7. The passage can be find in book II of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics or to be more precise it
is listed under 1106a14-1106a23 in Barns’ second volume of Aristotle’s works. In order to locate it and understand it under the wider context we need to consult Nicomachean Ethics as a whole.
The work deals, broadly spoken, with ultimate ends in life, happiness, and how to go about achieving it which is paramount purpose of ethics as a discipline. Hence, having understood
work as a whole, I can focus on this particular excerpt which follows in the same vein. In order to achieve this aforementioned good life which is permeated by happiness it is necessary for one
to live in accordance with virtue, or arête which can be translated also as an excellence. Two kinds of virtues pertaining to man which Aristotle mentions are intellectual achieved by
experience and moral achieved by habit and training. If a man lives his life in accordance with
these virtues or virtues in general which is golden mean and avoiding extremes which are vices he shall accomplish his main objective in life – happiness. And since Aristotle himself says that
everyone who has this understanding of virtue has potential to achieve happiness only if he lives in accordance with virtue and so does this directly pertain to gobbet part: “Therefore, if this is
true in every case, the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well.” If by work we understand any instrumental mean
which brings us to happiness than relation is established.
3. This excerpt comes from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, book I, and it is marked in Barns’
volume I under 71a1-71a11. In this work Aristotle deals indeed with logic and syllogisms but also with how the demonstrative or scientific knowledge comes to be and what separates it from
other forms of reasoning. In it, he proposes that scientific knowledge originates from knowing first things which are clearer in themselves rather than being more knowable to us. This highly
departs from what he writes in his works on nature where the reverse is true. First sentence
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indicates that Aristotle might have been influenced by Platonic ideas at that point in time. But this might have not been necessarily read like this. One can interpret this sentence as a
divergence of Aristotle from his teacher. Whereas Plato claimed that knowledge has to be immutable, unchanging, and innate, Aristotle believed this as well except for the fact that he did
not believe it has to be innate but that first principles are gathered from sensory inputs. Be that as it may, Posterior Analytics and this paragraph deals with demonstration or how to achieve true
scientific knowledge which arises out of principles and premises hence deductive reasoning. One should be careful here because not all deductions produce knowledge in demonstrative sense and
especially induction doesn’t which has more shaky foundations as an argument to begin with.
Section B – Short Essay Questions 1. Aristotle’s deductive reasoning is contained within his broader body of work entitled
Organon where books Prior Analytics deal with the structure and formation of syllogisms from terms and premises. This can be considered as first ever comprehensive work on logic. This work
differs from Aristotle’s take of inductive reasoning in Posterior Analytics which is crucial for cognitive processes and creation of episteme in its own right. Demonstration one the other hand
is called when a deduction is successful and produces knowledge. Deductive reasoning is based on a logical line of events where premises logically produce conclusion. But deductive reasoning
is not demonstration necessarily as obvious from following example: A-wetness, B-fire, C-cold and from deduction it follows that wetness is fire and fire is cold so wetness is cold. This does
not make any sense but how we achieved this particular conclusion I will explain later. It works from general to particular while induction works in the opposite fashion – from particular to
general. Famous example of this is: P All men are mortal; P Socrates is a man; C Socrates is
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mortal. Induction is relatively weaker form of reasoning because of the fact that it does not have so worked out chain of logical events and conclusion does not necessarily follow out of it.
