Tag: Aristotle's Metaphysics

Aristotle on the Platonic Good

“Philosophy begins with wonder not that there are things rather than not, but that they are as they are” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 1, p. 33, my translation throughout).

Here Aubry refers to Aristotle’s famous statement in book capital Alpha of the Metaphysics that philosophy begins in wonder. In the 20th century, Heidegger emphasized the question why there is something rather than nothing. Aubry is pointing out that that is not Aristotle’s question at all. As detailed in many posts here, it is the more particular what-it-is of things that Aristotle is mainly concerned to explain.

“Two texts, in Lambda and Nu, echo the critique of capital Alpha, and each time the insistence of Aristotle is the same, in underlining that he is, of all the philosophers, the first and the only to have posed the good as a principle” (ibid).

Of Aristotle’s four causes, the material cause and the source of motion were generally recognized by the pre-Socratics. The Pythagoreans and Platonists added something approximating to Aristotle’s formal cause. But Aristotle insists that even the Platonists made no real use of a concept of that-for-the-sake-of-which, and confusingly treated the good as a formal cause or as a source of motion instead.

In book Nu of the Metaphysics, according to Aubry he says that Plato’s successor Speusippus and the Pythagoreans “agree with the mythologists in seeing the good not as a principle but as an effect of order…. Beyond Speusippus, the allusion is to Plato…; the error of Plato is not in having posed the good as a principle in making it an attribute of the One, but in having made the One itself the principle” (p. 39).

The relevant passage in book Nu says, “Things that come down to us from those who wrote about the gods seem to agree with some people of the present time who say that the good and the beautiful are not sources but make their appearance within the nature of things when it has advanced. (They do this out of caution about a true difficulty which follows for those who say, as some do, that the one is a source. The difficulty is not on account of reckoning what is good to the source as something present in it, but on account of making the one a source — and a source in the sense of an element — and making number out of the one)” (Metaphysics, Sachs tr., pp. 291-292).

Aubry’s point rings true. Elsewhere Aristotle goes on at length about Speusippus’ and the Pythagoreans’ insistence on the central role of number, which gestures in the direction of a formal cause but is actually treated by them more like a kind of material cause. And when Speusippus and the Pythagoreans talk about the One, they seem to literally mean the number one. As Aristotle points out repeatedly, it is nonsense to make the number one the source of all things, and this also doesn’t explain anything.

I myself for many years simply accepted at face value an identity of the Platonic Good with the One as the source of all things, while downplaying the One’s connection with the mere number one, and emphasizing a sort of negative theology in the style of Plotinus, which eliminates all positive attributes of the One. This really just comes down to saying there is a source of all things, while leaving unclear the way in which it is a source. It also assumes the Platonic thesis — rejected by Aristotle — that there is a single form of the Good.

For Aristotle, the good is said in as many ways as being is. What is essential is not this good or that good, but the relevance of value and valuation to all judgment whatsoever and all doing whatsoever. That relevance appears concretely as that-for-the-sake-of-which, or “final” causality. This was Aristotle’s huge innovation.

Aubry reviews Aristotle’s critique of the Platonic Good in both the Nicomachean and the Eudemian Ethics, which focuses on its status as a universal or an Idea.

“Aristotle underlines that there is not a unique science of the Good, but multiple sciences having for their object different goods” (p. 44).

“To the Good as a genus — undiscoverable — and as Idea — useless and void — Aristotle opposes a good that is prakton [practical, in the ethical sense], a good realizable by the human, determined as the first term of a hierarchy of goods and ends, … which the Nicomachean Ethics calls ‘politics’…. If the critique of the Platonic Good leaves open this path, which the Ethics explore, it does not close off that which consists in posing a Good as principle, the relation of which to particular goods remains to be determined, and of the sort that it is neither that of a genus nor of a species, nor that of an Idea to its participants” (p. 45).

Once again, it will be only the causality of that-for-the-sake-of-which and the related details of act and potentiality that truly explain this relation.

Next in this series: Being and Becoming

Distinguishing Act and Form

“In fact, the notions of form (eidos) and of act (energeia or entelecheia) are not equivalent; and if the first belongs to a Platonic vocabulary, the second is an Aristotelian invention. It belongs, as such, to an anti-Platonic project: there is no sense, for Aristotle, in posing ‘pure’ or ‘separated’ forms, that is to say forms subsisting outside of and independent of the composites that they define. Form is not separable except ‘by logos‘, ‘according to the formula’, which signifies also that form is not fully ousia, fully substance” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., part 1, introduction, p. 23, my translation throughout).

For Aristotle, form is only separable from the embodied composite analytically, in speech or in thought. Though he was Plato’s star pupil for 20 years and continued to be influenced by Plato in other ways, his project is “anti-Platonic” in the sense that he specifically criticizes the notion of separate form, with which Plato is famously associated.

“It goes otherwise for act, which implies separation, understood as autonomous subsistence, and therefore has the value of another name for ousia. Act, nonetheless, is not only another name for substance. Identified with the end, it is also [identified] with the good. Being in act is not only to subsist, it is to subsist as adequate to its form and to a form that, posed as end, is also posed as good…. Act thus is not only another name for being, but also for the good: or more, insofar as it says the good as real, or as realized, [it] names the identity of being and the good” (p. 24).

Here it is important to recall once again that all the senses of “being” Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics involve being as a transitive verb (i.e., being this or that), not being as a noun. Being in the sense of existence simply has no place in this account. The identity of the senses of being as a transitive verb with those of the good tells us that the saying of transitive being for Aristotle has a normative character. Talking about the being or essence of things is talking about value, and making value judgments.

“Certainly, [the idea of] the unmoved First Mover does not come in response to the question of the emergence of being, but to that of the eternity of movement — both the continuity of the movement of the stars, and the perpetuity of the cycle of generation and corruption. This is why [book] Lambda [chapter] 10 [of the Metaphysics] can also designate the good as the cause of taxis [order], associated both with the movement of the eternal sensibles and that of the corruptible sensibles. If it is not an efficient cause, the First Mover nonetheless has an efficacity, or an influence on the world, which follows from the very fact that it has no power. For the purely actual substance, indeed excluding power as much as movement, is required as the condition of movement (Lambda 6 and 7). Again, it is necessary to determine the way in which it is [required]; Lambda 7 invokes the notion of final cause, which it is nonetheless necessary to understand in a particular sense: not in a sense in which the unmoved substance is itself the act and the end of the other substances, but in the sense in which, aiming at their proper act, the latter aim at the same time at its characteristic necessity. To understand this, it is not necessary to have recourse to the notion of imitation: the relation of the pure act to the substances mixed of act and potentiality is determined by the different relations of the anteriority of act to potentiality distinguished in Theta 8.” (p. 25).

