ARISTOTLE - The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics

THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE: METAPHYSICS

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

From biographical note on Aristotle: He [Plato] is said to have been called by Plato the intellect of the school. There is also a tradition that he taught rhetoric. “The more I am by myself and alone, the fonder I have become of myths.”

 

All men by nature desire to know.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 499

And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know, that the former can teach.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 499

… as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense perception whatever, the artist wiser than the man of experience, the master-worker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 500

… secondly, that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise… he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser in every branch of knowledge;

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 500

… in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. … Evidently then we do not seek it for the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another’s, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 501

… according to the proverb, the better state, as is the case in these instances too, when men learn the cause; for there is nothing which would surprise a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be commensurable.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 501

Those who have been driven to this position by difficulties in their thinking can easily be cured of their ignorance; for it is not their expressed argument but their thought that one has to meet. But those who argue for the sake of argument can be cured only by refuting the argument as expressed in speech and in words.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 4, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 528

For they think that the truth should not be determined by the large or small number of those who hold a belief, and that the same thing is thought sweet by some when they taste it, and bitter by others, so that if all were ill or all were mad, and only two or three were well or sane, these would be thought ill and mad and not the others. And again, they say that many of the other animals receive impression contrary to ours; and that even to the sense of each individual, things do not always seem the same. Which then of these impression are true and which are false is not obvious; for the one set is no more true than the other, but both are alike.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 5, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 529

… while there is some justification for their thinking that the changing, when it is changing, does not exist, yet it is after all disputable; for that which is losing a quality has something of that which is being lost, and of that which is coming to be, something must already be.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 5, Great Books Volume 8,  pg. 529

That physics, then, is a theoretical science is plain from these considerations. Mathematics also, however, is theoretical; but whether its objects are immovable and separable from matter is not at present clear; still it is clear that some mathematical theorems consider them qua immovable and qua separable from matter. But there is something which is eternal and immovable and separable, clearly the knowledge of it belongs to a theoretical science, - not, however to physics (For physics deals with things which exist separately but are not immovable and some parts of mathematics deal with things which are immovable but presumably do not exist separately, but as embodied in matter; while the first science deals with things which both exist separately and are immovable.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book VI, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 548

QUA

Since the science of the philosopher treats of being qua being universally and not in respect of a part of it and “being” has many sense and is not used in one only, it follows that if the word is used equivocally and in virtue of nothing common to its various uses, being does not fall under one science.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XI, Chapter 3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 589

Philosophy does not inquire about particular subject in so far as each of them has some attribute or other, but speculates about being, in so far as each particular thing is. – Physics is in the same position as mathematics; for physics studies the attributes and the principles of the thing that are, qua moving and not qua being (whereas the primary science, we have said, deals with these, only in so far as the underlying subjects are existent, and not in virtue of any other character); and so both physics and mathematics must be classed as parts of Wisdom.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XI, Chapter 4, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 590

For if the universe is of the nature of a whole, substance is its first part; and if it coheres merely by virtue of serial succession on this view also substance is first, and is succeeded by quality, and then by quantity.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 1, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 598

…if change proceeds from opposites or from intermediates, and not from all opposites (for the voice is not white (but it does not therefore change to white) but from the contrary there must be something underlying which changes into the contrary state; for the contraries do not change.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 598

Since changes are of four kinds – either in respect of the ‘what’ or of the quality or of the quantity or of the place, and change in respect of ‘thisness’ is simple generation and destruction, and change in quantity is increase and diminution.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 598

…that which ‘is’ has two senses, we must say that everything changes from that which is potentially to that which is actually, e.g. from potentially white to actually white, and similarly in the case of increase and diminution. Therefore, not only can a thing come to be, incidentally, out of that which is not, but also all things come to be out of that which is, but is potentially, and is not actually.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 2, Great Books Volume 8,  pg. 598

There are three kinds of substance – that matter, which is a ‘this’ in appearance (for all things that are characterized by contact and not by organic unity are matter and sub stratum, e.g. fire, flesh, head; for these are all matter, and the last matter is the matter of that which is in the full sense substance); the nature, which is a ‘this’ or positive and again, thirdly, the particular substance which is composed of these two, e.g.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 3, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 599

Yet, if we follow the theologians who generate the world from night, or the natural philosophers who say that ‘all things were together,’ the same impossible result ensues, For how will there be movement, if there is not actually existing cause?

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 6, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 601

If then, there is a constant cycle, something must always remain, acting in the same way. And if there is to be generation and destruction, there must be something else which is always acting in different ways. This must then, act in one way in virtue of itself and in another in virtue of something else – either of a third agent, therefore, or of that first.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 6, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 602

Those who suppose, as the Pythagoreans and Speusippus do, that supreme beauty and goodness are not present in the beginning, because the beginnings both of plants and of animals are causes, but beauty and completeness are in the effects of these, are wrong in their opinion.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 7, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 603

The nature of the divine thought involves certain problems; for while thought is held to be the most divine of things observed by us, the question how it must be situated in order to have that character involved difficulties. For if it thinks of nothing what is there here of dignity?

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 9, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 605

And all things are ordered together somehow, but not all alike, - both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world in not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are connected. For all are ordered together to one end…

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 605

But again there cannot be any contrary that is also essentially a productive or moving principle; for it would be possible for it not to be.

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 606

… but the world refuses to be governed badly. The rule of many is not good; one ruler let there be.(Ci, Iliad, II.204)

The Works of Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 10, Great Books Volume 8, pg. 606

VOCABULARY – THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE: METAPHYSICS

Elegy – a poem of lament and praise for the dead; any poem in elegiac verse. A poem written in a mournfully contemplative tone.

Lucidated, lucidity

Lucid – bright; shining; transparent; sane; clear; readily understood: as a lucid talk

Metaphysicsa

Obeisance

a gesture not only of respect but also of submission

Qua, pg. 589

qua kwä

conjunction

in the capacity of; as being : he's hard to pin down if you get him on entertainment qua entertainment.

ORIGIN Latin, ablative feminine singular of qui ‘who.’