Example of an induction can be: All men I have seen are mortal, therefore every man must be mortal. But there exists possibility that there is immortal person due to the fact that we don’t
know did I mean to say that I have seen every person in the Universe or just the ones I met. In order to understand Prior Analytics and thus deductive reasoning we first need to understand the
form of it all. Namely, there are statements Aristotle calls propositions or premises which can either be true or false, affirmative or negative, and which in turn through logical turn of events
lead to conclusion which is also either true or false. Within the premise itself subject and predicate are connected with verb or, how it looks in Prior Analytics – predicated of, said of,
belongs to. There can be 4 types of propositions or categorical sentences: universal affirmative A, particular affirmative I, universal negative E, particular negative O. Knowing this
conversion will be particularly important to learn: universal negatives convert to universal negatives; particular affirmatives convert to particular affirmatives and universal positives can
convert to particular positives. By combining the rules of the conversion with categorical sentences one will get what is known as 3 figures or syllogisms divided in 3 categories
dependent on their middle term. Middle term can be subject of one proposition and predicate of other and thus belong to first figure; it can be predicate of both propositions making it belong to
second figure; and it can be subject of both propositions hence belonging to third category. Figures of the first syllogism are complete and do not require additional proof while figures of
rest of syllogisms require one by the process of conversion. I might give one example of the conversion here demonstrating how the syllogism is valid. I shall analyze Disamis or Pis; RaS;
therefore PiR. Pis, Ras; Pir and from this it follows Ras, SiP; PiR since particular affirmatives
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convert to particular affirmatives and finally RaS, SiP; RiP. This demonstrates us that Disamis is a sound syllogism although in need of demonstration. Medieval authors have dubbed these
syllogisms with medieval names for the simplicity sake corresponding to three categorical sentences found in 2 premises and conclusion; AaB, BaC; therefore AaC or also known as
Barbara.
4. Aristotle’s view of soul is quite peculiar since it has certain similarities with his teacher’s
view of soul but on the other hand he adds some novelties that are quite specific to him. In line with Plato he divides soul on three parts, i.e. makes tripartite division but separates it according
to whole of physical things while Plato focuses solely on human soul. In this line we have according to Aristotle vegetative soul, emotive soul common to all animals, and rational soul
peculiar for humans. Furthermore, this division of souls corresponds to the activities which soul undertakes or as he specifies in his work De anima: souls which are only able to grow are
plant souls, those which are only able to move are animal ones, and those which are able to do rational contemplations are human. All these souls are not mutually exclusive since they all
converge in human. When Aristotle talks about soul he obviously talks about living beings since soul or anima is a living faculty, something which enables life. Those things which have life are
plants and animals under animals I shall subsume humans as well to avoid any confusion and they are compound substances composed of both form actuality and matter potentiality and
since soul makes living thing a living thing it is necessarily a form of that thing De anima, book II 412a18. But soul is also first actuality in Aristotle’s division of potentialities and actualities,
which means that the one who possesses soul whether animal or plant has potential to do various things related to life which it might not perhaps be doing at the moment but owns them
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throughout the course of life. Those aforementioned various things are simple life processes although a human soul has greater potential which is involves rational capacities and living a
happy, virtuous life. What separates thus a living being from an inanimate object is the possession of soul and hence this implies that a source of motion comes from the inside of being
itself, namely that being soul is the efficient cause of itself and does not have an efficient cause that
is external
to itself.
If translated in the language of causes, I believe that soul would be an efficient cause since it is the thing that animates living beings. Further, Aristotle believes that soul cannot exist
independently of the body since soul is the actuality of the body and not the other way around 414a4-414a28. Since soul cannot have existence separate from that of the body it is possible to
view it as a thought, or consciousness; an image popularized by recent scientific and science fiction endeavors. Thus, Aristotle’s soul is very much different from Plato’s version of the same
for which he argues unconditional immortality as seen from his Phaedo. Furthermore, by
sidelining soul one can easily notice empiricist lines in Aristotle contra Plato’s more idealistic worldviews and hence this very empiricism is what brought Aristotle to focus on senses as main
faculties for perception and knowledge formation inductive processes which eluded Plato in this respect. If then, soul is an animating faculty and gives purpose to the body it inhibits, in the
case of humans then it must be that, since humans possess rational soul, soul is striving to achieve unity with cosmic intellect or in other words with Prime Mover himself. This could be
alternative reading of the purpose of the soul since contemplation is the closest one can get to the universal nous and thus, besides being an efficient cause, every soul and especially human soul is
striving to approach the final cause. This claim is further supported by the rather dubious interpretation that Aristotle understood soul to die with body but what stays immortal is reason or
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active intellect 430a20-430a26. Soul can be equated with purpose and when a purpose leaves a body he ceases to be what it was originally, namely when a soul leaves a human heshe is not
human anymore since purpose left with it.
6. What it means to be happy for Aristotle? His happiness consists in a number of factors which
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