Aristotle is saying that the good in general or value in general is a condition for the possibility of all movement, both celestial and terrestrial. Every being is moved by some good or other. Aubry is here explaining the difference between Aristotle’s own view and the “ontotheology” that Heidegger and others have attributed to him.

“[The pure act’s] efficacy could be called non-efficient; its strength merges with the desire it arouses. Designating god as act, Aristotle identifies his mode of being; determining the mode of relation of act to potentiality, he identifies his mode of action….”

“But by this, Aristotle also identifies the mode of being and the mode of action proper to the good. It is perhaps thus that it is necessary to understand his insistence in affirming that he is, of all the philosophers, the first and the only to have posed the good as a principle….”

“The singularity of the Aristotelian theology as a theology of the good, and of the power proper to the good, can nonetheless not be known except on the condition of taking seriously the designation of the First Mover as pure act. This supposes in particular that the Aristotelian inventions that are act and potentiality are not reduced to form and power. The Aristotelian theology, that is to say the science of unmoving and separate substance, appears only in effect as one of the areas of application of an ontology or, at least, a general ousiology, which has for its foundation the notions of act and potentiality” (p. 26).

In contrast to the ways being is said in the senses of the Categories, which are “inadequate for speaking about the first unmoving being, [act and potentiality] allow both the difference and the relation of moved and unmoved substances to be thought. In a more general way, act and potentiality are at the foundation of an anti-Parmenidean ontology, …allowing being, movement, and their correlation equally well to be thought” (p. 27).

Aubry points out that the notions of act and potentiality first arise in the discussion of motion. But book Theta of the Metaphysics is dedicated to reshaping them in a way that applies to “being” as well as to motion. It is more particularly through act and potentiality that beings are constituted as the beings they are.

“Movement, in effect, should not be understood only in the order of interaction, but also in that of actualization. Or again: movement should not be understood only in the order of the correlation of an active dynamis and a passive dynamis, partitioning the field of efficiency into an agent and a patient, but in that of the correlation of dynamis and energeia” (ibid).

“But the dynamis found thus to be correlated to act, and which designates a state of being, is therefore irreducible to power: being in potentiality, coordinated with and determined by act, is neither passive nor efficient. Or again, potentiality is reducible neither to active power nor to passive power. The notion of potentiality serves to name the very possibility of the interaction of an agent and a patient in view of a change determined and finalized by act.”

“The correlation of potentiality to act nonetheless does not exclude that of passive power to active power: but it subsumes it, or subordinates it, insofar as it carries a greater intelligibility. It invites us to consider that which, in an impact, a meeting, or an interaction, is the occasion of an accomplishment. It is a point of view taken on that which, in movement, makes itself, that is to say not only makes itself but perfects itself…. Aristotle’s universe is not exempt from impacts and meeting: the substances that populate it are not Leibnizian monads…. The order of efficiency is a real order, but subordinate to that of finality” (pp. 28-29; see also The Four Causes Revisited).

“Potentiality is indeed for a being the real possibility, inscribed in the very qualities that give it its essence, of realizing that essence. Potentiality is the index and the principle of the becoming that leads a being to its accomplishment. It bears at the same time the distance between a being and what it has to be, and the possibility of crossing that distance. If act names the identity, real or realized, of being and the good, potentiality names this identity as to be realized. It inscribes into being at the same time as the concreteness of mediation, the possibility of perfection” (p. 29).

“The ontology of potentiality bears with it at the same time the thought of a possible perfection, realizable here and now, and that of failures, of accidents, of bad encounters, of unsuccessful mediations that could counter it” (ibid).

For Aristotle there is no “problem of evil”. Things are at one and the same time both imperfect and perfectible.

Again, I prefer to drop the term “ontology” altogether, because it is strongly associated with a (non-Aristotelian) approach to first philosophy that focuses on being as a noun, and in the sense of existence. Aubry retains the traditional term, but gives it a different meaning that is less prejudicial.

Far be it from me to claim to have the one true interpretation of these sharply contested points about Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but the key features of Aubry’s account seem to fit very well with my own examination of the text.

Aubry has emphasized the role of Plotinus in the historic re-interpretation of Aristotelian act and potentiality. I would note that the later neoplatonic school at Alexandria under Ammonius (5th/6th century CE) — especially Ammonius’ students Simplicius and John Philoponus — also produced extensive commentaries on Aristotle with a neoplatonic slant, which helped shape the way Aristotle was read in medieval times.

Ammonius argued that Aristotle’s first cause is after all also an efficient cause. Simplicius, who is also a major source for quotes from lost works in the history of Greek philosophy, added two more distinctly neoplatonic kinds of causes to Aristotle’s four. Philoponus was a Christian Aristotelian who defended creation from nothing, and was cited by Galileo as an inspiration for the impulse theory of motion. The impulse theory decouples physical motion from any teleology, paving the way for early modern mechanism.

Next in thus series: Aristotle on the Platonic Good

Pure Act

I just received the 2nd French edition of Gwenaëlle Aubry’s God Without Power: Dunamis and Energeia in Aristotle and Plotinus (2020), which is now also labeled Archaeology of Power volume 1, reflecting publication of her second volume, Genesis of the Sovereign God (French ed. 2018).

“But the notion of act (energeia or entelekheia) says something else that that of form does not: not only substance, but also the good. Of Aristotelian invention, contrary to that of form which belongs entirely to Platonism, it appears first in ethical contexts; and if its axiological significance is not explicitly formulated in [book Theta of the Metaphysics], but only suggested via the identification of energeia with telos [end] and with ergon [work], it is on the other hand clearly readable in book Lambda. Furthermore, the project formulated in book capital Alpha of a ‘wisdom’ (sophia) capable of determining the good and the end, like that, defined in [book Gamma], of a science of ‘being qua being’, are both accomplished in the knowledge of a single object: act.”

