Aiste Celkyte - An Analysis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Aiste Celkyte

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Aristotles Metaphysics is a collection of essays on a wide range of topics, almostcertainly never put together by Aristotle himself. This helps to explain why thematerial covers such a very wide range of material, from meaning tomathematics, from logical sequences to religion. It includes very usefultreatments of the nature of axioms (or primary truths) such as the law ofnon-contradiction and the laws of logic.

In looking at these, Aristotle provides sustained guides to clear thinking aswould be evidenced in analysis and evaluation of arguments and theproduction of good reasoning. He also provides some valuable discussion ofinterpretation by looking at homonyms (as in this knife is sharp and this noteis sharp) and what he calls paronyms, which lie between homonyms andsynonyms: an example is the word healthy. Metaphysics is also useful to studyfor its frequent examples of hypothetical reasoning, including their use inmathematics (if x, then y) and science (if a moves b, then b moves c..., sowhat moves a?). In addition, we find Aristotle analysing Platos arguments andsubjecting them to sustained (critical) evaluation. While Metaphysics showsAristotle in many well-developed critical thinking modes, it is first andforemost a work of exquisite reasoning, creating strong arguments thatcontinue to be debated and deployed today, nearly 2500 years after they werewritten.

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in what is present-day Macedonia. At theage of 17, he moved to Athens in Greece to begin an education inphilosophy under Plato, one of the founders of European philosophy, at hisrenowned Academy. On Platos death in 347 BCE, Aristotle moved backto Macedonia to tutor the young Alexander the Great. But in 335 BCE hereturned to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum. Politicalunrest forced Aristotle to leave Athens again in 322 BCE, and he diedshortly afterwards on the island of Euboea.

Dr Aiste Celkyte is a researcher specialising in ancient philosophy. She iscurrently a postdoctoral researcher at Yonsei University in South Korea.