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The Place Of Man In Aristotle: The Basis Of Man’s Life Crisis
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According to Enoch Stumpf, Anaxagoras in addition brought forward, the
phenomenon of ‘nous’ (the mind as that responsible for the actualization
of matter by form, thus he maintains that the nature of reality is best
understood as consisting mind and matter.[9] Accordingly, Aristotle
later expressed a double evaluation of his views.
Furthermore, the
materialists came to fore, exalting the material existence of all
things. Socrates in contrast emerged as a spiritualist in defense of the
soul and Plato asserted man as this soul, separating apart the two
worlds of reality and ideas, hence the emergence of his dualism as the
case may be. However, this psychological dualism was inherited by the
immediate successor, Aristotle, who sought to reconcile them. Thus, the
problem of balance and relation between matter and form (body and soul)
is seen scattered all over his
fragments.
For instance, the whole of his ethical, political, metaphysical
treatises as well as his scientific writings incidentally bear some
elements of this problem of his major concern. Biologically, Aristotle
proceeded with the analysis of nature. According to him the term,
‘phusis’, means essence or form in general.[10] Nature means for him ‘a
formed or active principle of movement and rest in corporeal
reality’.[11] The Physics BK II of Aristotle was strictly dedicated to
the explanation, justification and above all the articulation of the
notion of nature as ‘an intrinsic principle of movement’[12].
Considerably, to act intelligently is to act in accordance with rational
nature, while to act instinctively is to act in congruence with the
animal nature.
In the first book of De Anima, Aristotle speaks of the
soul as the entelechy or act of the body that possesses life in
potency. In the same manner and within history of psychology
appropriate to the dichotomized notions of philosophers on the soul, he
observes thus:
… the most far-reaching difference is that between the
philosopher who regard the elements as corporeal and those who regard
them as incorporeal.[13]
In a bid to reconcile them Aristotle
portrayed soul as the actuality of the body which cannot be
distinguished from it, though some parts are separable for him, since
they are precisely not the realizations of the body.
1.3 The Definition of Man
Having
seen previously the stand, which Aristotle takes on man, as a different
nature among other nature, can we now at this point try some sense of
definition? Generally, the question should be what is man, (Was ist der
mensch), but in Aristotelian concept of man, it goes thus: who is man,
(was ist der mensch). However, this question is not only onerous to man
but also most rancorous to him, since he evades approaching it.
Inadvertently, ‘man is a being so vast, so could, so multiform, that
every definition demonstrates itself as too limited. Man’s aspects are
too numerous’16.
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