“For such a project, Aristotle claims originality. He underlines that he is the first to have posed the good as a principle, and to have dissociated principle and power. Reading the history of philosophy reversed in relation to the one familiar to us, he considers thus that position of the good as principle is not a Platonic gesture. But if the Platonists have failed to think the status of the good as principle, that is in part because they did not identify its proper mode of causality. The double Aristotelian decision thus bears a unique formula: the principle is act. For to designate it thus, is to say at once that it is an essentially good substance, and that it acts not as power, but as the end of that which is in potentiality.”

“It is however also, and in conformity always with the project of Metaphysics [capital Alpha], to leave a place for the diversity of goods and of ends. For, like being, the good is said in many ways. And if the Ethics identify the good according to substance with god and with intellect, this is not the essence of all that could be called ‘good’, any more than it is the act of the other substances. So here again, Aristotle succeeds where Plato had failed: he succeeds at the same time in thinking the good’s status as a principle and the causality of the good, as well as taking into account the plurality of goods (which also says: the good is neither a power nor an Idea). However, a relation of foundation holds between the essentially good substance and the goods of the diverse substances. And this relation doubles itself, for the substance that is the human, in a relation of resemblance and a relation of knowledge, if theoria [contemplation], in which ethics finds its energeia and its supreme end, at the same time is similar to the divine act, and can have the latter as its object” (introduction, pp. 15-16, my translation).

The mode of causality of the good as first principle is as the end or that-for-the-sake-of-which, as a kind of attractor for potentialities. I’ve presented most of these ideas before, but this provides a very nice overview. Aubry gives a bit more weight to book Gamma’s proposed knowledge of being as such than I do, but the content that she ultimately gives to it is very close to what I end up with in reading book Lambda as a teleological meta-ethics (she calls it “axiology” or theory of values, but the concept is similar). In upcoming posts, I’ll take a look at her detailed analysis of the text of the Metaphysics. (See also The Four Causes Revisited; On the Good as a Cause; Aubry on Aristotle; Properly Human, More Than Human?.)

Aristotle’s main historical influence began only centuries after his death. His manuscripts were claimed by a relative and left to deteriorate in an attic. They were only edited around the 1st century BCE. Even then, they attracted only limited interest. Stoicism had meanwhile become dominant in Greek philosophy. The great early commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias did not flourish until late 2nd/early 3rd century CE, and was influential mainly via Plotinus and the neoplatonic schools. It was only with the late Platonic school of Alexandria in Egypt under Ammonius (late 5th/early 6th century CE) that Aristotle’s works became central to the teaching curriculum, and then they were read with a heavy neoplatonic slant. (See Fortunes of Aristotle.)

Next in this series: Distinguishing Act and Form

The Four Causes Revisited

Previously I abbreviated my account of book capital Alpha of the Metaphysics, focusing mainly on Aristotle’s own remarks about the “knowledge being sought”. The other main content of this book is a discussion of what his predecessors had to say about this question. The bulk of it concerns the pre-Socratics, with mention of the poets who preceded them.

I tend to regard serious philosophy as starting with Plato. By comparison, even though they have interesting things to say, the pre-Socratics seem mostly to just make dogmatic pronouncements in a simplistic way. As Aristotle says, “[W]hile in a certain way all the causes have been spoken of before, in another way they have not been spoken of at all. For the earliest philosophy about everything is like someone who lisps [sic], since it is young and just starting out” (ch. 10, Sachs tr., p. 28).

But Aristotle’s remarks on his predecessors here — including a brief mention of Plato — also give insight into his perspective on what was most original in his own thought.

These remarks are superficially structured around Aristotle’s claim that no one before him made use of all four causes. But implicitly, this historical critique is preparing the way for a much more fundamental point about the overall leading role of that for the sake of which, which parallels his more developed argument about the nature of explanation in Parts of Animals. The treatment here could also be seen as an anticipation of related conclusions about the nature of the first cause, which will not be made explicit until book Lambda.

The very way in which he briefly introduces the four causes here at the beginning of the Metaphysics already has several important nuances:

“[One cause] is thinghood [ousia or “substance”], or what it is for something to be [what it is] (since the why leads back to the ultimate reasoned account, and the first why is a cause and source), another is the material or underlying thing, a third is that from which the source of motion is, and the fourth is the cause opposite to that one, that for the sake of which or the good (since it is the completion of every coming-into-being and motion” (ch. 3, p. 6).

“Causes” are reasons why. The what-it-is (ti esti) of things is their form, but notably he does not use the word “form” here. The word that Plato had used for form (eidos) had a more common usage for the “look” or visible form of a thing, which is nearly opposite to the sense of essence and deeper truth that Plato and Aristotle give to it.

(Hegel’s remarks on the intangibility of truth suggest a relation between this more ordinary usage of eidos and a weakness of the specifically Platonic notion of form, in which the open-ended nature of essence that Plato so well represents in his depictions of Socratic inquiry is compromised by Plato’s conflicting tendency to sometimes suggest that the form of a thing is something that could be simply known once and for all.)

The material or “underlying thing” answers to the superficial sense of “substance” (ousia) as a logical “sub-ject” of properties in the Categories. But Aristotle has already here associated ousia with the form rather than the material. This could be seen as anticipating the argument of book Zeta on the what-it-is of things, in which the “underlying thing” sense of ousia is eventually superseded by that of the what-it-is.

Pre-Socratic philosophy arose in the relatively cosmopolitan environment of the thriving trade centers of Ionia in Turkey. The Ionians formulated various theories positing a material first principle (water for Thales, air for Anaximenes, fire for Heraclitus, “the Unlimited” for Anaximander).

“Of those who first engaged in philosophy, most thought that the only sources of all things were of the species of material” (ibid). “[B]ut as people went forward in this way, their object of concern itself opened a road for them, and contributed to forcing them to inquire along it. For no matter how much every coming-into-being and destruction is out of some one or more kinds of material, why does this happen and what is its cause? … [But since sources of this kind] were not sufficient to generate the nature of things, again by the truth itself, as we say, people were forced to look for the next kind of source. For that some beings are in a beautiful or good condition, or come into being well or beautifully, it is perhaps not likely that fire or earth or any other such thing is responsible…. So when someone said an intellect was present, just as in animals, also in nature as the cause of the cosmos and of all order, he looked like a sober man next to people who had been speaking incoherently beforehand…. Those, then, who took things up in this way set down a source which is at the same time the cause of the beautiful among things and the sort of cause from which motion belongs to things” (pp. 7-9).

This may seem like a very “Hegelian” kind of argument: “their object of concern itself opened a road for them”. But in reality it is Hegel who is being Aristotelian.

