Aristotle 101 - Part III, Three Dimensions of a Person

All bodies have three dimensions: length, width, and height.  But as persons we human beings have at least three other dimensions, or “directions,” in which we can act as human beings: making, doing, and knowing.

1	2	3
Making	Doing	Knowing
We are artists.  (art – anything artificial, or man-made) We make everything from clothes, to paintings, to a large hadron collider.	We are moral and social beings. We achieve, or fail to achieve, happiness by doing right or wrong.  What we do inevitabley puts us in contact with other people.	We are learners. We acquire knowledge about nature, society, ourselves, and even knowledge itself (as we are right now)
"Productive" thinking	"Practical" thinking	"Speculative," or "Theoretical" thinking
Concerned with “the Beautiful”	“the Good”	“the Truth”

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Previous posts in this thread:

Introduction

Part II, Bodies & Attributes

Aristotle 101 - Part II, Bodies & Attributes

Yes, more notes from Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody.
Aristotle recognized that the universe contained more things that could be thought of than simply the physical bodies (things) we observe:  mathematical concepts, fictional characters, ideas and theories for example.  Adler promises to address those after he lays much more of the groundwork: 


When considering physical bodies, Aristotle drew a sharp distinction between 1) a body, and 2) the characteristics it possesses.  A rock, for example, is a body.  Lets say we have a rock that is grey and weigh 5 lbs.  Its color and weight are characteristics that belong to the rock.  The color and weight don't exist, in and of themselves, apart from the rock.  If the stone is blown up, you no longer have the weight "5 lbs."

The stone on the other hand does have existence.  You can change the stone's color by painting it purple, or its weight by grounding it down from 5 lbs. to 2 lbs.  But white has not magically transmuted into purple or 5 lbs. been changed into 2.  It is the rock that changed.  "Physical things, in short, are changeable.  Physical attributes are not changeable; they are the respects in which physical things change" (p.13).


There are three principal respects in which things change:
1) in quanity - weight or size
2) in quality  - shape, color, texture
3) in place    - move from one place to another


The most important attributes are those which do not change as long as that body exists.  These are the attributes that help us in defining something's nature.
Examples:  certain metals conduct electricity; mammals suckle their young; human beings ask questions

Human beings are physical things, bodies.  But we're more than that.  We are rational animals - not just things, but persons.  Aristotle is going to teach us about our three dimensions as bodies, as well as three dimensions unique to us as persons.
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Previous post in this thread:  Aristotle 101 - Introduction

Aristotle 101 - Introduction

Scripture and Theology - I've spent many years reading them and love them.  Philosophy?  I consider myself woefully inadequate, and have been trying to remedy that.  Trying to read someone like Aquinas however is very difficult because I do not have the vocabulary down.  To start making some headway I have been reading an introduction to the thought of one of Aquinas' heroes, the Greek philosopher Aristotle.   This book came recommended to me from Kevin Vost, Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody.  My intent is to post my study notes here on the blog so that you can make use of them too.


Adler's purpose in distilling the philosophy of Aristotle for modern readers is to help us think more clearly.  The beauty of Aristotle in his opinion is the way he used common human experiences and notions common to all of us - thing, body, mind, change, cause, etc. - to reason about our existence.  These commonalities are accessible by all, unlike the scientific experimentation that goes on behind the doors of a laboratory and are only read about by non-specialists such as ourselves.

Categorizing things is where Adler begins his exploration of Aristotle.  Categorizing is so basic to our human existence that it's practiced by children playing "Guess Who?"

The most basic categories into which we divide things (or bodies, to use Aristotle's terminology) are living and non-living.  All living things (bodies) take nourishment, grow, and reproduce while inanimate objects (bodies) do not.  We can subdivide living bodies into the categories of plant or animal.  Granted, there seem to be bodies on the borderline between living and non-living or between plant and animal; some things (bodies) have characteristics that seem to straddle the dividing line. 

That we have borderline cases is actually good though.  Unless our minds recognized the clear-cut distinctions between something like a rock and a rabbit, we wouldn't have to puzzle over the borderline cases.  But the human mind does recognize these larger categories, and that sets us apart from all other animals!  Other animals show intelligence, but they do not ask one another questions about the nature of things and work to answer them.

Our minds recognize these categories because it is able to discern the nature possessed by all the individual things making up that category, or class.  Artistotle discerned five main classes of physical things and placed them in an ascending order.  Each subsequent class possesses the characteristics of that which comes before it in the chain, as well as some new characteristic that sets it apart:

Inanimate Bodies

1) Elementary Bodies - have weight, occupy space, and are composed of only one element.
2) Composite Bodies - have weight, occupy space, and are composed of two or more elements 

Animate Bodies

3) Plants - have all the characteristics of composite bodies, but also take nourishment, grow, and reproduce
4) Animals - do this, as well as move and employ additional powers of sense such as touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell.
5) Human beings - in addition to all that has come before, possess rational thought. 


The major differences indicated above, that separate one class of bodies from another, are essential differences.  All the other differences within a class are superficial, or accidental differences.  People have tried to divide our class into many different sub-classes (race, height, hair color, I.Q., place of origin, etc.), but these are all accidental differences.  Rational thought (asking "what" and "why") is the common property of human nature; it's what sets us apart as a class unto ourselves; all the other differences between us are superficial.