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    On Generation and Corruption: With linked Table of Contents
    On Generation and Corruption: With linked Table of Contents
    On Generation and Corruption: With linked Table of Contents
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    On Generation and Corruption: With linked Table of Contents

    By Aristotle

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    OUR next task is to study coming-to-be and passing-away. We are to distinguish the causes, and to state the definitions, of these processes considered in general-as changes predicable uniformly of all the things that come-to-be and pass-away by nature. Further, we are to study growth and 'alteration'. We must inquire what each of them is; and whether 'alteration' is to be identified with coming-to-be, or whether to these different names there correspond two separate processes with distinct natures.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateNov 27, 2015
    ISBN9781515402749
    On Generation and Corruption: With linked Table of Contents
    Author

    Aristotle

    Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a philosopher and writer from the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His work provides the intellectual methodology of most European-centred civilization, influencing the fundamental forms of all knowledge. Taught by Plato, he wrote on many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, philosophy, politics and the arts.

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    • 2/5
      This was a fairly standard text of Plato. Nothing really stood out that much to me.
    • 4/5
      Aristotle's Politics discusses the different ways to manage a state, arguing in favour of those he considers best. Politics is not a complete work: some chapters end abruptly and discussions promised to be included are missing. Aristotle being a student of Plato shares much of his thought, though differs in places and criticises some aspects of The Republic.What The Politics does have in common with The Republic is the bias towards an aristocratic form of government, and a dislike of democracy, not aristocracy as it exists today, but in the ancient Greek sense of the word – the people with the most intellectual and moral merit being singled out and put in charge of the state, with those below them being ruled over for their own good. This system is quite different from the modern Western political system, in that the government would not be voted in, and the average person with no expertise in politics would have little influence on political goings on, which makes sense to me. However, Aristotle notes the danger of such a system, in that if it goes wrong there is the risk of it becoming much worse than the democratic system when it goes wrong, as power is held in the hands of the few; even though when at its best it is a more efficient system than democracy at its best. Plato and Aristotle both split their state up into several classes, each have the lowest class being the agricultural, manual labour, shopkeepers and craftspeople, the next layer up being the military and police, and the highest layer being the guardians or government, the intellectuals and philosophers. Aristotle differs in his assignment of these roles from Plato, and I think he makes a mistake. Plato has the cleverest people occupying the top tier and being educated the most, and so on, while Aristotle has the least able in the lowest class, and the rest in the military class between the ages of 21 and 50 (after a general education is complete), and then has them move to the higher positions when they reach an age not suited to intense physical exertion. This denies the specialisation of the individual and the state which Plato favours, and I think is less ideal, but Aristotle opposes Plato's views more reasonably on the matter of family unity, that wives and children should not be held in common, and that the family is best in the traditional form. Aristotle also denies land ownership to those in the lowest class, which Plato does not, and I don't think this would work, both limit the amount of land allowed to each citizen though, with those having the most land only being allowed to posses for example five times more than those with the lowest, in order to reduce poverty.Overall I don't like The Politics as much as The Republic, partly because it does not feel like a complete work, both in content and vision, but it is worth reading for the bits it adds that The Republic gets wrong. Both books would be disagreeable to the modern leftist, they oppose liberty for the sake of liberty, for the reason that the uneducated do not know what they want; their notion of equality is “proportionate equality” - equality for equals, not equality for everyone, and their state is controlling and elitist. Nevertheless, despite the fact that such systems as advocated would meet disapproval today, I don't think they are bad systems per se, and if a combination of the system suggested here, and that suggested in the Republic were to used, it could theoretically operate as well as a democratic system, the problem being in the practicalities more than in the theory. But, as both say, when a democracy goes wrong, it never goes as wrong as the other types of system. When a monarchy goes wrong it turns into a tyranny, and when an aristocracy goes wrong it turns into an oligarchy, and more people end up suffering than when a democracy goes wrong. Democracy is the safe option, Aristotle thinks, but it does not have the potential for perfection that the state controlled solely by the most able has, and this is the most prominent idea behind this and The Republic.
    • 3/5
      A decent reference for Aristotle's works on government.
    • 4/5
      Here we see the full consideration of whether things come-to-be and pass-away or are altered from some other state. He refutes the previous assertion by Empodocles that the 4 elements are equal yet not combined. He claims and subsequent support that substance is made of real elements which at some point cannot be further divided, that these elements are combined, and that they are necessary for existence and cyclical in process.
    • 1/5
      Confusing - translation's fault? Or is it just because of the missing parts? Anyway, I couldn't really understand how Aristotle's thoughts could leave such a deep mark in our tradition. Maybe I should read some other book of his?

    Book preview

    On Generation and Corruption - Aristotle

    On Generation and Corruption

    by Aristotle

    Translated by H. H. Joachim

    ©2007 Wilder Publications

    This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.

    All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

    A & D Publishing

    PO Box 3005

    Radford VA 24143-3005

    www.wilderpublications.com

    ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-0274-9

    Table of Contents

    Book I

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    7

    8

    9

    10

    Book II

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    7

    8

    9

    10

    11

    Book I

    1

    OUR next task is to study coming-to-be and passing-away. We are to distinguish the causes, and to state the definitions, of these processes considered in general-as changes predicable uniformly of all the things that come-to-be and pass-away by nature. Further, we are to study growth and ‘alteration’. We must inquire what each of them is; and whether ‘alteration’ is to be identified with coming-to-be, or whether to these different names there correspond two separate processes with distinct natures.

