chapter

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six