“So these people, as we are saying, evidently got this far with two causes out of those we distinguished in the writings about nature, the material and that from which the motion is, but did so dimly and without clarity, rather in the way nonathletes do in fights; for while dancing around they often land good punches, but they do not do so out of knowledge, nor do these people seem to know what they are saying. For it is obvious that they use these causes scarcely ever, and only to a tiny extent. For Anaxagoras uses the intellect as a makeshift contrivance for cosmos production, and whenever he comes to an impasse about why something is necessarily a certain way, he drags it in, but in the other cases he assigns as the causes of what happens everything but the intellect” (ch. 4, p. 9).

He applauds Anaxagoras for bringing intellect into the discussion, but criticizes him for using it mainly as what Brandom would call an “unexplained explainer”. To the extent that Anaxagoras has an implicit theory of the way in which intellect affects other things, Aristotle regards him as treating it as a “source of motion”. But Aristotle notes that it is completely unclear in Anaxagoras how intellect is supposed to be a source of motion. The same goes for Empedocles’ principles of love and strife.

Aristotle will retain an important role for intellect (and love too) as well as the notion of sources of motion, but he decouples these, and develops a different account of each. In both the Physics and the Metaphysics, he ends up tracing sources of motion to potentiality. But meanwhile, the source of motion is also what the Latin scholastics and early moderns called the efficient cause.

It is again vitally important to recognize the order of explanation that Aristotle employs. He explains the operative aspects of “efficient causality” in terms of the more fundamental notion of developed potentiality. He does not explain “potentiality” in terms of efficient causality, and he most especially does not explain potentiality in terms of some passive role in what the scholastics and early moderns understood by efficient causality. Once again, when he is being careful, Aristotle makes it clear that the primary model for this kind of cause is something like the art of building as a developed potentiality, not something immediate like the hammer’s blow or the carpenter’s arm.

Chapter 5 is devoted to the Pythagorean school’s teaching that mathematical things are the sources of all things. This chapter also incorporates remarks on the Eleatic school’s teaching that the One or Being is the source of all things. He treats both of these as partial anticipations of Plato, grouping them together as “the Italians”, since both of these schools were centered in the Greek colonies in Italy.

“After these philosophic speculations that have been mentioned came the careful work of Plato, which in many ways followed the lead of these people, but also had separate features that went beyond the philosophy of the Italians. For having become acquainted from youth at first with Cratylus and the Heraclitean teachings that all sensible things are always in flux and that there is no knowledge of them, he also conceived these things that way later on. And since Socrates exerted himself about ethical matters and not at all about the whole of nature, but in the former sought the universal and was the first to be skilled at thinking about definitions, Plato, when he adopted this, took it up as applying to other things and not to sensible ones, because of this: it was impossible that there be any common definition of any of the perceptible things since they were always changing. So he called this other sort of beings forms, and said the perceptible things were apart from these and all spoken of derivatively from these” (ch. 6, pp. 14-15).

“In a curtailed way, then, and hitting the high spots, we have gotten hold of who happens to have spoken about origins and truth, and in what way” (ch. 7, p. 16). “But about what it is for something to be, and thinghood, no one has delivered up a clear account, but those who posit the forms speak of it most” (p. 17).

Aristotle thinks that Plato came closer to what is needed than any of his predecessors.

“That for the sake of which actions and changes and motions are, they speak of as a cause in a certain way, but they do not say it that way, nor speak of what is so by its very nature. For those who speak of intellect or friendship as good set these up as causes, but do not speak as though anything that is either has its being or comes into being for the sake of these, but as though motions arose from these” (ibid, emphasis added).

We saw that Aristotle understands Anaxagoras as claiming that intellect is a source of motion, in some direct but unexplained way. Aristotle maintains on the contrary that intellect is a cause in what he above called the “opposite” sense of that for the sake of which.

He continues, “And in the same way too, those who speak of the one or being as such a nature do say that it is the cause of thinghood [i.e., of things being what they are], but not that it either is or comes about for the sake of this; so it turns out that they both say and do not say that the good is a cause, since they say it is so not simply but incidentally” (ibid, emphasis added).

Parts of this remark apply to the Pythagoreans (the one) and the Eleatics (the one or being). All of it, including the part about the good, applies to the Platonists. For Aristotle, neither “the one” nor “being” is in its own right a true cause, because neither gives us a specific why for anything. Aristotle’s own notion of the first cause is to be identified neither with Thomistic Being nor with the neoplatonic One. On the other hand, the good is a true cause, because it does give us specific reasons why. These are expressible in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which. But he also delicately implies that even Plato treats the Good more like a source of motions than a grounding for explanations in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which. Elsewhere, he says that Plato treats the Good as a formal cause, rather than as that-for-the-sake-of-which. In any case, he clearly thinks that Plato treats the Good as affecting things in some other way than as that-for-the-sake-of-which. The neoplatonists explicitly represent the One or the Good as producing all things. But at this level, the specificity of reasons why things turn out some particular way is completely left behind.

Without a reason why things turn out as they do, for Aristotle there is no true cause. That-for-the-sake-of-which is more preeminently and properly a why than any of the other causes, and for Aristotle this makes it more preeminently and properly a cause than any of the other causes. That is why it seems reasonable to him that the first cause of all should be purely a cause in the sense of that for the sake of which.

The scholastics and the moderns tend to reduce all causes to the notion of efficient cause that they put in the place of Aristotle’s “source of motion”. But for Aristotle, a source of motion is principally a means to the realization of an end, to which it is subordinated. Aristotle ultimately subordinates all other causes to the operation of the good as that for the sake of which. The result is not a total determination or absolute necessity, but rather various hypothetical necessities that can each be realized in more than one way, and that therefore still allow room for genuine contributions to the outcome from secondary causes.

Aristotle’s association of that-for-the-sake-of-which with completion in the earlier quote recalls the way that he elsewhere associates it with actuality, which in the Barnes-edited Collected Works edition of the Physics is translated as “fulfillment”, and which Aristotle closely identifies with entelechy, which also implies completion. Thus, although I don’t recall him ever explicitly saying it, both potentiality and actuality are represented among the four causes, which we could now alternatively list as form, material, potentiality, and actuality. This particular conclusion is new to me, but based on the argument sketched here it seems pretty solid. This has a number of interesting consequences.

