of small treatises on various philosophical problems, put together and given its title
because it was to be read after the Physics(the literal meaning of meta-physics). This
has had the effect of making Aristotle’s philosophy seem more of a system than it
doubtless was, and modern Aristotelians have found development, change and
sometimes contradiction within our surviving texts.
After Plato, what is immediately striking is the great range of Aristotle’s intellectual
interests. He continues to reflect the Socratic and Platonic emphasis upon the moral
and metaphysical, but is less theoretical and mathematical than Plato, extending the
range of his philosophical enquiries to the physical and particularly to the biological.
He starts from observed phenomena, believing that man achieves knowledge by
looking outward, as well as inward, and by maintaining contact with the world of sense
impression. His physics concerns not abstractions but real substances as they move
and change spontaneously. This empiricism is most evident in his biological work. We
cannot imagine the other-worldly and visionary Plato devoting time to (and doing the
research for) the classification of biological phenomena according to structure and
function that we find in several of Aristotle’s works, including his monumental History
ofAnimals, in which we see the natural philosopher reaching out towards a clear
definition of the actual world and towards an explanation of facts.
InAristotle, for the first time, the various branches of learning and science are
systematically classified, differentiated and defined, so that subsequent developments
in logic, physics, metaphysics, zoology, political and moral science, psychology,
rhetoric and literary criticism all grow out of Aristotelian beginnings. While Plato
eschewed technical terms in his popular writings, to Aristotle the world owes a whole
philosophical vocabulary and grammar, so to speak. The ‘vocabulary’ comprises
categories and essential terms such as form and matter, energy and potential, sub-
stance and essence, quantity and quality, accidental relations and causes, genus
and species. The ‘grammar’ comprises Aristotelian logic (from logosmeaning word,
discourse or reason, something distinctive to the human species), for he saw the
necessity of establishing rules for correct argumentation, in the course of which he
became the first to analyse sentences, bequeathing the terms subject and predicate
amongst others. Later commentators entitled his logical works the Organon or ‘tool’,
recognizing that Aristotelian logic is not an end in itself but the indispensable
prerequisite to any fruitful scientific enquiry.
While Plato is an idealist, Aristotle is often called the first great representative of
the realist school of western philosophy. The reaction against Plato and his greater
realism may be illustrated in his critical appraisal of Plato’s Republic in his own Politics
(1260–1264). He finds fault with Plato’s proposals to abolish the family and ownership
of private property among the ruling guardians, which he believes to be neither
practical nor desirable. He attacks the basic premise from which Plato argues that
the highest unity of the state is its highest good, insisting that plurality is the nature
204 THE GREEKS