The purpose that the object is trying to achieve is somehow inside the object already
without knowing. For example; a cow’s purpose of living is to be a fully-grown cow
but if it dies young, it doesn’t achieve it’s potential. He believe everything had an
order, nothing came randomly. The reason of why a living thing may not achieve its
purpose would be it’s final cause from the Unmoved Mover, God.
Everything that Aristotle did was based on observation. He was meticulous in
his interpretation in what he had seen and observed by using all his senses to come up
with a definite conclusion that everyone would believe.
Many people have problems believing his theory as you had to believe quite
strongly in God as Aristotle believed he was the creator of everything. Aristotle did
not question, where creation was created because he already thought he knew. It
wasn’t a question of weather he believed or not because to him God is pure
knowledge. Aristotle’s idea of God was one of an unchanging, ultimate designer, who
was static and eternal, but impassive. ‘Only God, who exists as form without matter is
perfect’.
However, Aristotle’s theory is seen to be a lot more to do with common sense
compared to Plato’s, which is a lot more to do with interpretation. Aristotle
considered Plato’s theory as completely wrong. This was because Aristotle saw no
reality in Plato’s theory at all.
Aristotle saw many things wrong with Plato’s theory such as; he thought it had
no static, it seemed powerless. This was mainly because Aristotle looked at change in
situations. To him there must be some sort of change to the theory of the Forms.
Also, Aristotle couldn’t see how the existence of the forms explained how we
gained knowledge in the first place. He didn’t understand how not knowing what we
already know brings us knowledge because we didn’t know it before.
Aristotle also disagreed with Plato’s theory because the theory of the forms did not explain how individual objects of nature existed. Plato stated things as a whole as he didn’t look into depth of different individuality.
Another disagreement that Aristotle made was that he could never just ‘draw the line’ somewhere with what was the ideal. There was always something better than what was thought to be the best. For example; beauty and truth were ideal according to Plato but, how ideal can you get?
The reason why Aristotle and Plato had so many disagreements was because they were really talking about completely separate ideas. Plato’s theory was based upon situations such as; how justice is known throughout the world? No-one decided upon particular rules to follow. Whereas Aristotle was trying to understand what reality really is.
Aristotle’s theory was much more convincing as many people can understand more clearly where he got his ideas from but Plato’s ideas are quite different to what people would expect to hear.