For example, with these identifications in hand, we can apply the priority of actuality over potentiality in Aristotle as an alternate reason why that-for-the-sake-of-which is prior to the source of motion.

We can also see another reason why although there is a kind of analogy between the actuality/potentiality and form/material relations, the distinction between actuality and potentiality cannot be reduced to that between form and material. Otherwise, there would be only two distinct kinds of causes, and not the four on which Aristotle insists. This distinction between the two distinctions fits perfectly with Aristotle’s other insistence that nonsensible as well as sensible things can have being in potentiality, whereas only sensible things are properly said to have material.

Next in this series: Infinity, Finitude, and the Good

On the Good as a Cause

Having recently prototyped a modest textual commentary of my own on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, I feel in a somewhat better position to begin examining the more detailed arguments of Gwenaëlle Aubry on what exactly the Metaphysics aims to do. Her very important 2006 work Dieu sans la puissance: dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin highlights Aristotle’s own neglected statements on what his most distinctive contributions in first philosophy were, and argues that they make Aristotle very relevant today.

This leads to a very distinctive reading of the intent of the Metaphysics, which differs greatly from both the “ontological” view of Avicenna and the Latin scholastic mainstream, and the “forgetting of Being”, “metaphysics of presence” view promoted by Heidegger in the 20th century. Here I’ll just provide a top-level introduction.

Aubry sees the Metaphysics primarily as a very innovative work of philosophical theology, centered on what I would call a kind of teleological meta-ethics.

Aristotle’s first cause is the highest good, which works by attraction and motivation, not by creating, or by directly intervening in events. (This makes what Kant calls internal teleology Aristotle’s most fundamental explanatory principle, as is also made especially clear in Aristotle’s biological works, but also even in the Physics.)

Aristotle’s first philosophy treats the world as most fundamentally governed by the values that are at work in it. The logistical working out of means and ends is also essential to how things play out in the world, but Aristotle insists that orienting values come first in the order of explanation. The highest good is a kind of ultimate moral compass for those values. (And from a Kantian standpoint, the resolution of empirical questions of fact depends on the resolution of normative, ultimately ethical or meta-ethical questions of interpretation.)

Next in this series: Pure Act

Plotinus on Contemplation

“Supposing we played a little before entering upon our serious concern and maintained that all things are striving after Contemplation, looking to Vision as their one end — and this, not merely beings endowed with reason but even the unreasoning animals, the Principle that rules in growing things, and the Earth that produces these — and that all achieve their purpose in the measure possible to their kind, each attaining Vision and possessing itself of the End in its own way and degree, some things in entire reality, other in mimicry and image — we would scarcely find anyone to endure so strange a thesis. But in a discussion entirely among ourselves there is no risk in a light handling of our own ideas (Plotinus, Enneads III.8, ch. 1, MacKenna tr., p. 239).

Thus begins Plotinus’ great essay that we know by the title “Nature, Contemplation, and the One”. The remainder of the text suggests that he is in fact fairly serious in what he suggests, but this disclaimer shows that he recognizes its unusual character. He does at a later point say in effect, “and now for the serious part”. In the “playful” part, he is deliberately stretching the meaning of contemplation, challenging us to apply it in many more cases than we would expect. In the “serious” part, he narrows the meaning to cases that come close to instantiating the identity Aristotle speaks of between thought and what it thinks.

Scholars believe this essay was part of Plotinus’ single largest work, which his student and editor Porphyry divided into four separate pieces, including “On the Intellectual Beauty” and “Against the Gnostics”. I wanted to compare what he says about contemplation with what Aristotle says. I find that even when I don’t agree with Plotinus, his work often has a kind of poetic appeal.

Aristotle speaks of contemplation as the characteristic activity of the gods, and as the ultimate end of human life. Plotinus here suggests that all nature aims at contemplation. Aristotle never says that, but it is in a way implicit between the lines. If the first cause is characterized by pure contemplation, and is the ultimate end behind all particular ends for which things do what they do, then in that sense all things aim at contemplation.

The characterization of contemplation as “Vision” is not one I would want to endorse in an Aristotelian context, at least without major qualification. The way Plotinus speaks of it, this Vision seems like a case of what Kant would call intellectual intuition — a kind of immediate grasping of some deep content.

I agree with Kant and Hegel that humans can “immediately” grasp deep content in holistic fashion only after and because we have previously done the work needed to understand it, which typically involves what Aristotle calls “thinking things through”, and what I have called interpretation and (after Paul Ricoeur) the long detour. I want to read Aristotle in a way that is compatible with this.

As it stands, Plotinus’ notion of Vision seems designed to exclude mediation, consonant with his emphasis on the simplicity of the One as the source of all things. For Plotinus, Vision is an immediate holistic “seeing” of deep truth.

I think Aristotelian contemplation is holistic too, but that any holistic Vision or immediate intuition achievable by humans and acceptable to Aristotle must have a cumulative, retrospective, reflective character that depends on previous insight and work, like apperception does in Kant and Hegel. I would suggest that Aristotelian contemplation could be elaborated as apperceptive entelechy.

“Well — in the play of this very moment am I engaged in the act of Contemplation? Yes; I and all that enter this play are in Contemplation: our play aims at Vision; and there is every reason to believe that child or man, in sport or earnest, is playing or working only towards Vision, that every act is an effort towards Vision; the compulsory act, which tends rather to bring the Vision down to outward things, and the act thought of as voluntary, less concerned with the outer, originate alike in the effort towards Vision” (ibid).

Here we begin to see in detail the vast extension of contemplation Plotinus is “playfully” suggesting. All things either are contemplation or aim at contemplation. In effect, he is treating Vision as a name for the Good at which all things aim.

“[L]et us speak, first, of the earth and of the trees and vegetation in general, asking ourselves what is the nature of the Contemplation in them, how we relate to any Contemplative activity the labor and productiveness of the earth, how Nature, held to be devoid of reason and even of conscious representation, can either harbour Contemplation or produce by means of the Contemplation which it does not possess” (ibid).

For Aristotle, the earth has a nature or internal source of motion, and plants as living things have an elementary kind of soul corresponding to their abilities for growth and nutrition. But even motion is a primitive kind of entelechy, of which contemplation is the highest form. Aristotle may not see contemplation everywhere, but he does see entelechy everywhere.

Incidentally, the English word “consciousness” was first coined by Locke’s friend, the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, to express ideas he found in Plotinus.

