We are halfway through Aubry’s discussion of Metaphysics book Lambda, chapter 7. From this point, she says that the text becomes less of an argument, and more rhetorical and descriptive. Aristotle compares the “way of life” (diagoge) of the divine with “ours”. His discussion here largely follows the much more developed one in book X of the Nicomachean Ethics. Toward the end of Aubry’s section, she also critically scrutinizes the more particular basis of claims that the first cause of book Lambda is not only a final cause but also an efficient cause.
(Though it is much longer than this post, for greater insight and a fuller context on Aristotle’s view of this relation between the human and the divine, I would highly recommend reviewing Ethics book X in The Goal of Human Life.)
Now “it is no longer only a question of movable and perishable substances, but more concretely, and for the first time, of the human subject” (Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 189, my translation throughout).
“From the outset, the divine diagoge is characterized by comparison with the human condition, as being ‘like the best’ that is given to us, but also by opposition to it, since what is accessible to us ‘for a brief period of time’, mikron khronon, is for god continuously, aei [always]. The same opposition is found below, between the happy state god enjoys always, aei, but we enjoy only sometimes, pote” (ibid).
She quotes Aristotle, “The [divine] act is pleasure” (ibid). Plato in the Philebus suggests that the divine has a neutral state, but for Aristotle “god is the only living thing that at the same time has access to the most pure pleasure and always knows its enjoyment. If the human also has access to the pleasure of contemplation, she does not know it in a continuous enjoyment, for she is composed of two natures such that each for the other is against nature” (p. 190).
If I may be allowed a shallow comparison, this theme of divine pleasure makes me liken the condition of thought thinking itself to that of a blissful Buddha.
“In book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics, the continuity of divine pleasure is referred to the simplicity of the divine nature which, because nothing is mixed with it or hinders it, always exercises the same activity and finds in it a complete pleasure. The text of Lambda itself is content to associate pleasure and energeia. And where one might expect an exploration of the contrast between the transience of human pleasure and the perpetuity of divine pleasure, the next proposition proceeds on the contrary to underline their similarity. More precisely, the fact that the divine act is pleasure is given as the cause (dia touto [through this]) of the fact that for us every act is pleasure, whether it is a matter of walking, of sensation, or of thinking” (ibid, emphasis in original).
“We can see here a first illustration of the mode of action of the unmoved final cause as it has been determined above: we have immanent ends and aim at our own acts; it remains that through the latter, we also aim at the continuity and indeed the pleasure that attach par excellence to the divine act” (ibid).
“The following lines do no more than deploy the identity between act and pleasure, in formulating the conditions that make a certain act (thought or contemplation) pleasant. That the divine act indeed consists in thought is presupposed (or simply induced from the pleasant character of contemplation for us): above, the god has been assimilated to the intelligible, or to the noeton, but not to thought, noesis. For the act of thought to be pleasure, it is necessary that it be in-act, that is to say that intelligence is in effective possession of the intelligible” (pp. 190-191, emphasis in original).
“[T]hought in itself is thought of the best in itself, from which we deduce that the divine theoria [contemplation] is not only more agreeable, ediston, but also the best, ariston” (p. 191).
(Here again we are reminded how extremely different this is from modern notions of thought as “value free”, which seems to assume that all values are prejudices. We do not have to suppress questions of value in order to be fair and objective. Objectivity and fairness in the real world involve openness, but not a completely relativistic free-for-all. Fairness and objectivity are themselves values.)
“After the identity between act and pleasure, we pose that between act and life, zoe. This time, it is nonetheless clear that this identity only applies to one particular act: that of intelligence. It seems on the other hand that it applies to every act of intelligence, whether it be human or divine. Of the divine act, insofar as it is energeia kath autein [act directed toward itself], we say nonetheless that it is not simply life, but ‘the best life, and eternal'” (p. 191).
I was a little surprised that she says only the act of intelligence is to be identified with life. But she does not say that only the act of intelligence presupposes life, but rather that it is the only one to be strictly identified with it. Life for Aristotle is not reducible to some bare fact like a heartbeat; it involves purpose, and the best realization of purposes involves intelligence. That this applies to the human is no surprise. And if we accept that there is meaningful sense to thought eternally thinking itself, it is also no surprise that for Aristotle this would be the best life.
