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tonyrey
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If so why? If not why not?
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prodigalson2011
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I think underrated is an understatement. It seems most modern philosophers hold him in the same regard as modern scientists hold flat-earthers.
One of the chief reasons, as I see it, is that his philosophy is mixed with a very outmoded science, so modern philosophers tend to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” However, a careful process of sorting metaphysical truth from scientific error unearths a wealth of insight and wisdom.
Aquinas, for instance, describes the development of the universe and life in terms very sympathetic to modern cosmological theory as well as “the biological theory which must not be named.” In fact, Aquinas explicitly believed in abiogenesis, and in much more radical form than is theorized nowadays: he believed that new lifeforms were, from time to time, generated straight out of the dirt by the sun! In his own words:
Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship. (Commentary on Physics II.8, lecture 14, no. 268)
I think it is only rational that someone whose ideas proved so prescient should be given due consideration. While his scientific ideas may be found wanting, the metaphysical principles that undergirded them still hold very true today. Too bad he (and Aristotle) are so unjustly ignored by modern academics.
Of course, there is the factor of secularization: Aristotle (and Aquinas), properly understood, have a tendency to lead people to theism (case in point.) In a world where “man is the measure of all things,” such ideas are not going to find a very warm welcome.
(P.S. It’s been awhile, tonyrey. It’s good to “see” you [or at least your name] again!)
One of the chief reasons, as I see it, is that his philosophy is mixed with a very outmoded science, so modern philosophers tend to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” However, a careful process of sorting metaphysical truth from scientific error unearths a wealth of insight and wisdom.
Aquinas, for instance, describes the development of the universe and life in terms very sympathetic to modern cosmological theory as well as “the biological theory which must not be named.” In fact, Aquinas explicitly believed in abiogenesis, and in much more radical form than is theorized nowadays: he believed that new lifeforms were, from time to time, generated straight out of the dirt by the sun! In his own words:
Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship. (Commentary on Physics II.8, lecture 14, no. 268)
I think it is only rational that someone whose ideas proved so prescient should be given due consideration. While his scientific ideas may be found wanting, the metaphysical principles that undergirded them still hold very true today. Too bad he (and Aristotle) are so unjustly ignored by modern academics.
Of course, there is the factor of secularization: Aristotle (and Aquinas), properly understood, have a tendency to lead people to theism (case in point.) In a world where “man is the measure of all things,” such ideas are not going to find a very warm welcome.
(P.S. It’s been awhile, tonyrey. It’s good to “see” you [or at least your name] again!)
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Prodigal_Son
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I’m immersed in the world of secular modern philosophy, and I hear nothing but good things about Aristotle.
People don’t blame Aristotle for the bad science; they blame the Dark Ages, who decided not to make any advances on Aristotle.
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adawgj
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Why would he be underrated if people still read and admire his works such as Prior if he lived thousands of years ago.
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polytropos
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I think this is probably more accurate (and seems to be the view that, for instance, Bertrand Russell took). That Aristotle was an improvement in his time is usually granted. But I think most people would not regard his philosophy as viable today, and much of the reason for that is the failure to dissociate his metaphysics from his physics.I’m immersed in the world of secular modern philosophy, and I hear nothing but good things about Aristotle.
People don’t blame Aristotle for the bad science; they blame the Dark Ages, who decided not to make any advances on Aristotle.
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Charlemagne_II
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On the whole Plato has fared better than Aristotle and I think his influence has eclipsed the influence of Aristotle. I don’t say he was the greater philosopher, but I think his Socratic methodology has made him more readable, especially for younger people. I remember with gratitude how well Socrates formed my ability to think. When I went from Plato to Aristotle, I felt a bit of letdown. The drama just wasn’t there any more. Aristotle was more like reading a dry essay than watching a cerebral boxing match.
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tonyrey
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And you!
There is a good summary by Peter Blair of Aquinas’s debt to Aristotle rather than Plato:
dartmouthapologia.org/articles/show/125
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1AugustSon7
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The Scholastics made excellent contributions to Aristotle’s philosophy and developed and reconciled many of the problems in his texts. They contributed many fine points and distinctions that are philosophically fruitful - Sir Anthony Kenny, for one, praises Aquinas’s contributions to the idea of habitus or dispositions. They were constantly seeking to reconcile Aristotle to himself and to Christianity. They kept Aristotle alive.I’m immersed in the world of secular modern philosophy, and I hear nothing but good things about Aristotle.
People don’t blame Aristotle for the bad science; they blame the Dark Ages, who decided not to make any advances on Aristotle.
IMO, what happened increasingly after Aquinas was a hollowing out of Scholasticism that lead finally into nominalism. This was just a shell. It was for many of the early moderns the deeply counter-intuitive streak of nominalism in the schools that lead to revolt for one of two reasons. Either a) a religiously motivated revolt (as in the case of Luther) because nominalism could hardly be reconciled with belief in the divine authority and power of the Scriptures or the Word of God; and for others, b) academically for the sake of a more certain rationalism that affirmed our true ability to know and desire to understand, which nominalism undermined. Nominalism very much looked and sounded like the Perennial Philosophy, but it was just a carcass of it or, in other words, a straw man. This degradation happened slowly over time and increasingly predominated; nominalists were at best parroting the Perennial Philosophy and - like the sophists of Socrates’ day - taught and claimed to be philosophers but really were not. They only appeared to be and sounded like the true philosophers. They were certainly not bona fide intellectual heirs of Aristotle or Aquinas.