“To begin with, since in all [Nature’s] production it is stationary and intact, a Reason-Principle [logos] self-indwelling, it is in its own nature a Contemplative act. All doing must be guided by an Idea, and will therefore be distinct from that Idea: the Reason-Principle then, as accompanying and guiding the work, will be distinct from the work; not being action but Reason-Principle it is, necessarily, Contemplation” (ch. 3, p. 240).

Plotinus generally seems to use logos in a sense that is derived from Stoicism, rather than any Platonic or Aristotelian source. Logos is a — arguably the — fundamental explanatory principle in Stoicism. It has relations with Platonic and Aristotelian concepts, but is a distinct notion or family of notions in its own right. For the Stoics, everything has an indwelling logos or rational principle that internally governs it, and the logos has a divine origin.

“And does this Reason-Principle, Nature, spring from a contemplation? Wholly and solely” (ibid).

He doesn’t explain this, but instead proceeds to qualify it.

“The Contemplation springing from the reasoning faculty — that, I mean, of planning its own content — [Nature] does not possess” (p. 241).

Nature neither reasons explicitly, nor plans how to achieve its aims.

“Because to plan for a thing is to lack it: Nature does not lack; it creates because it possesses. Its creative act is simply its possession of its own characteristic Essence; now its Essence, since it is a Reason-Principle, is to be at once an act of contemplation and an object of contemplation” (ibid).

The idea of starting from fullness rather than lack is appealing. Aristotle’s way of doing this is to emphasize entelechies everywhere. Every entelechy is in a way complete in itself.

Aristotle complements this by saying that the living things that have natures are more immediately moved by desire. Plato, however, strongly identifies desire with a kind of lack. Plotinus therefore seems to want to downplay the role of desire, and identifies nature with the fullness of a creative act. If this is not the creativity of the translator, we have here a reference to creation, as distinct from making. Creation is also not part of Platonic or Aristotelian vocabulary.

Plotinus is said to have read works by Numenius, a Neo-Pythagorean who was impressed by the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. I don’t have my Loeb edition handy to check the Greek. (Incidentally, Armstrong’s complete translation of Plotinus in the Loeb edition is more accurate and less flowery than the more common MacKenna I am using here. Kevin Corrigan’s translation in his Reading Plotinus is also better, but I don’t have that handy either.)

The “act” part seems to be a reference to actuality or being-at-work. This is also an important concept for Plotinus, though in contrast to Aristotle he ultimately subordinates it to potentiality.

“Thus the act of production is seen to be in Nature an act of contemplation, for creation is the outcome of a contemplation which never becomes anything else, which never does anything else, but creates by simply being a contemplation” (ibid).

Aristotle makes the more specific claim that the what-it-is of things is the outcome of thought thinking itself that contemplates. He would not collapse this together as Plotinus does, into a claim that nature’s act of production is an act of contemplation.

“[W]hat we know as Nature is a Soul, offspring of a yet earlier Soul of more powerful life; that it possesses, therefore, in its repose, a vision within itself; that it has no tendency upward nor even downward but is at peace, steadfast, in its own Essence;” (ch. 4, p. 241).

Aristotle calls nature an internal source of motion, but not a soul (psyche). On the other hand, the things he regards as having a nature (plants and animals) he also regards as having a soul. But the notions of soul in Aristotle and Plotinus are also vastly different. While Aristotle is careful to stay close to what can be observed by anyone, Plotinus makes the soul a much grander thing with much stronger properties.

“Of course, while it may be convenient to speak of ‘understanding’ or ‘perception’ in the Nature-Principle, this is not in the full sense…; we are applying to sleep a word borrowed from the wake” (pp. 241-242).

Here he acknowledges he is stretching things.

“In the same way, human beings, when weak on the side of contemplation, find in action their trace of vision and of reason: their spiritual feebleness unfits them for contemplation; they are left with a void, because they cannot adequately seize the vision; yet they long for it; they are hurried into action as their way to the vision which they cannot attain by intellection. They act from the desire of seeing their action, and of making it visible and sensible to others when the result shall prove fairly well equal to the plan. Everywhere, doing and making will be found to be either an attenuation or a complement of vision” (p. 242).

Long ago, I was profoundly impressed by this argument that all action aims at contemplation, which he returns to further on. Looking at it now, it strikes me that this thesis may be implicitly counterposed to Aristotle’s idea of the priority of actuality, which, as we will see, Plotinus does not agree with. Aristotle also would never be so one-sidedly dismissive of doing and making, even though he agrees that contemplation is “even more” to be valued.

“The primal phase of the Soul — inhabitant of the Supreme… — remains unchangeably There; but in virtue of that first participation, … a secondary phase also participates in the Supreme, and this secondary goes forth ceaselessly as Life streaming from Life; for energy runs through the universe and there is no extremity at which it dwindles out” (ch. 5, p. 242).

“Energy” here is actuality or being-at-work, now explicitly associated with something secondary.

“All goes softly since nothing here demands the parade of thought or act upon external things: it is a Soul in vision and, by this vision, creating its own subsequent — this Principle (of Nature), itself also contemplative but in the feebler degree… a Vision creates the Vision ” (p. 243).

The implicit complaint against the “parade of thought” has to do with Plotinus’ strong bias for intuitive immediacy over what Aristotle would call “thinking things through”. I think Plotinus is perhaps the best proponent of this view that I disagree with — certainly better than the followers of Schelling and Jacobi who attacked Hegel.

“[T]his explains how the Soul’s creation is everywhere: where can this thing fail to be, which is one identical thing in every soul? Vision is not cabined within the bournes of magnitude.”

In Plotinus’ modified Platonic view, Soul is not just the form of a living body, but plays a huge role in the formation and governance of the world. There is a soul of the world or soul of the all; nature is a kind of soul; and there is a transcendent Soul that is Nature’s prior. Every individual soul has a direct connection to the transcendent Soul.

“This, of course, does not mean that the Soul is present at the same strength in each and every place and thing — any more than it is at the same strength in each of its phases.”

“The Charioteer (the Leading Principle of the Soul, in the Phaedrus myth) gives the two horses (its two dissonant faculties) what he has seen and they, taking that gift, showed that they were hungry for that vision; there was something lacking to them: if in their desire they acted, their action aimed at what they craved for — and that was vision, and an object of vision” (ibid).

Here he refers to imagery from Plato’s Phaedrus, while re-centering the myth around his own notion of Vision. He again dwells on the superiority of contemplation to action.

