Integrative Analysis Of Aristotle’S Views On Psychology And Theology

Introduction

Aristotle was the greatest scientist and theorist in the earliest world. He started the education of proper logic, made every segment of psychology rich and made many contributions to science. Many ideas presented by Aristotle are currently out-dated but the important thing about the individual theories is the rational method that is incorporated in his work. In the writing made by Aristotle, the most implicit thing is the boldness that is expressed in every element of society and human life. This provides a suitable object of thinking in the integrative analysis. He presented thoughts like the world is not measured by magic, blind chance or unpredictable deities but the behaviour of the world is in accordance with the rational laws. This provides the human beings to carry out a systematic inquiry into every element of the world and the opinion that people should make both logical reasoning and empirical observations in making conclusions. His work on logical approaches makes him be considered a creator of the vital branch of philosophy.

Psychology

Aristotle perceives psychology to part of science that examines the soul and its characteristic but he believes that the soul is the main principle of life. He focuses on every living being. When compared to the current category of psychology, the psychology presented by Aristotle has a broad scope. He concentrates on the elements of nature, which are a subject that is considered to be outside the concern of psychology in the current contexts of phycology. Using his approach, psychology concentrated on knowing all things that are ensouled and the animate things. He emphasizes that the soul is the core of a natural scientist because the different psychological states like joy, anger, pity, courage, hate, and love involve the body in obvious and central ways. He also emphasizes the intellect or the mind may not be trapped in the body in a similar manner like the other types of state. In this case, he does not accept that the study of the soul in the category of a natural scientist.

Aristotle developed a philosophical theory, hylomorphism, that believes that a being is a result of form and matter. The origin of this hylomorphism is important for two explanations. First, the inception of the theory makes use of two related but distinct perceptions of from. One of the notions is important to the complex that makes form and the second notion is seen as unintentional to its subject. To advance his understanding of the soul and its abilities, he uses these two notions; a soul is an important form while perception contains the attainment of the unintentional forms. The use of this theory in philosophical psychology is strained because the theory was established to deal with puzzles of generation and change, insofar, Aristotle is not intending to see every situation of thought and perception as straightforward when considering the change in a subject. He believes that different type of souls, perceptual, nutritive and intellectual comprise a type of hierarchy. He believes that any creature that can reason has perception; any creature that has perception has the capability to reproduce and take on nutrition, however, the opposite does not hold. In this case, the animals have both nutritive and perceptual faculties; the plants have nutritive soul only while human beings have the three faculties. Lacking the nutritive faculty would make the other activities hard to undertake. He, therefore, concludes that psychology must carry out a thorough investigation in the three area; thinking, perceiving and nutrition. With evidence, he accepts that the three faculties have a core importance. He shoes his willingness to define the hierarchy of life-based on them. He adds other capacities that are desire and imagination and applies them in the context of thinking and his viewpoint of action. However, he does not describe them in a basic way. He perceives imagination as a subsidiary faculty that is combined in different ways with the abilities of perception, nutrition, and thought. Desire occurs concurrently with the sensory faculty and is raised to peak capacity because it performs the function of explaining the purposive behaviour. The conversation of desire and imagination bring interesting queries on how Aristotle understands the different capacities of the soul as combined in amalgamated types.

Theology

Aristotle’s perspective of theology is seen in the way that he sees God, for instance, as the prime mover, the final source for all motion in the world and unmoved universe mover (Buckley, 2015). He sees God as the topmost unbiassed of all the lively progress in the universe from potentiality to reality and from substance to form. He understands that God stands separate from the great chain of beings and yet he is the main cause for all development and motion. He attributes love, mercy, providence, and sympathy to the outside self-contemplation and not to God.

In the philosophy of Aristotle, God has two functions and that is to be the cause of motion and modifications in the world and he is the topmost being, in this case, he gives an illustration of uncontaminated form that happens without being related to the matter. His perspective of understanding God is summarized in two questions, one being the reason people assume that God exists. To answer this question, he establishes one argument from the presence of motion or change. In his statement, he notes that there is the presence of an outside circular motion that is the way the sphere moves around the fixed stars. He also notes that something else makes everything move. Thirdly acknowledges that there must an immeasurable sequence of the cause or a motion that is not moved. He then says having an unmeasurable sequence of motions is not possible. Therefore, the unmoved root of motion is God.

The second question regards the knowledge we have regarding God. To answer this question, he argues that because God is an unmoved cause of motion, he cannot be changed. This means that he is made up like other substances of potentiality and reality. He is all actuality, all form and totally immaterial. He notes that he makes changes to the outside domain of the immovable stars and this change in movement is conveyed to the inner globe through normal mechanical progressions. However, the outside sphere is not moved mechanically by God because is not within the space and he is immaterial. God activities are results of an immaterial being, and thoughts are in themselves an object. Any smaller object would result in dilapidation of His divinity and any object that can be changed would be the thinker can be changed. Therefore, god is seen as perfect being and the doctrine of the perfection of God is demonstrated in the logical conclusion.