“It appears nonetheless that in the passage, [energeia] no longer designates a way of being but a way of acting: we no longer say that god is in act, but that god has an act. If this distinction between act and activity is at work, the text nonetheless invites us to surpass it: the activity of god in effect comes down to its character of being in-act. Thus, if god’s activity is thought, and self-thinking, this is, as Lambda 9 will make precise, because god is the good; and if the act is continuous, this is because as act without power, god is without movement or change. The notion of life, zoe, intervenes precisely at the junction of the ontological sense and the practical sense of energeia, serving thus to name the activity of that which is act by itself” (ibid, emphasis in original).
“More decisive seems to be the reiterated distinction between the continuous activity of being in-act, and the discontinuous activity of beings mixed from act and in-potentiality. The latter (or, at least, ‘we’) have access to an activity of the same nature as that of the divine: thought, pleasure, and life. What makes the difference between the theos and ‘us’, is indeed not the nature of the activity, but its duration (continuous/discontinuous) and its value (the activity of god is the best, and indeed also the most pleasant” (ibid).
“This characterization initiates the transition from the ontological approach to the prime mover, governed by the notion of energeia, to [Aristotle’s] axiological approach, governed by the notion of the good, which energeia in its most determinate sense nonetheless also includes. Against the Pythagoreans and [Plato’s successor] Speusippus, we thus repeat that the best and the most beautiful are arkhe [principles or sources]” (p. 192).
“From here the question is posed whether dunamis, more than a mode of being, designates here a mode of action: indeed whether the final cause must also be conceived as an efficient cause. The fact is that we have seen that the schema of efficiency, such as it is expounded notably in On Generation and Corruption, presupposes that the agent is in-act. Further, this schema is extended so as to be applicable to impassible and incorruptible realities: in their case, there can be action without reciprocal contact (they touch without being touched, move [other things] without being moved); and insofar as they are without matter, they are not affected by the action they exercise (the medical art heals without being healed)” (p. 193).
“According to this enlarged model, efficiency — and indeed also the dunamis poietike [power to do or make] seems to be compatible with actuality, but also with immobility, immateriality, and impassibility. The question nonetheless remains whether it is also compatible with the final cause” (ibid).
Previously, she pointed out that book VIII of the Physics does once apply the phrase dynamis apeiron [unlimited power] to the prime mover. This is indeed the passage appealed to by those who want to make the prime mover an efficient cause. The basis for this appeal is that Lambda 7 does briefly recall the argument of Physics VIII that the prime mover is without magnitude or parts.
But she has explained that in Physics VIII, what she calls the ontological sense of dynamis is completely missing, and the context is a long polemic against the Platonic notion of self-motion. Along with the fact that any reference to unlimited power is completely absent from the Metaphysics, and that the “unlimited” power of the prime mover in Physics VIII is not said to be unlimited in all respects but only in relation to time, she argues that this in no way intended to undo Aristotle’s many consistent affirmations that the first cause is pure act without power. This seems entirely reasonable to me.
“That the prime mover is a final cause, [the first half of] Lambda 7 has clearly established. To this must be added that the ontological sense of dunamis and energeia mobilized by the argument of Lambda 6 implies not only… that energeia is anterior to dunamis, but that it is anterior as end” (ibid, emphasis in original).
“Otherwise said… the final character of the causality of the prime mover is already posed, even in ontology, via the exploration carried out in Theta 8 of the asymmetrical relation between energeia and dunamis. As a result, the problem is not whether the prime mover is an efficient cause more than a final cause, but whether it can even be an efficient cause at the same time as it is a final cause. For on this point On Generation and Corruption is explicit: ‘to d’ou heneka ou poietikon‘, ‘the final cause is not efficient’. Thus ‘health is not efficient, except in a metaphorical sense’, that is to say in the sense in which, insofar as it is an end, it sets off an action that aims at it, but in which it is not itself the agent (it is not health that cures, but the medicine or the remedy). In the same way, we can say of the end that it moves [other things]; but we must not confuse that which moves [other things], kinoun, with that which does, poiein, or with the efficient cause as principle of movement, arkhe kineseos: if it is true that the efficient is also a mover, it is not true that every mover is efficient” (pp. 193-194, emphasis in original).
For this last, she cites On Generation and Corruption again.
“In the same way that the ontological sense of dunamis is incompatible with the characterization of the prime mover as pure energeia, its kinetic sense is incompatible with its characterization as a final cause” (p. 194).
Next in this series: Eternal Sensibles
The Postmodern Peripatetic 