However, it is also rational
since humans have the distinct ability to control these desires with the help of
reason. The human ability to properly control these desires is called moral
virtue, and is the focus of morality. Aristotle believes that there is a purely
rational part of the soul, the calculative, which is responsible for the human
ability to contemplate, reason logically, and formulate scientific principles.
The mastery of these abilities is called intellectual virtue. Aristotle
continues by making several general points about the nature of moral virtues.
First, he argues that the ability to regulate our desires is not instinctive,
but learned and is the outcome of both teaching and practice. Second, if we
regulate our desires either too much or too little, then we create problems.
Third, he argues that desire-regulating virtues are character traits, and are
not to be understood as either emotions or mental faculties. The core of
Aristotle's account of moral virtue is his doctrine of the mean. According to
this doctrine, moral virtues are desire regulating character traits, which are
at a mean between more extreme character traits (or vices). For example, in
response to the natural emotion of fear, we should develop the virtuous
character trait of courage. If we develop an excessive character trait by
curbing fear too much, then we are said to be rash, which is a vice. If, on the
other extreme, we develop a deficient character trait by cutting fear too
little, then we are said to be cowardly, which is also a vice. The virtue of
courage, then, lies at the mean between the excessive extreme of rashness, and
the deficient extreme of cowardice. Most moral virtues, and not just courage,
are to be understood as falling at the mean between two accompanying vice.
Aristotle's editors gave the name Metaphysics to his works on first philosophy,
because they went beyond or followed after his physical investigations.
Aristotle begins by sketching the history of philosophy. For Aristotle,
philosophy arose historically after basic necessities were secured. It grew out
of a feeling of curiosity and wonder, to which religious myth gave only
provisional satisfaction.
For Aristotle, the subject of metaphysics deals with
the first principles of scientific knowledge and the ultimate conditions of all
existence. More specifically, it deals with existence in its most fundamental
state and the essential attributes of existence. This can be contrasted with
mathematics, which deals with existence in terms of lines or angles, and not
existence as it is in itself. In its universal character, metaphysics
superficially resembles dialectics and sophistry. However, it differs from
tentative dialects and from sophistry, which is pretence of knowledge without
the reality. The axioms of science fall under the consideration of the
metaphysician insofar as they are properties of all existence. Aristotle argues
that there are a handful of universal truths. Against the followers of Heraclitus and Protagoras, Aristotle defends both the laws of contradiction, and
that of excluded middle. He does this by showing that their denial is suicidal.
Carried out to its logical consequences, the denial of these laws would lead to
the sameness of all facts and all assertions. It would also result in
indifference and conduct. As the science of being as being, the leading question
of Aristotle's metaphysics is, what is meant by the real or true substance?
Plato tried to solve the same question by positing a universal and invariable
element of knowledge and existence the forms as the only real permanent besides
the changing phenomena of the senses. Aristotle attacks Plato's theory of the
forms on three different grounds. First, Aristotle argues, forms are powerless
to explain changes of things and a thing's ultimate extinction. Forms are not
causes of movement and alteration in the physical objects of sensation. Second,
forms are equally incompetent to explain how we arrive at knowledge of
particular things. For, to have knowledge of a particular object, it must be
knowledge of the substance, which is in those things. However, the forms place
knowledge outside of particular things. Further, to suppose that we know
particular things better by adding on their general conceptions of their forms,
is about as absurd as to imagine that we can count numbers better by multiplying
them. Finally, if forms were needed to explain our knowledge of particular
objects, then forms must be used to explain our knowledge of objects of art;
however, Platonists do not recognize such forms. The third ground of attack is
that the forms simply cannot explain the existence of particular objects.
