Aristotle

Aristotle Ἀριστοτέλης
Born	384 BCE Stagira, Chalkidiki
Died	322 BCE Euboea, Macedonia
School tradition	Aristotelianism Classical republicanism

Aristotle was an proto-fascist ancient Greek aristocrat and metaphysical philosopher born in Stagira, Greece, in 384 BCE to Nicomachus, the royal physician of Macedonia, and his mother, Phaestis, who was a noblewoman. His father, Nicomachus, was King Amyntas II of Macedon's personal physician and close friend. From a young age, Aristotle was interested in the natural sciences, influenced by his father, which eventually led him to travel to Athens at age seventeen to study under Plato, where he studied for two decades.

Biography

After Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens for Atarna, Turkiye, which was a center for Platonic philosophy. Despite respecting Plato, he stated, "Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth," as he diverged considerably from Plato's theories. Between 343 and 342 BCE, Aristotle was invited to tutor King Philip of Macedon's son, Alexander, who would become "Alexander the Great," primarily teaching him Homer's epics and tragedies.

After King Philip's death in 335 BCE, he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, his own school, and collected various manuscripts and maps in order to teach zoology, astronomy, physics, metaphysics, and mathematics to his followers, who were called Peripatetics which translates to "those who walk" as Aristotle liked to walk while giving lectures.

In 323 BCE, after the death of Alexander the Great, a movement against Macedonian rule sparked across Athens, and Aristotle fled to Chalcis, Greece, as he was persecuted for impiety. He chose Chalcis, as his mother owned property there, but died the following year.

Teachings

Preface

Aristotle wrote for the Greek elite; through his classifications of citizens, slaves, and domestic relations, he served the interests of the ruling class by naturalizing inequality and the existing hierarchy. Aristotle's teleology and hierarchical anthropology give legitimacy to the property relations and slave labor that were the foundation of the Greek state. Aristotle uses the concept of telos as a smokescreen to obscure how human activity is embedded in class-constricted material conditions; he naturalizes social hierarchies and inequality by presenting them as part of a natural and unchanging order.

Aristotle has held and continues to hold influence today, from the colonization of the Americas, which was justified by Aristotle's teachings on inferior people destined to be natural slaves, to the present day, with conservatives and fascists using Aristotle's natural rights claims and appeals to human nature. Aristotle stated in Politics that there are people born as slaves, as they lacked the ability to reason; this is Aristotle's ideological defense of the slave-owning economy and the slave-owning ruling class.

Slavery and slaves are a consequence of Greek imperialism, property relations, and surplus extraction; slavery was the material basis of ancient Greece, allowing the ruling class to live a life of leisure while engaging in art and philosophy. Aristotle frames Greek imperialism as a metaphysical necessity, thereby justifying and legitimizing slavery and imperialism.

Through Aristotle's treating classes as fixed by nature and final, he naturalizes and justifies the class relations, while also protecting the social reproduction of the elite's power alongside disciplining the slaves.

"The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master... for he who can be, and therefore is, another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature." -  Politics, Book I, Chapter 5

Eugenics & Chauvinism

Misogyny

Aristotle believed that the universe was structured in two systems: men were hot and active, while women were cold and passive. He expands this by arguing that women's bodies were cold, thereby serving as biological incubators:

• Biological Incubators: Aristotle stated that all things were of matter and form. In reproduction, this entailed that women's bodies were too cold to cook their blood into semen; thus, they were mutilated and deformed men. Therefore, the man, who carries the rational soul and divine spark, provides the "form" into the woman so she can incubate it.

"For the female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia [menstrual blood] are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul." -  Generation of Animals

• Rationality: He was willing to admit women had rational souls, though their reasoning was fundamentally flawed, as a woman's deliberative faculty is easily overpowered by her emotions, making her unfit for any form of leadership role.

"The relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled." - Politics

"The slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority..." -  Politics

• Innate Irrationalism: Aristotle stated women's biological coldness made them emotionally volatile. Despite being more compassionate, they have a deceptive, impulsive, complaining nature and lack self-respect.

"Woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears... more void of hope, more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory." - History of Animals

Ethnocentrism

Aristotle was deeply xenophobic and racist, as he viewed the world in terms of purpose, inferiority, and superiority; this was embedded in his ideology:

• Geographic Determinism: Aristotle claimed that people who lived in cold climates had spirit, as they had thicker blood, but lacked intelligence and reasoning, whereas people in hot climates had thinner blood and, thus, high intelligence but lacked courage.

"Those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill... Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery. But the Hellenic race... is intermediate in character, being high-spirited and also intelligent." - Politics

• Natural Slaves: Anyone who wasn't Greek was a barbarian according to Aristotle; they lacked the ability to self-govern, and therefore it was a moral good for the Greeks to enslave them:

"...therefore the poets say: 'It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians'; as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one." - Politics

Disdain for the Working Class

As Aristotle was an aristocrat, he believed that virtue required one to have leisure, which is why he argued that the working class lived a vulgar life and that the state should only be run by wealthy, leisured men:

• Vulgarness of Labor: He argues that laborers, artisans, and tradesmen lived an ignoble life that was inimical to virtue, as the working class solely exists to support the elite and ensure they have the leisure to live a life of virtue.

"...citizens must not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life is ignoble, and inimical to virtue. Neither must they be husbandmen, since leisure is necessary both for the development of virtue and the performance of political duties."  - Politics

• Hatred of Merchants & Usury: He viewed merchants and usury as the most unnatural methods of acquiring wealth, as they threatened the land-owning ruling class; thus, through this stance, he protected the wealth of the Greek elite. Usury allowed merchants to emerge and rapidly acquire wealth, and so his delegitimization served as a defensive posture.

