11 - 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):
Section ten of the Story of Aristotle's Philosophy by Will Durant.
This librovox recording is in the public domain recording by
Pamela and Agami. Chapter nine criticism. What shall we say
of this philosophy? Perhaps nothing rapturous. It is difficult to

(00:21):
be enthusiastic about Aristotle, because it was difficult for him
to be enthusiastic about anything. And see wis me flare
primum to be flandum footnote if you wish me to weep,
you must weep first. Horace Ours Poetica two actors and
writers and footnote. His motto is nioladmirati to admire or

(00:45):
marvel at nothing, and we hesitate to violate his motto.
In his case, we miss in him the reforming zeal
of Plato, the angry love of humanity which made the
great idealist denounce his fellow men. We miss the daring
originality of his teacher, the lofty imagination, the capacity for

(01:06):
generous delusion. And yet after reading Plato, nothing could be
so salutary for us as Aristotle's skeptic calm. Let us
summarize our disagreement. We are bothered at the outset with
his insistence on logic. We want him to describe his ideal,

(01:27):
and he describes a perfect syllogism. Not content with that,
he makes his syllogism judge of our ideals. He thinks
the syllogism is a description of man's way of reasoning,
whereas it merely describes man's way of dressing up his
reasoning for the persuasion of another mind. He supposes that

(01:49):
thought begins with premises and seeks their conclusions, when actually
thought begins with hypothetical conclusions and seeks their justifying premises,
and see makes them best by the observation of particular
events under the controlled and isolated conditions of experiment. Yet
how foolish we should be to forget that two thousand

(02:11):
years have changed merely the incidentals of Aristotle's logic, that
Acham and Bacon, and Hewel and Mill and a hundred
others have but found spots in his son, and that
Aristotle's creation of this new discipline of thought, and his
firm establishment of its essential lines, remain among the lasting

(02:33):
achievements of the human mind. It is again the absence
of experiment and fruitful hypothesis that leaves Aristotle's natural science
a mass of undigested observations. His specialty is the collection
and classification of data in every field. He wields his
categories and produces catalogs. But side by side with this

(02:57):
bent and talent for observation goes a platonic addiction to metaphysics.
This trips him up in every science and inveigles him
into the wildest presuppositions. Here, indeed, was the great defect
of the Greek mind. It was not disciplined, It lacked
limiting and steadying traditions. It moved freely in an uncharted

(03:22):
field and ran too readily to theories and conclusions. So
Greek philosophy leaped onto heights, yet unreached again, while Greek
science limped behind. Our modern danger is precisely opposite. Inductive
data fall upon us from all sides, like the lava

(03:42):
of Vesuvius. We suffocate with uncoordinated facts. Our minds are
overwhelmed with sciences breeding and multiplying into specialistic chaos. For
want of synthetic thought and a unifying philosophy, we are
all mere fragments of what a man might be. Aristotle's

(04:04):
ethics is a branch of his logic. The ideal life
is like a proper syllogism. He gives us a handbook
of propriety rather than a stimulus to improvement. An ancient
critic spoke of him as moderate to excess. An extremist
might call the Ethics the champion collection of platitudes in

(04:25):
all literature, and an anglophobe would be consoled with the
thought that Englishmen in their youth had done advance penance
for the imperialistic sins of their adult years, since both
at Cambridge and at Oxford they had been compelled to
read every word of the nicolmachy and Ethics. One longs
to mingle fresh green leaves of grass with these drier pages,

(04:49):
to add Whitman's exhilarating justification of sense joy to Aristotle's
exaltation of a purely intellectual happiness. One wonders if this
Ristotilian ideal of a moderate moderation has had anything to
do with the colorless virtue, the starch to perfection, the

(05:09):
expressionless good form of the British aristocracy. Matthew Arnold tells
us that in his time, Oxford tutors looked upon the
Ethics as infallible for three hundred years, this book and
the politics have formed the ruling British mind, perhaps to
great and noble achievements, but certainly to a hard and

(05:30):
cold efficiency. One wonders what the result would have been
if the masters of the greatest of empires had been
nurtured instead on the holy fervor and the constructive passion
of the republic. After all, Aristotle was not quite Greek.
He had been settled and formed before coming to Athens.

(05:51):
There was nothing Athenian about him, nothing of the hasty
and in spirited experimentalism which made Athens throb with politically
acas and at last helped to subject her to a
unifying despot. He realized to completely the Delphic command to
avoid excess. He is so anxious to pare away extremes

(06:13):
that at last nothing is left. He is so fearful
of disorder that he forgets to be fearful of slavery.
He is so timid of uncertain change that he prefers
a certain changelessness that near resembles death. He lacks the
Heraclidean sense of flux, which justifies the conservative in believing

(06:35):
that all permanent change is gradual, but justifies the radical
in believing that no changelessness is permanent, he forgets that
Plato's communism was meant only for the elite, the unselfish,
and ungreedy few, And he comes deviously to a platonic
result when he says that though property should be private,

(06:57):
its use should be as far as possible calm. He
does not see, and perhaps he could not be expected
in his early day to see that private control of
the means of production was stimulating in salutary only when
these means were so simple as to be purchasable by
any man, and that their increasing complexity and cost lead

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to a dangerous centralization of ownership and power, and to
an artificial and finally disruptive inequality. But after all, these
are quite inessential criticisms of what remains the most marvelous
and influential system of thought ever put together by any
single mind. It may be doubted if any other thinker

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has contributed so much to the enlightenment of the world.
Every later age has drawn upon Aristotle and stood upon
his shoulders to see the truth. The varied and magnificent
culture of Alexandria found its scientific inspiration in him. His
organon played a central role in shaping the minds of

(08:04):
the medieval barbarians into disciplined and consistent thought. The other
works translated by Nestorian Christians into Syriac and the fifth
century a d and thence into Arabic and Hebrew in
the tenth century, and thence into Latin towards twelve twenty five,
turned Scholasticism from its eloquent beginnings in Abelard to encyclopedic

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completion in Thomas Aquinas twelve twenty seven to twelve seventy four.
The Crusaders brought back more accurate Greek copies of the
philosopher's texts, and the Greek scholars of Constantinople brought further
Aristotelian treasures with them when after fourteen fifty three they
fled from the besieging Turks. The works of Aristotle came

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to be for European philosophy what the Bible was for theology,
and almost infallible tess with solutions for every problem. In
twelve fifteen, the Papal legate at Paris forbade teachers to
lecture on his works. In twelve thirty one, Gregory the
ninth appointed a commission to expurgate him. By twelve sixty

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he was de rigueur in every Christian school and ecclesiastical assemblies,
penalized deviations from his views. Chaucer describes his student as
happy by having at his bedizad twenty boches clothed in
blac o rede of Aristotle and his philosophie, and in
the first circles of Hell, says Dante, I saw the

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master there of those who know amid the philosophic family,
by all admired and by all reverenced. There Plato two
I saw, and Socrates, who stood beside him closer than
the rest. Such lines give us some inkling of the
honor which a thousand years offered to the Stagarite, not

(10:02):
till new instruments, accumulated observations and patient experiments remade science,
and gave irresistible weapons to Accaman Ramus, to Roger and
Francis Bacon. Was the reign of Aristotle ended. No other
mind had for so long a time ruled the intellect
of mankind. End of Section ten.