Aristotle and Ancient Educational IdealsDavidson, Thomas
Philosophy
Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals
Davidson, Thomas
Aristotle, 384 BC-322 BC; Education, Greek
Instead of appealing, like Plato, to the individual consciousness, and
trying to discover ultimate truth by bringing its data into harmony
among themselves, Aristotle appeals to the historic consciousness, and
endeavors to find truth by harmonizing and complementing its data
through a further appeal to the outer world, in which these data are
realized. He maintains that the truths reached by the dialectic process
are merely formal, and therefore empty,--useless in practice, until they
have been filled by experience from the storehouse of nature. In
consequence of this changed attitude, he sets aside the dialectic
process, and substitutes for it the _Method of Induction_, which he was
the first man in the world to comprehend, expound, and apply, becoming
thus the father of all true science. And he makes a more extensive use
of induction than any other man since his time, applying it in a field
in which even now it is hardly supposed to yield any results, the field
of the common consciousness. Indeed, he everywhere begins his search for
concrete truth by examining the historic consciousness, and, having, by
a process of induction, discovered and generalized its contents, he
turns with these to nature and, by a second induction, corrects,
completes, and harmonizes them. We might express this in modern
language, by saying that his whole endeavor is to correct and supplement
the imperfect human consciousness by a continual appeal to the divine
consciousness, _as manifested in the world_. It is the error of modern
investigators that they employ only one-half of the inductive method,
the objective, and either omit altogether the subjective, or else, like
Plato, apply it only to the individual consciousness. Hence come the
widely divergent results which still meet us in so many of the sciences,
in Politics, Psychology, etc., hence the fact that a great deal of
science, instead of correcting, widening, and harmonizing the common
consciousness, stands altogether apart from it, or even in direct
opposition to it. The man who writes a treatise on Psychology, or on the
Soul, without troubling himself to discover what "Soul" means in the
general consciousness of mankind, and perhaps setting out with an
altogether individual notion of it, can hardly look for any other
result. Aristotle, true to his method of induction, devotes one entire
book of his _Psychology_ to finding out what "Soul" means in the
historic consciousness, unreflective as well as reflective. Then, with
this meaning, he goes to nature, seeks by induction to discover what
she has to say about it, and abides by her reply. Hence it is that his
thought has laid hold upon the world, and influenced it in practical
ways, as no other man's thought has ever done. Hence it is that, of all
ancient men, he is the one before whom the modern scientist bows with
respect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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