"The most hated sort [of wealth getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it... money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest." - Politics

• Opression of the Working Class: Aristotle states that severe inequality is the spark of revolution and the collapse of the ruling class. In his time, poor citizens lost their land and were sold into debt slavery; fearing a revolution, Aristotle encouraged the ruling class to create a middle class as a buffer between the poor and the rich, so as to give the illusion of upward mobility.

"Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large... for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end." - Politics (Book IV, Chapter 11)

Eugenics & Ableism

Aristotle was an eugenicist, as he viewed working people as organon empsychon (vocal instrument/tool); a worker's value was only tied to his utility for the ruling class, and, in so doing, he advocated for infanticide of the disabled and for deciding with whom people should reproduce for example, he recommended that men marry at 39 and women at 18, as he incorrectly argued this combined a man's peak of intelligence with a woman's peak of fertility:

• Infanticide for the Disabled: While outlining his ideal state, he advocated for the infanticide of any disabled or slightly different infant, as he viewed it as nature making a mistake that had to be corrected by the state so as not to have any faulty tools.

"As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live." - Politics

• State-Controlled Breeding: He advocated for strict age windows for marriage and reproduction, which were 37-39 for men and 18 for women. He argued that couples who are too young or too old produce inferior children, alongside mandatory abortions to cull the population and also to eliminate unwanted traits.

"But if any children are conceived in excess of the limit, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun..." -  Politics

• Prejudice Against the Deaf: As Aristotle taught orally while walking around, he incorrectly stated that the ability to hear is directly connected to the cognitive ability to think abstractly; he falsely concluded that the deaf were intellectually challenged. This view of deaf people held back education and rights for them for two thousand years, until the 17th century.

"Of the two [sight and hearing], hearing is more important for intelligence and for what is essential, albeit indirectly... For speech, which is the cause of learning, is audible, not in itself but by accident... Therefore, those who are born deaf are also in all cases also dumb; they make vocal sounds, but they cannot speak." - Sense and Sensibilia

Inspiration

Despite Aristotle's chauvinist and ethnocentric views of other cultures, such as his various statements on non-Greeks being born to be subjugated under Greek rule, he had to admit that Ancient Egypt and Babylonia were the founders of the astronomy and mathematics upon which they based their entire academic foundation.

"For we have seen the moon, half-full, pass beneath the star of Mars, which vanished on its dark side and came forth on the bright and shining side. Similar evidence is supplied about the other planets by the Egyptians and the Babylonians, whose observations have been kept for very many years past, and from whom much of our evidence about particular stars is derived." - On the Heavens, Book II, Chapter 12

As Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great, he had expansive access to the world through Alexander's subjugation of various states. For example, during Alexander's military campaigns against Persia and India, Alexander sent back vast amounts of information such as medical theories, philosophy, cultural relics, plants, animals, and geographical data to the Lyceum.

After Alexander's subjugation of Babylon in 331 BCE, Alexander's historian Callisthenes and Aristotle's nephew translated 1,900 years' worth of Babylonian astronomical records and sent them back to Aristotle in Athens, which he used in his works On the Heavens, Metaphysics, and Meteorology.

Aristotle credited Ancient Egypt with the invention of mathematics. In Metaphysics, he argued that theoretical sciences such as mathematics arose in places that allowed a substratum to live in leisure, which would enable them to pursue such studies; he specifically pointed to the Egyptian priests, as they were free from labor.

"Thus it was only when all such inventions [for survival and basic comfort] were already established that the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered, and first in the places where men began to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure." - Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1

Telos

Aristotle asserted that everything in the world has a purpose; for humans, it was to achieve eudaimonia, which translates to everlasting happiness. An acorn's telos is to become an oak tree. It is humankind's exclusive ability to reason, and so it is our obligation to use our reasoning efficiently to create eudaimonia.

"The human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete."  - Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, Chapter 7).

Golden Mean

Aristotle stated that we are not virtuous innately; rather, we become virtuous through our actions, which can cultivate virtue through habit and practice. His concept of the Golden Mean entails the ideal balance of the "sweet spot" of an action or behaviour one takes, as any action can be insufficient or excessive; for example, cowardice is an insufficiency, while recklessness is an excess, and the Golden Mean is situated in courage.

"Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it." - Nicomachean Ethics (Book II, Chapter 6,)

Four Causes

Aristotle claimed that we can truly understand any object or concept if we look at the four causes. The four causes are four questions that you ask in order to understand the nature of the target, with them being:

• Material Cause: What is it made of?
• Formal Cause: What is its design or shape?
• Efficient Cause: Who or what made it?
• Final Cause: What is it used for, or what is its purpose

"Nature, as we say, does nothing in vain."  - Politics (Book I, Chapter 2)

Law of Non-Contradiction

The Law of Non-Contradiction states that something cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect for example, a lemon cannot be entirely yellow and entirely red simultaneously.

"It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same respect." - Metaphysics (Book IV, Chapter 3,)

Four Elements

Aristotle asserted that the world was composed of five elements: water, earth, air, fire, and Aether. He stated that these four elements were naturally drawn to their places, which is why rocks fall to the ground and why fire rises to the sky. Aether, the fifth element, is the perfect, unchanging heavens.

"For in all natural things there is something of the marvelous." - Parts of Animals (Book I, Chapter 5,)