Aristotle's Metaphysics Summary

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Nguyen 1

Randy Nguyen

Ancient Philosophy

Rev. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J

12/6/17

Metaphysics, What is Metaphysics? In a world where the study of philosophy combines with the principles of things, which includes abstract concepts such as substance, knowing, cause, identity, space, and time. All of these concepts are very important since they are used to determine the real nature of things, and identify the meaning, and how structured thing exist in the world. Aristotle develops what he called “the science of first philosophy”, since form; matter, substance, potentiality, actuality, and cause are key concepts
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Substance that is both form and matter. It also reveals the reality of how individual things exist in the world. The substance of each individual thing doesn’t belong to other individual things, but the universal element of an individual thing belongs to many individual things. Through out the book Aristotle mentions the differences between the three kinds of substances. The first two kinds of substances he mentions are material and changeable, which shows that physical substances can be capable of being changed. They can also be eternal, perishable, and non-material …show more content…
He also believes that wisdom is the virtue that leads to happiness and makes us an organism. According to Aristotle, he believes that every living thing that can move itself has a soul. He believes that plants, animals, along with human beings are more like each other, since they have a soul. Aristotle also believes that the hierarchy of living things exist, that plants have a vegetative soul, animals are above plants because they have an appetite, and humans are on top of animals because they have the mind to reason things out. In Aristotle’s view, plants have the ability to absorb food, grow and reproduce. While animals and humans being have features such as thought which allows them to think what is wrong and right.
The soul within the human being allows the human being to think, and that is why the soul is really important within a person’s knowledge and in metaphysics as well. It shows that everything around us in the world is real, and that the specific nature in the Nguyen

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