Therefore most of the attacks on scholasticism in the early modern period were really being directed (and to a large extent quite rightly) against a nominalist straw man. The degradation of philosophy as ever lead to confusion and revolt on a widespread scale: Protestantism and early modernism are what we acquired with the splits in Western Christianity and the further split between Western Christianity and secularism. Unfortunately, as often happens, all the babies were in both cases thrown out with the bathwater.
I base this on Sir Anthony Kenny’s history of philosophy from the Ancient to Medieval times and on *A Concise History of the Catholic Church * by
Thomas Bokenkotter.
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Prodigal_Son
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To clarify, I was not blaming the Scholastics for anything. It’s the period from 500-1100 that is pretty quiet, in terms of philosophy, and VERY quiet in terms of science (with the exception of some dynamic regions of the Middle East). The Scholastics were a major improvement. However, the Scholastics were largely uninterested in experimental science, which is a strike against them – at least from the perspective of most modern philosophers.
As far as reviving Aristotle, the Scholastics certainly did that!
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1AugustSon7
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I deny this also.
What we moderns actually mean by “experimental science” is so vague and amorphous that any two people will claim to believe in it and its usefulness but will not, however, be able to come to an agreement on what it actually is or even means. But it basically means making observations, guessing at the causes or reasons for the phenomena, then testing to see if the proposed causes are actually the reason for the effect that we observe. As far as that goes, the Medievals were just as busy going about it in every field as anyone else was. The real shift between Medieval and modern science in the terms of philosophy was that philosophy focused on reality more like a piece of art and tried to understand it as such: tinkering with it was secondary. In other words, they were not all too concerned with manipulating it for the purposes of technology, and philosophers have never been primarily in the business of being engineers or trying to invent new and nifty stuff. We hardly call the man tinkering around in his garage trying to produce some new wonder product a scientist.
What philosophers do and always have done is organize human knowledge and understanding: philosophy is what brings all the manifold sciences and knowledge together into a coherent whole and single body of learning; and no other science can claim to have the authority or ability to do this, although (as Aristotle says) Physics comes pretty close because it is the most fundamental. And it is clear that only when something like this is attempted and actually more or less correctly achieved that what we call wisdom (as distinct from mere knowledge or a collection of random facts) results. It’s the man who more or less manages to impressively make sense out of all of our knowledge that we gather to listen to and to hear what he recommends we should do as a result. It seems to give him the credentials and authority to make such wide sweeping recommendations. And that’s a philosopher even if he doesn’t realize it. It’s the person who can tell us ‘what it all means’.
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Prodigal_Son
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I admit I’m no expert, but can you explain to me why heliocentric astonomy took until the 1500s to come into existence, if these medievals were so keen on physical evidence? It seems to me they spent much of their time refining the theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy, instead of coming up with theories of their own.
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1AugustSon7
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The theory had already been around for a long time; it just didn’t enjoy the balance of evidence. Aquinas, following Aristotle’s own comment, was shrewd enough to point out that speculative astronomy was just that - speculative - and that other theories could be presented to explain our observations. This is why Saint Thomas’s Five Ways do not rely on the motions of the heavens - he deliberately cut out that precarious middle man, so to speak.
The usefulness of astronomy, moreover, was very limited: mostly for making calendars. For a good review of the development of heliocentrism, see here. The geocentric model sufficed for making calendars; in fact, it seems that only when Ptolemy’s own theory and calculations increasingly suffered from things like copyist errors and the like that real problems for developing calendars developed and thus gave impetus for better astronomy: i.e., better and more accurate calendar making. I also suspect that more advanced navigation also generated increased practical interest.
In all this they are not seeking for theories and causes to account for observed facts, but rather forcing their observations and trying to accommodate them to certain theories and opinions of their own.
– Aristotle, On the heavens II.13.293a
That had always been a problem. Even today we will be inclined to fix and interpret the facts (observations) in accordance with our reinging theories. It would take something radical to justify a new paradigm.
“The theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, forasmuch as some other theory might explain them.”
– Summa theologica, I, q.32, a.1, ad. 2
Good philosophers left open the doors to alternate theories and explanations; however, they were just exceedingly aware of how precarious the enterprise was for reasons Aristotle gave:
"We are far away from the things we are trying to inquire into, not only in place but more so in that we have sensation of exceedingly few of their accidents. … It is good to inquire about these things and so to deepen our understanding, although we have little to go on and we are situated at such a great distance from the attributes of these things. Nevertheless, from contemplating such things nothing [we infer] should seem to be unreasonable, holding them now as fraught with difficulties.
– Aristotle, On the heavens, 2.3.286a5-7 and 2.12.292a14-18
This is the philosophical attitude. Nothing about this impedes theorizing about the heavens. So, whatever the reason geocentrism held sway for as long as it did (in my opinion because it simply sufficed for what men’s practical needs) it was not philosophy per se that did anything to hold heliocentrism back.
Again I recommend Michael Flynn’s blog post here for a fairly good and sometimes entertaining summary of heliocentrism’s development over time.
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tonyrey
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:clapping: Thank you for a superb series of posts!
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