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A BRIEF HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY – The Substantial Unity of Plato and Aristotle

GREEK PHILOSOPHY – II. RATIONALISM

§ 14 – Aristotle

The Substantial Unity of Plato and Aristotle

The divergences that have been pointed out between Aristotle and Plato need not blind us to the fact that they are, in spite of those divergences, in substantial harmony. This appears immediately if they be compared with one who is fundamentally opposed to either, i.e., whose first principle is a purely material principle, whether water, air, fire, atom (ancient or modern), or all these, or any number of them together,—thus viewed, Plato and Aristotle are at one, for they are both completely committed to the view that spirit, and spirit only, is absolute. They do not, it is true, entirely get rid of «matter,» but treat it as a kind of negative function of spirit, or form; to Aristotle matter is passive reason in the world; to Plato it is a kind of «spurious reason». The entire weight of Plato’s teaching was, as we have already seen, thrown into the scale in support of the thesis that the real is rational and the rational is real, and Aristotle, with many criticisms and demurrings, it is true, in regard to secondary matters, simply added to Plato’s thought the immense weight of his own. In fact, probably no other two of the world’s master-thinkers are in such substantial agreement as these two. With such solidarity of thought throughout the whole history of human speculative thought, the philosophical mind of the world would be really one, as indeed it ideally is. Philosophy in itself and philosophy in its history would be all but identical.