Topics (or "Topica") is a text by Aristotle (sculpture) Aristotle ( Greek: Αριστοτέλης Aristotelēs) ( 384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. Along with Plato, he is often considered to be one of the two most influential philosophers in Western thought. He...
Aristotle.
Aristotle argues with some justification that all change and generation require the existence of something complex: when a statue comes to be from a lump of bronze, there is some continuing subject, the bronze, and something it comes to acquire, its new form.
So Aristotle contends: “It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one.
Aristotle does not here eschew questions concerning the unity of soul and body as meaningless; rather, he seems, in a deflationary vein, to suggest that they are readily answered or somehow unimportant.
Topics for constructing arguments for and against something, or for the choice of an action, constitute the generally accepted opinions (endoxa) for these are truly common to all in that everyone must know them to define something and hence conduct a discussion with others.
Aristotle continues by saying that one should direct one's argument or discussion to showing that something is good, for this is what determines the choice of action.
From this, Aristotle concludes that when a thing's exercise is its function, this exercise is better than the state (even though he does not explain here, this is because the second kind of function is the end, and the end is the best since everything is chosen for its sake).
Feeds |
Contact