Plato and Aristotle

On Aristotle and Plato

Central to Aristotle 's philosophy is his analysis on the actuality of things based on observation or on sensory perception . In contrast to Plato who believes in the world of forms upon which the essence of worldly objects is grounded , Aristotle believes that the essence of things can be found among the particular objects themselves . That is the very essence of things is to be derived from the actual object itself or in its concreteness to a certain extent since not all objects have the attribute of being

physically concrete . Thus , using Plato 's concept of world of objects , Aristotle 's philosophy centers on such a world and that innate ideas concerning the forms do not have a bearing in the latter 's philosophy

Plato 's theory of forms suggests that the world that we know of and that which we live in is not the real and objective world . This world is where the material objects exist , and the very material objects are not the essences of these very objects . Rather , in the Platonic view , real objects are the forms , such that latter is the very essence of these objects , that it is where objects of the material world are framed upon These forms are not of this material world but exist instead in the world of forms or ideas . Thus , real knowledge for Plato is not the commonsensical notion of knowledge derived from what we directly experience through our senses but is rather the knowledge of the forms To know and understand the forms is to know the very essence of things

Quite on the contrary , Aristotle believes that knowledge can be obtained empirically and that a grasp of the nature of things can be acquired through careful observation of phenomena . The senses of man , then , pose great centrality to Aristotle 's method of arriving at the understanding of objects . Through the use of sensory perception , one can obtain the critical facts which are directly observable from the object and are constitutive of its physical existence . The observation on objects allows one to acquire the basic information about the object . The corresponding sensory experience on the object creates the very core of what seems to be the ultimate components that comprise the very form of the object of the perception . The way the objects represent themselves before the senses is the real way things are as they are . Roughly speaking , the very form of the object is its unique characteristic which is primarily constitutive of its overall existence . The very essence of objects for Aristotle cannot be separated from the object itself and hence , the way to understand the essence of a thing is to experience the object through sensory perception

Aristotle tries to arrive at generalizations out of specific observations . More generally , he attempts at proceeding to the general knowledge on the essences of things from an analysis of specific phenomena . This ascent from particulars to generalizations is considered to be inductive in...