A History of Greek Philosophy / ARISTOTLE

Page 13

The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a crux still. What is the meaning of this ‘Ultimately’? Or, putting it in Aristotle’s formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality? Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is no unreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or in germ there? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why this groaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal ‘By and by’ wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all the clashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled and satisfied? An illustration of Aristotle’s attempt to answer this question will be given later on. That the answer is a failure need not surprise us. If we even now ‘see only as in a glass darkly’ on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing ‘face to face.’

Life is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown, but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. We pass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants and animals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we rise still higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiar function of man. Each is a potentiality to that which is immediately above it; in other words, each contains in germ the possibilities which are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there a touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose running through all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation for something higher.

Previous / First / Next Page of this chapter

Next Chapter : THE SCEPTICS AND EPICUREANS / Previous Chapter : PLATO

A History of Greek Philosophy : Table of Contents
Cf. D'Arcy W. Thompson, Aristotle's Natural Science

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/aristotle.asp?pg=13