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A History of Greek Philosophy /
ARISTOTLE
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Page 9
Aristotle was as convinced as Plato that there must be some fixed and immovable object or reality corresponding to true and certain knowledge, but with his scientific instincts he was not content to have it left in a condition of emptiness, attractive enough to the more emotional and imaginative Plato. And hence we have elsewhere quite as strong and definite statements as those quoted above about universals, to the effect that existence is in the fullest and most real sense to be predicated of individual things, and that only in a secondary sense can existence be predicated of universals, in virtue of their being found in individual things. Moreover, among universals the species, he maintains, has more of existence in it than the genus, because it is nearer to the individual or primary existence. For if you predicate of an individual thing of what species it is, you supply a statement more full of information and more closely connected with the thing than if you predicate to what genus it belongs; for example, if asked, “What is this?” and you answer, “A man,” you give more information than if you say, “A living creature.”
How did Aristotle reconcile these two points of view, the one, in which he conceives thought as starting from first causes, the most universal objects of knowledge, and descending to particulars; the other, in which thought starts from the individual objects, and predicates of them by apprehension of their properties? The antithesis is no accidental one; on the contrary, it is the governing idea of his Logic, with its ascending process or Induction, and its descending process or Syllogism. Was thought a mere process in an unmeaning circle, the ‘upward and downward way’ of Plato?
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/history-of-philosophy/aristotle.asp?pg=9
