Aristóteles

Aristotle, Greek philosopher, 384-22.

Fishburn and Hughes: "A Greek philosopher whose comprehensive system over a range of theoretical and practical questions from metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics to politics and biology has influenced Western science for more than two thousand years. Though not a philosopher whom Borges quotes extensively, Aristotle's awareness that no one system of thought can encompass the whole of being and serve for the deduction of all truths is an underlying theme in Borges. Aristotle, a pupil of Plato, found himself in disagreement with his master's idealism, according to which the observed world is only a reflection of the real world of ideas. Aristotle stressed the primacy of the particular or individual over the general. Thus in the Categories he distinguished between primary substances, such as particular men or horses, and secondary substances, such as the species or genera to which these particularities belonged. This polarity has characterised human thought through the centuries. Deutsches Requiem:When Borges, quoting an aphorism of Coleridge (TL 337), divides men into Aristotelians or Platonists, he refers to their contrasting world views. The difference between the Aristotelian concept of the particularising nature of reality and the Platonic concept of its abstract, generalising nature as manifested in language is humorously treated by Borges in Tunes the Memorious'. A link between the discussion of the mnemonic system in Aristotle's De Memoria and Borges's story is suggested by R. Sorabji (Aristotle on Memory, London 1972, ch. 2). Developing an argument used by Plato against himself (in his Parmenides), Aristotle further refutes the duality of the Platonic doctrine in his famous argument of the Third Man, who provides a necessary ideal for the combination of the First Man, the archetype, and any Second Man, its visible manifestation, and who in turn will necessitate a Fourth Man, and so on, postulating an infinite regress. This theme, much used by Borges, finds its prime example in 'The Circular Ruins'. The Other Death: the reference to Aristotle's denial that 'it is within God's power to make what once was into something that has never been' can be found in his Nicomachean Ethics (1139b) where he quotes the poet Agathon in support: 'For this alone is lacking even to God, / To make undone things that have once been done.' Averroës’ Search: Aristotle's thought was rekindled in Western Europe by the writings of his Arab commentator Averroes and, through Aquinas, became the dominant influence in medieval theology. See Politics, Rhetoric, Summa Theologiae." (16)