PHLC05H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Junk Food, Style Guide, Eudaimonia
•Continuing with Aristotle
•Essay
•1 of 3 possible topics
•Show understand main argument, draw on reading material and class notes
•What are the benefits of idea, shortfalls, is it legit for today, why or why not?
•Thesis, defend your thesis
•Offer your insight as well
•History unit. Choose one philosopher, summarize, use your own original insight to criticize or
otherwise comment and embellish
•Use a proper style guide
•Citations very important
•There is no midterm for this class
•Final exam will cover the whole term
Lecture
•To understand that Aristotle’s viewpoint is teleological, we must understand the four causes
•Flourishing is good in itself, all other goods aim toward flourishing
•Every action and aim has a good, a good that is specific to it, but there is one good toward which all
other goods aim, and that is flourishing
•Look at document LEC 2 Aristotle on the four causes
•Aristotle believed there to be four causes, different from today’s belief—we generally believe there to be
one cause
•The fire was caused by a lightning bolt—this would be Aristotle’s efficient cause
•In a tree, the origin of movement is internal to the tree itself, it has its own principle of movement and
development—for Aristotle, the principle for a thing from nature it is internal
•That is different from a human-made artifact, where the origin of movement or efficient cause is in the
idea of the human being who causes movement in something other than itself
•Efficient cause is what is used in the modern world
•What caused the car accident? Moving through the red light
•But that is just one type of causality for Aristotle
•Look at special terms
•There are three other types of causality
•The formal cause is like the Platonic eidos
•This is the form, or essence, or “what it is” of a thing
•Enables a recognizability of an object
•Concept allows me to recognize the different types of chair—they are all chairs, but materially
different, but unified
•The formal cause is one which without a baseball bat would just be a plank of wood
•Very different from efficient causality
•What is responsible for the being of the baseball bat is its form, the idea
•These are four ways for conceiving the responsibility of things
•The final cause is crucial to understand teleology in Aristotle
•The final cause is the telos
•The purpose for which a thing is made
•A type of causality that is one way something can be responsible for something else
•In the case of a baseball bat, the final cause would be the baseball game
•The purpose is the baseball game
•In Nicomachean Ethics, the final cause of human life is flourishing, ultimately “the good” in itself
(eudaimonia), although a lot of actions aim at specific goods
•It is interesting to note that in the modern world, there are not thought to be any final causes
•Descartes thought as a great idea as eliminating final causality as a way of understanding things
•What was the cause of disease? You don’t think of it as anything teleological, you would say, for
example, smoking, excessive junk food, exposure to pesticides. All those are efficient causes
•Modern scientists came to think of final causes as fictional and associated with God and religion
•For Aristotle, final causality was not necessarily associated with religion, it was a scientific matter
•The ultimate purpose is eudaimony
•We tend to think now that people’s good is their own choices
•Flourishing is an activity, it is the ultimate final activity, not an end state. It is something that one does
•Flourishing is doing and living well
•My question: Would Aristotle still use efficient causes for the cause of disease?
•In his time, they probably did not have a very sophisticated understanding of disease, they might see it
as a deficiency of flourishing, just like vice is a deficiency
•Disease could have all four of these causes
•Material cause: the substance out of which a thing is made
•The final cause is very foreign to the modern mind
•Scientific thinking became strictly involved with efficient causes
•Perhaps in his times, they did not understand efficient causes so well and so they appealed to final
causes
•Moving to document LEC 2 Aristotle on the soul
•Aristotle claimed that the soul (psyche) and body are unified
•The soul is the unifying process which maintains the body as an identity
•He did not think the soul outlived the body, unlike what Plato thought (Plato supported reincarnation)
•The soul does not outlive the body because the soul is just a unifying process which maintains the body
as an identity
•Plants and animals have a soul
•Difference between a dead body and a living body is that the former contains a soul
•Inanimate objects have form
•But the soul is an activity, it is a unifying process that maintains the body as an identity over time
•The soul is related to the body in the same logical way as the form/shape bench is related to the wood
•In a living organism, the soul orders the matter by giving it structure just as the form of a bench that
orders the wood
•The soul is the form, gives the body definition, such as a particular shape like being big and strong or
small and weak, or healthy or sick
•Think of the soul as a process, an activity, the form as an activity
•Same logical relation as the wood and the form of the bench
•Distinguish form from matter, where the wood is matter and form gives it definition
•The form is conceived as different for a living entity than it is for an inanimate object
•With a human being, for example, they are rational animals (anthropos logos)
•But for every specific human being, their form is their soul, which is an identifying process that animates
the living body that gives it a definition that is specific to that person
•It is important to conceive the form/matter distinction. Form gives definition to matter
•The soul orders the matter (flesh), just like the form gives order to the wood for the bench
•Soul = substance (ousia)
•The soul is the “what it is” character of the organism, such that if one took this away the organism would
no longer be what it is (i.e. poison ivy), but rather something else
•For human beings, their substance is their capacity for rationality
•If I took the hood off of my hoodie, it would no longer be a hoodie
•What is essential to the human being is logos, having rationality
•Being 6 ft tall is inessential, it is not part of the substance
•That rational animal is a doctor, but being a doctor is inessential as a substance for being a rational
animal
•Soul = actuality/function (energeia)
•A human being is actually a human being when it is actually using its logos
Document Summary
Choose one philosopher, summarize, use your own original insight to criticize or otherwise comment and embellish: use a proper style guide, citations very important, there is no midterm for this class, final exam will cover the whole term. You don"t think of it as anything teleological, you would say, for example, smoking, excessive junk food, exposure to pesticides. The esh of the human body is actually a human being when animated by a soul and is living and functioning. Only a body animated by a soul is functioning as the living being that it is: aristotle said that silence is tting for the woman, but women had rationality. They had the logos, but it was without authority. She sets down an end and accomplishes the means toward it. Earlier it was mentioned that the activity of ourishing is the ultimate goal.
