Aristotle's Four Causes, Ethics, and the Social Being

Aristotle's Four Causes

Because it's the beginning that proceeds an individual being described by four causes:

• Material cause: It is the substratum of which things are made.
• Formal cause: It is the shape and operation of a quality.
• Efficient cause: It is the maker of the instrument and the process by which there is one thing.
• Final cause: The purpose of a thing.

It's not intended to be exclusive of artificial things produced by man. This attribution of a purpose to everything that occurs in nature is called teleologism. Aristotle also says that talks aimed at productive knowledge and practical knowledge have a purpose outside themselves.

Happiness and the Supreme Good

In his Ethics, Aristotle says that the good is the purpose of our action on our practice, and happiness is the supreme good of man. This does not mean happiness as euphoric joy, but flourishing (Greek eudaimonia). Like everything in nature, there is purpose, and since man is part of nature, each of these communities tends to an end: the end of the household is basic needs and food.

Man acts, and action seeks the good; the order of our action is happiness. We all agree we want happiness, but not all reach it the same way. Some identify it with pleasure and call a good life a voluptuous life. But all are wrong because, for Aristotle, happiness is not about doing this particular thing or another; anything can make us happy, always, if we get it right. Happiness is to fulfill any function effectively. Politically, the citizen represents the fulfillment and greatest happiness of human nature. It is capable of the best and biggest; the best that can be in life is a people that is free, sane, and adult.

Man as a Social Being

Aristotle says that man is a social being; he who lives alone is a beast or a god, but not a man. The domestic community is to meet basic needs, living in heterogeneous elements in terms of age, sex, etc. This element, the rector of the household, is a free man, and the free adult male homeowner is naturally superior to women and children. As a social being, man lives not only in the domestic community but also in the city with men who speak the language of right and wrong.

Justice is very important for Aristotle, but also the lasting of the length of just ordering. Aristotle worries as much as inequality; society is made up of extremes and is eliminated by encouraging the middle class.