Aristotle & Plato – Philosophy

The readings on Plato and Aristotle seem to be largely differentiated by the expression of ideas while trying to understand nature, cause, and subjects. Aristotle's argument seems empirical and based on logic unlike Plato

Plato

The reading On Plato discusses nature of reality issue and how Socrates related to the natural science. Plato's discussion on good life largely depends on Socrates his teacher and Phaedo put these things in the dialogue by Plato. To begin with, Plato attributes everything to natural science after being keen on such wisdom since the time he was a young man. "When I was a young man I was wonderfully keen on that wisdom which they call natural science …." (Levenson & Jonathan, 23).  The argument in this reading appears to essentially conclude that nothing exists and if its existence can be seen it can never be known. If it is known, its communication cannot be done.  Plato could not know the results of adding one to another, how anything like a unit comes to exists or perishes. With knowledge from Anaxagoras that the cause of everything is the mind, Plato thought such a cause would enable the mind to arrange all things in the best way. (Levenson & Jonathan, 23).

Also, if a person needed to understand the cause anything, one needed to look for the best way and investigate what is worst. In the reading, Plato refers largely to other philosophers like Anaxagoras before agreeing or disagreeing with them. "…This wonderful hope was dashed as I went on reading and saw that the man made no use of Mind…" (Levenson & Jonathan, 25).   The readings relate the cause of a thing to not its appearance but itself. The reading makes the philosopher's argument look vague while trying to search for the cause of things whether good or bad. "… all things are beautiful by beautiful" (Levenson & Jonathan, 27).  Delving into what is good or bad, the reading focuses on the knowledge of the same so that it looks into what people know is good or bad. Thus, knowledge enables people to define what is good or bad, so that a thing is good or bad according to the person involved with it. It is not about what people believe but whether things are really good or bad and people have contempt for things only believed to be so. In this case, the reality of a thing determines a person's definition its goodness or badness. ".. Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake…" (Levenson & Jonathan, 30).  Socrates is pointing to the knowledge of a thing by a person as defining whether it's good and it has to include whether it's the truth. Hence the text focuses on nature, knowledge, and truth.

Plato

The reading on Aristotle focuses on his explanation of what is real using logic and providing the basic "characteristics of substances or ultimate reals" (Levenson & Jonathan, 45).   The reading presents work that is more empirical unlike Plato's work starting with the basic idea of abstraction, which in this case seems to justifiably be used in the description of a subject on which the obstruction is founded. The reading focuses on concepts, subject and its descriptive characteristics. In this case, a basic rule is that a descriptive characteristic cannot be tied to the subject so that the subject may remain as it is forever.  For example, "white' being present in a body is predicated of that which it is present, for a body is called white: the definition, however, of the color 'white' is never predicable of the body..." (Levenson & Jonathan, 45).  In this case, it seems Aristotle never had knowledge of existing biology and physics since he is unable to distinguish between what composes a subject and what is present in it. 

The reading also focuses on the existence of an individual person and positively affirms its. Individuals are presented as basic feature in existence of his basis species and forming the foundation of the larger group. " .. therefore of the individual man, for if there were no individual man of whom it could be predicated, it could not be predicated of the species 'man' at all.. "(Levenson & Jonathan, 46). The fundamental concept of predication is that a group can abstract from its comprising rudiments.  Whenever there is a clear distinction between the primary and secondary basics there will be a complimentary of "predicated upon and present", the two concepts.  The demonstration of logical argument by Aristotle is his assertion that all species are equal and all individual members are important than others of a different species. "In the same way, of primary substances, no one is more truly substance than another; an individual man is not more truly substance than an individual ox" (Levenson & Jonathan, 46).  The point expressed here is that man and ox belong to the same animal kingdom and are made of the same substance. This implies the use of logic in this reading.

Works cited

Levenson, Carl A, and Jonathan Westphal. Reality. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co, 1994.