Aristotle for Everybody

Part I: Man the Philosophical Animal

The book begins with a discourse on categories. Aristotle was fascinated by categories, and Adler points out how that is important to most of his teachings. Beyond the elementary “animal, vegetable, mineral” distinctions, the first significant claim is that humans are different from other animals in one respect: our ability to “play philosophical games.”

(Note: Covey makes exactly this claim in 7HoHEP to explain mankind’s freedom to choose, and therefore the importance of proactivity and responsibility)

Aristotle also made the distinction between bodies (on one hand) and their characteristics or attributes (on the other). We can consider the attributes of a thing without thinking of the thing itself, but we cannot change them without changing the thing. What’s more – things CAN be changed, whereas attributes cannot; green does not become red, but a green thing can change to a red thing (like a bell pepper, or tomato).

Here, Adler steals my heart once again, with a semantic aside about the meaning of the term “thing.” You see, Aristotle uses the term “thing” interchangeably with the term body (see above) – that is, a physical object. One issue: he ALSO uses “thing” as a counterpart to “person” (as in “person, place or thing”). We do the same thing today, actually. From his other books, I know Adler is a big proponent of being mindful of authors’ wordplay – their intentional use of language in a way that, because it is unusual, must be explained to the audience. Wordplay like this (which Adler calls a “Term”) is a flashing red light, a dead giveaway of on idea that the author feels is of utmost importance.

What is the importance, though?

Human beings are physical things in one sense of the word and not in another when we call them persons, not things. As physical things, as bodies, they have the three dimensions with which we are all acquainted. As persons, the also have three dimensions, which are quite different.

And what are those three dimensions of humanity? Stay tuned to find out...