    On this question, indeed, the early philosophers are divided. Some of them assert that the so-called ‘unqualified coming-to-be’ is ‘alteration’, while others maintain that ‘alteration’ and coming-to-be are distinct. For those who say that the universe is one something (i.e. those who generate all things out of one thing) are bound to assert that coming-to-be is ‘alteration’, and that whatever ‘comes-to-be’ in the proper sense of the term is ‘being altered’: but those who make the matter of things more than one must distinguish coming-to-be from ‘alteration’. To this latter class belong Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus. And yet Anaxagoras himself failed to understand his own utterance. He says, at all events, that coming-to-be and passing-away are the same as ‘being altered’:’ yet, in common with other thinkers, he affirms that the elements are many. Thus Empedocles holds that the corporeal elements are four, while all the elements-including those which initiate movement-are six in number; whereas Anaxagoras agrees with Leucippus and Democritus that the elements are infinite.

    (Anaxagoras posits as elements the ‘homoeomeries’, viz. bone, flesh, marrow, and everything else which is such that part and whole are the same in name and nature; while Democritus and Leucippus say that there are indivisible bodies, infinite both in number and in the varieties of their shapes, of which everything else is composed-the compounds differing one from another according to the shapes, ‘positions’, and ‘groupings’ of their constituents.)

    For the views of the school of Anaxagoras seem diametrically opposed to those of the followers of Empedocles. Empedocles says that Fire, Water, Air, and Earth are four elements, and are thus ‘simple’ rather than flesh, bone, and bodies which, like these, are ‘homoeomeries’. But the followers of Anaxagoras regard the ‘homoeomeries’ as ‘simple’ and elements, whilst they affirm that Earth, Fire, Water, and Air are composite; for each of these is (according to them) a ‘common seminary’ of all the ‘homoeomeries’.

    Those, then, who construct all things out of a single element, must maintain that coming-to-be and passing-away are ‘alteration’. For they must affirm that the underlying something always remains identical and one; and change of such a substratum is what we call ‘altering’ Those, on the other hand, who make the ultimate kinds of things more than one, must maintain that ‘alteration’ is distinct from coming-to-be: for coming-to-be and passing-away result from the consilience and the dissolution of the many kinds. That is why Empedocles too uses language to this effect, when he says ‘There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only a mingling and a divorce of what has been mingled’. Thus it is clear (i) that to describe coming-to-be and passing-away in these terms is in accordance with their fundamental assumption, and (ii) that they do in fact so describe them: nevertheless, they too must recognize ‘alteration’ as a fact distinct from coming to-be, though it is impossible for them to do so consistently with what they say.

    That we are right in this criticism is easy to perceive. For ‘alteration’ is a fact of observation. While the substance of the thing remains unchanged, we see it ‘altering’ just as we see in it the changes of magnitude called ‘growth’ and ‘diminution’. Nevertheless, the statements of those who posit more ‘original reals’ than one make ‘alteration’ impossible. For ‘alteration, as we assert, takes place in respect to certain qualities: and these qualities (I mean, e.g. hot-cold, white-black, dry-moist, soft-hard, and so forth) are, all of them, differences characterizing the ‘elements’. The actual words of Empedocles may be quoted in illustration

    The sun everywhere bright to see, and hot,

    The rain everywhere dark and cold;

    and he distinctively characterizes his remaining elements in a similar manner. Since, therefore, it is not possible for Fire to become Water, or Water to become Earth, neither will it be possible for anything white to become black, or anything soft to become hard; and the same argument applies to all the other qualities. Yet this is what ‘alteration’ essentially is.

    It follows, as an obvious corollary, that a single matter must always be assumed as underlying the contrary ‘poles’ of any change whether change of place, or growth and diminution, or ‘alteration’; further, that the being of this matter and the being of ‘alteration’ stand and fall together. For if the change is ‘alteration’, then the substratum is a single element; i.e. all things which admit of change into one another have a single matter. And, conversely, if the substratum of the changing things is one, there is ‘alteration’.

    Empedocles, indeed, seems to contradict his own statements as well as the observed facts. For he denies that any one of his elements comes-to-be out of any other, insisting on the contrary that they are the things out of which everything else comes-to-be; and yet (having brought the entirety of existing things, except Strife, together into one) he maintains, simultaneously with this denial, that each thing once more comes-to-be out of the One. Hence it was clearly out of a One that this came-to-be Water, and that Fire, various portions of it being separated off by certain characteristic differences or qualities-as indeed he calls the sun ‘white and hot’, and the earth ‘heavy and hard’. If, therefore, these characteristic differences be taken away (for they can be taken away, since they came-to-be), it will clearly be inevitable for Earth to come to-be out of Water and Water out of Earth, and for each of the other elements to undergo a similar transformation-not only then, but also now-if, and because, they change their qualities. And, to judge by what he says, the qualities are such that they can be ‘attached’ to things and can again be ‘separated’ from them, especially since Strife and Love are still fighting with one another for the mastery. It was owing to this same conflict that the elements were generated from a One at the former period. I say ‘generated’, for presumably Fire, Earth, and Water had no distinctive existence at all while merged in one.

    There is another obscurity in the theory Empedocles. Are we to regard the One as his ‘original real’? Or is it the Many-i.e. Fire and Earth, and the bodies co-ordinate with these? For the One is an ‘element’ in so far as it underlies the process as matter-as that out of which Earth and Fire come-to-be through a change of qualities due to ‘the motion’. On the other hand, in

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