“Action, thus, is set towards contemplation and an object of contemplation, so that even those whose life is in doing have seeing as their object” (ch. 6, p. 243).

“[T]hey desired a certain thing to come about, not in order to be unaware of it but to know it, to see it present before the mind…. We act for the sake of some good; this means not for something to remain outside of ourselves, not in order that we may possess nothing but that we may hold the good of the action. And hold it, where? Where but in the mind?” (ibid).

“This vision achieved, the acting instinct pauses; the mind is satisfied and seeks nothing further” (p. 244).

Aristotle would agree that a maximally complete entelechy like contemplation is in a way better than any incomplete entelechy, such as would be associated with action. Even so, his emphasis on the priority of actuality leads to a much more positive valuation of acting, doing, and making. Also, for Aristotle contemplation is a being-at-work. And I at least also think of it as a particular kind of acting and doing, even though it is different from external acting and doing.

“[N]ow we come to the serious treatment of the subject — In proportion to the truth with which the knowing faculty knows, it comes to identification with the object of its knowledge” (ibid).

What he says here about knowledge resembles the Aristotelian identity of thought and the thing thought, broadened to include a kind of proportional applicability. On the other hand, Aristotle seems to view knowledge as a discrete relation, which if taken strictly would seem to rule out any kind of proportional applicability or approximation.

“Hence the Idea must not be left to lie outside but must be made one identical thing with the Soul of the novice so that he finds it really his own. The Soul, once domiciled within that Idea and brought to likeness to it, becomes productive, active; what it always held by its primary nature it now grasps with knowledge and applies in deed, so becoming, as it were, a new thing and, informed as it now is by the purely intellectual, it sees (in its outgoing act) as a stranger looking upon a strange world” (ibid).

Though the strong implications of Soul and the initiatory rhetoric are distinctive to Plotinus, what is really essential here is that “the Idea must not be left to lie outside”. Aristotle and Hegel would both wholeheartedly endorse this part.

“The Sage, then, has gone through a process of reasoning when he expounds his act to others; but in relation to himself he is Vision” (ibid).

Plotinus has a much more individualist point of view than Aristotle. For him we are ultimately each “alone with the Alone”. A direct personal relation to the One makes all human social relations seem insignificant by comparison. For Aristotle, participation in social relations is essential to being human, and this is a good thing, not just a distraction from personal spiritual development.

“All the forms of Authentic Existence spring from vision and are a vision. Everything that springs from these Authentic Existences in their vision is an object of vision — manifest to sensation or to true knowledge or to surface-awareness. All act aims at this knowing; all impulse is toward knowledge” (ch. 7, p. 245).

Now in the “serious” part, he repeats what was initially supposed to be the “playful” claim that all things either are contemplation or are oriented toward it.

“[T]he creating powers operate not for the sake of creation and action but in order to produce an object of vision. This same vision is the ultimate purpose of all the acts of the mind and, even further downward, of all sensation, since sensation also is an effort towards knowledge; lower still, Nature, producing similarly its subsequent principle, brings into being the vision and Idea that we know in it. It is certain, also, that as the Firsts exist in vision all other things must be straining towards the same condition; the starting point is, universally, the goal” (ibid).

Aristotle would never speak of “creating powers”. While he certainly recognizes distinctions between immediate, intermediate, and ultimate ends, he would also never deny that what a thing essentially does is its end.

“[T]he procreative act is the expression of a contemplation, a travail towards the creation of many forms, many objects of contemplation, so that the universe may be filled full of Reason-Principles and that contemplation may be, as nearly as possible, endless…. So Love, too, is vision with the pursuit of Ideal-Form” (ibid).

Again this has a kind of poetic charm, but taking it literally relies on a collapsing of distinctions.

“In the advancing stages of Contemplation rising from that in Nature, to that in the Soul and thence again to that in the Intellectual-Principle itself, the object contemplated becomes progressively a more and more intimate possession of the Contemplating Beings, more and more one with them” (ch. 8, p. 245).

Here he returns to what we know from Aristotle as the strict identity of pure thought and what it thinks. As before, he wants to first greatly generalize and then to relativize it.

“[I]n the Intellectual-Principle itself, there is complete identity of Knower and Known, and this not by way of domiciliation, as in the case of even the highest soul, but by Essence, by the fact that, there, no distinction exists between Being and Knowing” (ibid).

Aristotle would agree.

“The Supreme must be an entity in which the two are one; it will, therefore, be a Seeing that lives, not an object of vision like things existing in something other than themselves” (pp. 245-246).

The Supreme in Plotinus is a name for the One. Aristotle’s first cause is identified with thought thinking itself, more or less equivalent to the Intellectual-Principle here. Plotinus is clearly not satisfied with Aristotle’s first cause, and posits the One above it. Aristotle in the Metaphysics argues at length why we should not follow the Pythagoreans and Plato in regarding the One as a source or cause.

“Every life is some form of thought…. But while men may recognize grades in life they reject grades in thought; to them there are thoughts (full and perfect) and anything else is no thought” (p. 246).

This is an important point. The thoughts that we embodied beings have in ordinary life are far from “full and perfect”, but we tend to act as though they were full and perfect.

“The essential is to observe that, here again, all reasoning shows that whatever exists is a bye-work [sic] of visioning” (ibid).

Once again, for Plotinus the immediate whole of the One is the complete source of everything. By contrast, Aristotle complements his account of the dependency of all things on the first cause by insisting that everything also depends on particular causes.

“The Highest began as a unity but did not remain as it began; all unknown to itself, it became manifold; it grew, as it were, pregnant: desiring universal possession, it flung itself outward, though it were better had it never known the desire by which a Secondary came into being…. The Whence is better; the Whither is less good: the Whence is not the same as the Whence-followed-by-a-Whither; the Whence alone is greater than with the Whither added to it” (ibid).

Overall, Plotinus seems to be conflicted about the goodness of manifestation and actualization. There are many texts like “On the Intellectual Beauty” that seem to present these in a positive light, and he sharply criticizes the Gnostics for their negative views of life in the world. But here he repeats in three different wordings that the One shut up within itself is better than the One complemented by a world.

For Aristotle, manifestation and actualization as such are unequivocally good, even if some true facts are not good. For Aristotle — in diametrical contrast to Plotinus here — the highest good should be called not a Whence but a Whither, the ultimate end of all things, that-for-the-sake-of-which. The first cause is a pure end.

