Jacob Medina’s Reviews > The Philosophy of Aristotle > Status Update

“Truth is the aim of a contemplative study, action that of a practical study; for even if practical men do study the state of a thing, they do not study its cause for its own sake, but for some immediate and relative purpose.”

In order to have real knowledge, we must have knowledge of universals, of causes of the world. The most elemental of all knowledge.

“It is, then, clear that wisdom is a science that is concerned with certain principles and causes.”

“In general, too, what distinguishes the man who has knowledge from the man who does not is the ability to teach, and this is why we regard art as being more truly knowledge than experi-ence: those who possess art can teach, those who do not cannot.”

“Men who have experience know that a thing is so, but not why it is so; those who know why a thing is so also know its cause. This is why we regard the master craftsmen in any field as more deserving of respect, more knowledgeable, and wiser than manual workers: because they know the causes of the things being done;”

“Experience is produced in men from memory, since many memories of the same thing produce the effect of a single experience.”

“For not only when we want to do something, but even when we have no intention of doing anything at all, we prefer sight to practically every other sense. The reason for this is that, more than any other sense, it enables us to get to know things, and it reveals a number of differences between things.”

“All men by nature desire to have knowledge.”

“The struggle with this difficulty is a very large part of the task of metaphysics. The group of treatises that we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics is primarily concerned with this central problem.”