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Aristotelianism ( ) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by Prior Analytics and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes, including purpose or telos, and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories (e.g. in ethics or in ontology) may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle.
In Aristotle's time, philosophy included natural philosophy, which preceded the advent of modern science during the Scientific Revolution. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school and later on by the Neoplatonism, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings. In the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna and Averroes translated the works of Aristotle into Arabic language and under them, along with philosophers such as Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi, Aristotelianism became a major part of early Islamic philosophy.
Maimonides adopted Aristotelianism from the Islamic scholars and based his Guide for the Perplexed on it and that became the basis of Jewish scholastic philosophy. Although some of Aristotle's logical works were known to western Europe, it was not until the Latin translations of the 12th century and the rise of scholasticism that the works of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators became widely available. Scholars such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas interpreted and systematized Aristotle's works in accordance with Catholic theology.
After retreating under criticism from modern natural philosophers, the distinctively Aristotelian idea of teleology was transmitted through Wolff and Immanuel Kant to Hegel, who applied it to history as a totality. However, this project was criticized by Trendelenburg and Franz Brentano as non-Aristotelian, Hegel's influence is now often said to be responsible for an important Aristotelian influence upon Karl Marx.
Recent Aristotelian ethical and "practical" philosophy, such as that of Gadamer and John McDowell, is often premised upon a rejection of Aristotelianism's traditional metaphysical or theoretical philosophy. From this viewpoint, the early modern tradition of political republicanism, which views the res publica, public sphere or state as constituted by its citizens' virtuous activity, can appear thoroughly Aristotelian.
Alasdair MacIntyre was a notable modern Aristotelian philosopher who helped to revive virtue ethics in his book After Virtue. MacIntyre revises Aristotelianism with the argument that the highest temporal goods, which are internal to human beings, are actualized through participation in social practices.
With the founding of House of Wisdom, the entire corpus of Aristotelian works that had been preserved (excluding the Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia and Politics) became available, along with its Greek commentators; this corpus laid a uniform foundation for Islamic Aristotelianism.Manfred Landfester, Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider (eds.), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Classical tradition, Volume 1, Brill, 2006, p. 273.
Al-Kindi (801–873) was the first of the Muslim Peripatetic philosophers and is known for his efforts to introduce Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world.Klein-Frank, F. Al-Kindi. In Leaman, O & Nasr, H (2001). History of Islamic Philosophy. London: Routledge. p 165 He incorporated Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thought into an Islamic philosophical framework. This was an important factor in the introduction and popularization of Greek philosophy in the Muslim intellectual world.Felix Klein-Frank (2001) Al-Kindi, pages 166–167. In Oliver Leaman & Hossein Nasr. History of Islamic Philosophy. London: Routledge. In the 9th century, Persian astrologer 's Introductorium in Astronomiam was one of the most important sources for the recovery of Aristotle for medieval European scholars.Richard Lemay, Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century, The Recovery of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy through Iranian Astrology, 1962.
The philosopher Al-Farabi (872–950) had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries, and in his time was widely thought second only to Aristotle in knowledge (alluded to by his title of "the Second Teacher"). His work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Avicenna (980–1037). Avicenna was one of the main interpreters of Aristotle. The school of thought he founded became known as Avicennism, which was built on ingredients and conceptual building blocks that are largely Aristotelian and Neoplatonist.
At the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, during the reign of Al-Hakam II (961 to 976) in Córdoba, a massive translation effort was undertaken, and many books were translated into Arabic. Averroes (1126–1198), who spent much of his life in Cordoba and Seville, was especially distinguished as a commentator of Aristotle. He often wrote two or three different commentaries on the same work, and some 38 commentaries by Averroes on the works of Aristotle have been identified.Edward Grant, (1996), The foundations of modern science in the Middle Ages, page 30. Cambridge University Press Although his writings had an only marginal impact in Islamic countries, his works would eventually have a huge impact in the Latin West, and would lead to the school of thought known as Averroism.
The renaissance of the 12th century saw a major search by European scholars for new learning. James of Venice, who probably spent some years in Constantinople, translated Aristotle's Posterior Analytics from Greek into Medieval Latin in the mid-twelfth century,L.D. Reynolds and Nigel G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, Oxford, 1974, p. 106. thus making the complete Aristotelian logical corpus, the Organon, available in Latin for the first time. Scholars travelled to areas of Europe that once had been under Muslim rule and still had substantial Arabic-speaking populations. From central Spain, which had returned to Christian rule in the eleventh century, scholars produced many of the Latin translations of the 12th century. The most productive of these translators was Gerard of Cremona,C. H. Haskins, Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, p. 287. "more of Arabic science passed into Western Europe at the hands of Gerard of Cremona than in any other way." (–1187), who translated 87 books,For a list of Gerard of Cremona's translations see: Edward Grant (1974) A Source Book in Medieval Science, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr.), pp. 35–8 or Charles Burnett, "The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century," Science in Context, 14 (2001): at 249-288, at pp. 275–281. which included many of the works of Aristotle such as his Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology. Michael Scot (–1232) translated Averroes' commentaries on the scientific works of Aristotle.
