/aristotle/

Aristotle General

>how much have you read?
>general thoughts?
>favorite piece?

Please don't be limited by these questions. Feel free to discuss any and everything Aristotle related.

Have a feeling he'd browse /pol/ if he were allowed to day. Extremely redpilled on women and leftism.

I've never paid Aristotle much attention.
Is Physics required reading for Metaphysics?
Also, in 'On the Soul' (only Aristotle I've read) he defines form as 'essence' and matter as 'potential'. Am I to take that, for example, if I have a ball of gold its form as 'ball' is sphere and its matter gold, and its form as 'gold' is 'goldness' and its matter is simply existence?

For the gold ball, this is the case more or less. He treats this more explicitly in his Metaphysics and the Physics (which isn't really requisite reading
for the Metaphysics). For Aristotle, as you said, matter is pure potentiality and nothing particular in the sense of being unqualified (i.e. no shape, structure, length, width,
and so on) but possesses the capacity to be something if it is given a form - which in the case of a gold ball is given to it by the soul of the craftsman.
Which is to say, the craftsman puts roundness and other ball-like attributes to the gold which is artificial generation, and gold itself possessing goldness from natural generation.

Matter, however, is not existence in the precise sense, as he thinks there have always been forms alongside matter (he believes for instance that there is
an eternal, non-material and unchanging form which could be equated with God, Nature or something of the like, which is the source of all change or motion,
which we have knowledge of because evidently things change and have motion) - and that a thing is said to exist when it is the compound of matter, and form.
To clarify some, he does not think there was ever a time where things did not have forms - so existence proper can neither be attributed purely to matter, nor form.
So, in the case of gold for example, it would not exist without the form of goldness, nor its matter. Matter is the potential for existence, and the form is the realization of existence.

this.

I've read Ethics twice, and it's my favorite. I've got halfway through Physics twice and I think next time I'll be able to finish it. I got through a quarter through the Organon twice and I hate it, though I acknowledge its importance. Physiognomy is really good, though in some places inconsistent. On the Soul is also great.

About Ethics, I highly recommend it. I've seen a criticism here somewhere along the lines of DUDE LMAO STRIKE A BALANCE but not only has that person underestimated the power of sometimes realizing you're going to get thrown off balance and that you're more than likely better off to face accidents than others--they are also forgetting Aristotle's advice for achieving happiness that includes the five categories: practical wisdom, philosophical wisdom, art, knowledge, and comprehension.

>The young man of practical wisdom is thought not to be found. (Ethics 6.8)
Cf. Schopenhauer, who in his essay Ages of Life says that a man of intelligence really starts to come into his own at the age of 40, in conversations at least, and then at an older age, can really be seen as someone who knows.
>The man who is defective in respect of resistance to the things which most men both resist and resist successfully is soft and effeminate; for effeminacy too is a kind of softness; such a man trails his cloak to avoid the pain of lifting it and plays the invalid w/o thinking himself wretched, though the man he imitates is wretched... Not resisting pleasures or pains distinguishes the female sex from the male. (Ethics 7.7)
honestly bros can we just use this thread as a reminder for the future to actually discuss why women might be inferior to men instead of outright saying women are dogs or all women are the same? Like instead of saying women are bad I could cite the bit in Politics 1.13 where Aristotle quotes someone as to saying "Silence is a woman's glory." There doesn't even have to be an exact citation, but at least give us some credibility. We're not as ahead as we could be because we have people spouting off what comes off as pure hatred seemingly fueled by only having read Schopenhauer's On Women and not rational thought.

So goddamn boring, only read metaphysics and de categories though

Got Physics like yesterday because I want to get into the philosophy of science, so decided to go for something very early, and ordered Nachamean Ethics, will go on to Poetics after that.

>people unironically reading his physics in this day and age
The power of intellectual fetishization

Aristotle as well as Aquinas said women were slaves. They made it pretty clear. Women's emancipation is also a recent development, like barely a hundred years old. It's about as old as Bolshevism.