Aristotle further writes (IV 7, 1011 b 23-24):

"In the same way, there can be nothing in the middle between two contradictory judgments, but about one [subject] every definite predicate (hen cath'henos hotioyn) must either be affirmed or denied."

In these words Aristotle formulates another law of formal logic, and this whole chapter of the Metaphysics contains as many as seven arguments in favor of this law of the excluded middle.

Thus, Aristotle deliberately and quite consciously wants to build his philosophy with the help of the methods of formal logic. However, two extremely important conclusions follow from this.

(b) In the first place, Aristotle himself revealed his own cards with regard to the criticism of Plato. Why does he always say that no ideas exist in themselves, but only a thing? The key to this kind of argument lies precisely in the Aristotelian cult of formal logic. Does not Aristotle recognize the existence of ideas in themselves and of the immaterial mind as the "seat of ideas"? Not only does he admit this, but he even goes much further than Plato in this respect, creating, as we have seen, a most detailed and difficult argument for the existence of such a mind. What is the matter? The point is in the cult of formal logic, which requires that a material thing be in itself, and its idea in itself.

On the other hand, why does Aristotle constantly assert that the essences of things must not be outside things, but in the things themselves? In the first place, it contradicts Aristotle's basic doctrine of the immateriality of the cosmic Mind, on which, as we have seen, all the specific properties of this Mind are based. And besides, the same formal logic forced him to deny the essence of things outside the things themselves and to recognize them only within the things themselves. For formal logic cannot understand how the idea of a thing is at once and simultaneously both outside the thing itself and within itself. The essence of a thing, according to Aristotle, is immaterial and immaterial. But in this case it is meaningless to raise the question whether the idea of a thing exists in itself, that is, only outside the thing, or whether it exists only in the thing itself, and in no other place. The dialectician Plato admits the existence of the ideas of things as outside the things themselves (since these ideas are immaterial; and it is as senseless for Plato to find any material or spatial properties in them as in our most ordinary multiplication table), and in the same way in the things themselves (since the idea of a thing comprehends this thing and is the cause of everything that is done with this thing).

Thus, Aristotle's criticism of Plato's ideas is based on the fact that he rejects dialectics in the sense of the doctrine of being, and instead of dialectics he uses the most ordinary formal logic, from the point of view of which, in fact, no opposites are compatible, and, in particular, being is always only different from non-being and can never be identical with it.

Incidentally, does Aristotle, in his criticism of ideas, always have only Plato in mind, and does he not have in mind other Socratics, who, like the Megarians, are fully subject to Aristotle's criticism? At the same time, Aristotle borrowed his criticism of isolated ideas from Plato's Parmenides and sometimes least of all attributed it to Plato. The closest thing to the point is to think that Aristotle, if he had Plato in mind, at any rate those passages from his writings which developed only a theory of ideas in themselves. More precisely, Aristotle, in his constant criticism of ideas, has in mind simply this or that fascination with isolated ideas, wherever they may be. Plato has nothing to do with it, because he himself criticizes the theory of isolated ideas, and in all his dialogues he resolutely regards ideas either as the principle of an ordered cosmos, together with the forces and motions actually acting in it, or, at the very least, as a generative model of the cosmos.

But the piquancy of this whole relation between Plato and Aristotle lies in the fact that Aristotle is not at all a formal logician in the most essential points of his philosophy, but a pure dialectician.

(c) We have already seen above how in the Aristotelian mind its subject and its object, its thought and the object of this thought, are identical. We have already seen how the Aristotelian mind is at once absolute immobility and the absolute cause of all motion. We have already seen how the Aristotelian mind is at the same time immaterial, the "eidos of eidos," and how these eidos or forms are substantial in things and construct their eternal mobility. Now we will say that Aristotle, even where he strenuously pursues his formal-logical point of view, now and then strays into dialectics and even into the substantial representation of the ideal, which, from his point of view, it would seem, should be only material. We do not have the opportunity to cite here all the enormous material in Aristotle, which clearly testifies to this, and we will confine ourselves here to giving only a few examples.

(d) In the Metaphysics (XII-10) the question is immediately raised whether the first good is separated from everything or is not separated and is its order, or whether the good is both together (1075a11-13). Already here Aristotle suggests that it is possible to speak of the good as something independent and separate from things in a purely Platonic way. Aristotle's thought is quite inclined towards the good, understood in isolation, in the manner of Plato, although the examples he adduces have a certain banality (1075a14-23):

"For [in the case of the existence of good, both outside things and in themselves] and in order, good, and it is also the leader, and the latter is even more likely: for he does not exist by order, but order by virtue of it. And everything is harmonized in a certain way [one with another], but not in the same way, both floating creatures, and flying creatures, and plants; And it is not that one has no relation to the other, but there is such a relation. For everything here is harmonious, directed towards the same goal, but as it happens in a house, where free people are least of all supposed to do what happens, but, on the contrary, their actions - all or most - are ordered, while among slaves and animals there is little to do with the common, and for the most part their actions are accidental: this is the beginning of everyone's nature."

Here, therefore, Aristotle quite definitely goes for the transcendental good, although, being a representative of formal-logical metaphysics, he cannot formulate it as a unity of opposites.

However, Aristotle's philosophical insight still goes so far that it seems to him absurd to deduce everything from disconnected opposites. At this point, it would seem that he should speak of the good as an absolutely transcendental principle. He thinks so. But formal logic, from the point of view of which he tries to consider all being, does not allow him to turn this into an independent dialectical theory.