Aristotle needs an Onlinephilosophyclub makeover, please

[OC Sure]

The link on this site for the summary of Aristotle needs many improvements if it is to be factual.

1. "Most people see Aristotle as one of the most influential Greek philosophers, rivaled only by his teacher Plato and Plato's teacher Socrates. These three philosophers took Presocratic Greek philosophy and turned it into the foundations of Western philosophy."

This description throws Aristotle into the same genre as Plato and Socrates, which he was not. Plato and Socrates were not simply Aristotle's adversaries. To say that there was rivalry, says nothing of the conclusion to their discourse and overlooks the fact that Aristotle never philosophized in person with Socrates. Å discussed philosophy with P in person and the end of their rivalry was that A defeated P's claims as nonsense. He proved it to the world in his treatise on First Philosophy (which later scholars inappropriately, due to lack of understanding, labeled as Metaphysics).

The "foundations of western philosophy" are a mess because P is taken seriously. The foundations of western civilization are in order because A is taken seriously. That any foundation were to be built upon opposing constructions is not possible. There is one foundation of reason and one foundation of mysticism. The two are incompatible and therefore not both supporting the same edifice no matter what it is labeled.

2. " In Metaphysics he makes observations about the nature of numbers."

For a site that seeks to promulgate the love of wisdom, this line is either the greatest smear of the most important lecture that Aristotle (or any other) ever taught or it is the greatest exclamation of ignorance. Aristotle's First Philosophy is everyone's first philosophy and it could not be otherwise, any way, any how. This uncontested identification of how to think, that the first principle of all principles is No Contradiction, that universals come to be from particulars by an active process of the human mind and not visa versa, has very, very, very little to do with the study of numbers. It has every thing to do with denying Plato's THEORY of the Forms as false. The denial by Aristotle as Aristotle qua Aristotle is not asserted or opined it is proven by fact.

To ignorantly pass over the most benevolently influential lecture in the entire curriculum of human thought as a fainting glance at numerology is for the hatred of wisdom, not the love of it. This lecture summarizes all 6 of his treatises on Logic into one defining and brilliant demonstration of Logic which is then souly responsible for the scientific revolutions, first in the Middle East's Renaissance and then in Europe's Renaissance. Further, equally as important, and as a necessary derivative, this lecture is primarily, if not solely, responsible for bringing the Church's reign to an end. The discussion of facts brought forth by Aristotle in his First Philosophy (Metaphysics) is what the inquisition was all about. No other method of identifying what is true and what is false has ever done more for tearing down the facade of Platonic authority embodied by such hypocrisies as "organized" religion.

3. "Though he devoted most of his life to metaphysics"

The devotion to his First Philosophy is the application of his First Philosophy to every thing else. He applies his first principle of no contradictions to Ethics and necessarily arrives at "the pursuit of happiness." He applies his first principle of no contradictions to Politics and necessarily arrives at the virtue of the proper state as being dependent upon what is first virtuous and proper to the individual; i. e., his ethics of the pursuit of happiness. His First Philosophy begets his Ethics and his Ethics then begets his Politics. Aristotle qua Aristotle is the application of no contradictions.

4. "Less comically, he and Plato proposed geocentricism, which the Roman Catholic Church thereafter adopted." Anyone familiar with the lectures of Aristotle, familiar with the fact that Aristotle was historian first then philosopher, and familiar with the fact that the heliocentric view of the heavenly bodies was abundantly discussed prior to and preceding his lifetime, can only conclude that this nonsense was an insertion into his lost, transcribed, re-lost, and re-transcribed works over the course of centuries precisely by the Church in an attempt to usurp his reason and to smear his goodness.

5. Lastly, let us make mention to one of the most underestimated and overlooked identifications that Aristotle made regarding economics that our culture has refused to recognize. Not even the "wise" Austrians acknowledge it (because it contradicts their false claims). In Nichomachean Ethics, Book V, Part 5, Aristotle correctly identifies that money is not first a medium of exchange but instead that money comes from productive work. This turns the Austrian school on its ear.

Regarding these 5 points let us let Aristotle summarize:

"For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all." - First Philosophy, Book II, part 2.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

The guide to Aristotle should be on Philopedia, and that is a wiki. On it, you can make any changes you deem appropriate. However, sources are required for all statements.

[Niosim]

I am troubled with an iconic image of Aristotle, especially with the wisdom of his “whole before its parts”.

As I understand, it started with a famous paradox put forward by Zeno in which he states that a distance of any length could be divided into an infinite number of shorter segments and therefore traversing an infinite amount of segments would take an infinite amount of time.
Aristotle, reflecting the thinking of that time didn’t have coherent understanding of infinity and thought that the infinite is imperfect, unfinished and unthinkable rejecting infinite numbers as unnecessary nonsense. Apparently Aristotle’s didn’t have a good answer to Zeno' paradox and responded (as I am concerned) with unintelligible response like - "a length was first and foremost a whole. True, this whole might be divided into an infinite number of parts—nevertheless, the whole was fundamentally irreducible to those parts. In fact, it was only because a distance was a 'whole before its parts' that it could be traversed."

Every middle school student, who pay attention to math, know that 'any length is equal to the sum of its infinite number of shorter segments. Therefore this Aristotle's' response is just a blunder and not an example of wisdom interpreted these days as the 'whole is more than the sum of its parts'
However I am not sure if my judgment (I am a layman) about Aristotle' response is 'way out of the chart', resulted from misunderstanding of Aristotle, or could be considered as plausible.