Aristotle's physical writings began to be discussed openly. At a time when Aristotle's method was permeating all theology, these treatises were sufficient to cause his prohibition for heterodoxy in the Condemnations of 1210–1277. In the first of these, in Paris in 1210, it was stated that "neither the books of Aristotle on natural philosophy or their commentaries are to be read at Paris in public or secret, and this we forbid under penalty of ex-communication."Edward Grant, A Source Book in Medieval Science, page 42 (1974). Harvard University Press However, despite further attempts to restrict the teaching of Aristotle, by 1270, the ban on Aristotle's natural philosophy was ineffective.Rubenstein, Richard E. Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages, page 215 (2004). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
William of Moerbeke (–1286) undertook a complete translation of the works of Aristotle or, for some portions, a revision of existing translations. He was the first translator of the Politics () from Greek into Latin. Many copies of Aristotle in Latin then in circulation were assumed to have been influenced by Averroes, who was suspected of being a source of philosophical and theological errors found in the earlier translations of Aristotle. Such claims were without merit, however, as the Alexandrian Aristotelianism of Averroes followed "the strict study of the text of Aristotle, which was introduced by Avicenna, because a large amount of traditional Neoplatonism was incorporated with the body of traditional Aristotelianism".
Albertus Magnus (–1280) was among the first medieval scholars to apply Aristotle's philosophy to Christian thought. He produced paraphrases of most of the works of Aristotle available to him. He digested, interpreted and systematized the whole of Aristotle's works, gleaned from the Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, in accordance with Church doctrine. His efforts resulted in the formation of a Christian reception of Aristotle in the Western Europe. Albertus did not repudiate Plato. In that, he belonged to the dominant tradition of philosophy that preceded him, namely the "concordist tradition",Henricus Bate, Helmut Boese, Carlos Steel, On Platonic Philosophy, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990, p. xvi. which sought to harmonize Aristotle with Plato through interpretation (see for example Porphyry's On Plato and Aristotle Being Adherents of the Same School). Albertus famously wrote:
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the pupil of Albertus Magnus, wrote a dozen commentaries on the works of Aristotle. Thomas was emphatically Aristotelian, he adopted Aristotle's analysis of physical objects, his view of place, time and motion, his proof of the prime mover, his cosmology, his account of sense perception and intellectual knowledge, and even parts of his moral philosophy. The philosophical school that arose as a legacy of the work of Thomas Aquinas was known as Thomism, and was especially influential among the Dominican Order, and later, the Jesuits.
Using Albert's and Thomas's commentaries, as well as Marsilius of Padua's Defensor pacis, 14th-century scholar Nicole Oresme translated Aristotle's moral works into French and wrote extensively comments on them.
Hegel's influence is now often said to be responsible for an important Aristotelian influence upon Karl Marx.For example, George E. McCarthy (ed.), Marx and Aristotle: Nineteenth-Century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity, Although many disagree Rowman & Littlefield, 1992. Postmodernists, in contrast, reject Aristotelianism's claim to reveal important theoretical truths.For example, Ted Sadler, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Question of Being, Athlone, 1996. In this, they follow Martin Heidegger's critique of Aristotle as the greatest source of the entire tradition of Western philosophy.
Mortimer J. Adler described Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a "unique book in the Western tradition of moral philosophy, the only ethics that is sound, practical, and undogmatic."
The contemporary Aristotelian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helped to revive virtue ethics in his book After Virtue. MacIntyre revises Aristotelianism with the argument that the highest temporal goods, which are internal to human beings, are actualized through participation in social practices. He opposes Aristotelianism to the managerial institutions of capitalism and its state, and to rival traditions—including the philosophies of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche—that reject its idea of essentially human goods and virtues and instead legitimize capitalism. Therefore, on MacIntyre's account, Aristotelianism is not identical with Western philosophy as a whole; rather, it is "the best theory so far, including the best theory so far about what makes a particular theory the best one."Alasdair MacIntyre, 'An Interview with Giovanna Borradori', in Kelvin Knight (ed.), The MacIntyre Reader, Polity Press / University of Notre Dame Press, 1998, p. 264. Politically and socially, it has been characterized as a newly 'revolutionary Aristotelianism'. This may be contrasted with the more conventional, apolitical, and effectively conservative uses of Aristotle by, for example, Gadamer and McDowell.Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Polity Press, 2007. Other important contemporary Aristotelian theorists include Fred D. Miller, Jr.Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics, Oxford University Press, 1997. in politics and Rosalind Hursthouse in ethics.Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, Oxford University Press, 1999.
These ideas go back to Aristotle's thesis that entities from different ontological categories have different degrees of fundamentality. For example, substances have the highest degree of fundamentality because they exist in themselves. Properties, on the other hand, are less fundamental because they depend on substances for their existence.
Jonathan Schaffer's priority monism is a recent form of neo-Aristotelian ontology. He holds that there exists only one thing on the most fundamental level: the world as a whole. This thesis does not deny our common-sense intuition that the distinct objects we encounter in our everyday affairs like cars or other people exist. It only denies that these objects have the most fundamental form of existence.
David Malet Armstrong was a modern defender of Aristotelianism on the problem of universals. States of affairs are the basic building blocks of his ontology, and have particulars and universals as their constituents. Armstrong is an immanent realist in the sense that he holds that a universal exists only insofar as it is a constituent of at least one actual state of affairs. Universals without instances are not part of the world.
Taking a realist approach to universals also allows an Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics, according to which mathematics is a science of properties that are instantiated in the real (including physical) world, such as quantitative and structural properties.
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