Back to the philosophy timeline

Thinker profile

Aristotle

Develops act and potency, substance, causality, virtue ethics, and philosophical arguments from motion and nature.

Dates

384-322 BC

Tradition

Classical Greek

Core profile

Develops act and potency, substance, causality, virtue ethics, and philosophical arguments from motion and nature.

Concepts to watch

Act and potencyfour causesvirtue

How to study this thinker

  1. 1Start with the basic problem this thinker is trying to solve.
  2. 2Name the concepts Aquinas receives, corrects, or resists.
  3. 3Return to Aquinas and ask how the borrowed insight is reordered.

Aquinas connection

Influence on Aquinas

Aristotle gives Aquinas much of his philosophical grammar: act and potency, form and matter, the four causes, and virtue as habit.

Aquinas responds

Aquinas uses Aristotle without treating him as final authority, correcting him through creation, providence, and Christian doctrine.

Adjacent profiles

Previous thinkerPlatoTreats intelligible forms, participation, and ordered ascent toward the good as central philosophical tasks.Next thinkerAugustineJoins Platonist interiority with Christian doctrines of grace, illumination, evil as privation, and the restless desire for God.