“If, then, neither the Intellectual-Principle nor the Intelligible Object can be the First Existent, what is? Our answer can only be: The source of both…. Yet: our knowledge of everything else comes by way of our intelligence; our power is that of knowing the intelligible by means of the intelligence: but this Entity transcends all of the intellectual nature; by what direct intuition, then, can it be brought within our grasp?” (ch. 9, p. 247).

Here and below, Plotinus seems to refer to the One as a Being. In other texts, he says that the One is beyond being, and associates being with intellect. Even here, he associates all knowledge with intellect (the One would be beyond knowledge).

“To this question the answer is that we can know it only in the degree of human faculty: we indicate it by virtue of what in ourselves is like it. For in us, also, there is something of that Being; nay, nothing, ripe for that participation, can be void of it. Wherever you be, you have only to range over against this omnipresent Being that in you which is capable of drawing from It, and you have your share in it” (pp. 247-248).

Now he uses “knowledge” in a much looser way than above. The idea that what is highest is not entirely inaccessible to us is appealing.

“The Intellectual-Principle in us must mount to its origins: essentially a thing facing two ways, it must deliver itself over to those powers within it which tend upward; if it seeks the vision of that Being, it must become something more than Intellect.”

Elsewhere, Plotinus seems to suggest that if each thing “turns upward” toward what is above it and away from what is below, that which is below it will spontaneously carry on in the best possible way — i.e., better than if we were more actively looking down into it and intervening in it. Very different presentation notwithstanding, this always reminded me of the Tao Te Ching‘s idea of getting things done in the best possible way by “non-action”.

“For the Intellectual-Principle is the earliest form of Life: it is the Activity presiding over the outflowing of the universal Order — the outflow, that is, of the first moment, not that of the continuous process” (p. 248).

He identifies neither intellect nor the the One with the whole of things.

“[I]t must of necessity derive from some other Being, from one that does not emanate but is the Principle of Emanation, of Life, of Intellect, and of the Universe…. [T]his can be no thing among things but must be prior to all things” (ibid).

The One is not a “thing” at all. For Aristotle, the first cause is a particular thing that is prior in nature to all other things. To be a being in the proper sense is to be a particular independent thing.

“And what will such a Principle essentially be? The potentiality of the Universe: the potentiality whose non-existence would mean the non-existence of all the Universe and even of the Intellectual-Principle which is the primal Life and all Life” (ch. 10, p. 248).

Here he makes the potentiality of the One prior to any actuality. Aristotle would strenuously object to this.

“Imagine a spring that has no source outside itself; it gives itself to all the rivers, yet is never exhausted by what they take, but remains always integrally what it was…. Or: think of the Life coursing throughout some mighty tree… it is the giver of the entire and manifold life of the tree, but remains unmoved in itself” (p. 249).

This image of something that constantly gives and never needs anything is powerful. Plotinus radicalizes and generalizes Aristotle’s notion of unmoved moving, making it a complete cause of things, which Aristotle never claimed it was.

“Thus we are always brought back to The One. Every particular thing has a One of its own to which it may be traced; the All has its One, its Prior but not yet the Absolute One; through this we reach that Absolute One, where all such references come to an end. Now when we reach a One — the stationary Principle — in the tree, in the animal, in Soul, in the All — we have in every case the most powerful, precious element: when we come to the One in Authentically Existent Beings — their Principle and source and potentiality — shall we lose confidence and suspect it of being — nothing?” (ibid).

I probably should go back to the Metaphysics, and pull out Aristotle’s discussions of oneness and the Pythagorean-Platonic claims that the One is something separate. I think he pretty conclusively shows that claims for a separate One are incoherent.

“Certainly, this Absolute is none of the things of which it is the source — its nature is that nothing can be affirmed of it — not existence, not essence, not life — since it is That which transcends all these. But possess yourself of it by the very elimination of Being and you hold a marvel. Thrusting forward to This, attaining, and resting in its content, seek to grasp it more and more — understanding it by that intuitive thrust alone, but knowing its greatness by the Beings that follow upon it and exist by its power” (ibid).

This seems like his more standard position that the One is not a Being. It also at least suggests the very useful approach of understanding a cause or a higher thing by examining what follows from it. But the extent to which Plotinus puts this into practice is limited.

“The Intellectual-Principle is a Seeing, and a Seeing which itself sees; therefore it is a potentiality which has become effective…. All actual seeing implies duality; before the seeing takes place there is the pure unity (of the power of seeing)” (ch. 11, p. 249).

The assertion that all seeing — and implicitly, all knowing — implies duality suggests a denial of Aristotle’s thesis that pure thought is simply identical with what it thinks. But again there is a mismatch that could also allow for doubt. Where Aristotle speaks of thinking, Plotinus speaks of seeing, and of knowing in some broad sense. For Aristotle, thinking and knowing are primarily discursive; for Plotinus, they are primarily intuitive.

“Now as our sight requires the world of sense for its satisfaction and realization, so the vision in the Intellectual-Principle demands, for its completion, The Good” (pp. 249-250).

Here he implicitly rejects Aristotle’s identification of thought thinking itself with the good. In modern terms, we are back to the model of the duality of consciousness of an object that is not Aristotle’s, and that Hegel strove mightily to overcome in favor of a more Aristotelian solution.

“It cannot be, itself, The Good, since then it would not need to see or to perform any other Act; for The Good is the center of all else, and it is by means of The Good that every thing has Act, while The Good is in need of nothing and therefore possesses nothing beyond itself” (p. 250).

For Plotinus, intellect sees and acts, while the One or The Good is above all that. For Aristotle, pure intellect is a pure entelechy that is also the the ultimate good for all things. Whether or not we say that it sees and acts depends on the meaning we attribute to seeing and acting.

“Once you have uttered ‘The Good’, add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency. Do not even say that it has Intellection; you would be dividing it; it would become a duality, Intellect and The Good” (ibid).

“[W]e form a conception of its true character from its image playing upon the Intellectual-Principle (ibid).

“[A]ll the striving is on the side of the Intellect, which is the eternal striver and eternally the attainer (ibid).

For Aristotle, intellect is an entelechy, which I think would be exempt from “striving”. It is composite things that do the striving.

“The Source of all this cannot be an Intellect…. [T]here is That before them which neither needs nor possesses anything, since, needing or possessing anything else, it would not be what it is — The Good” (ibid).

Once again, Aristotle does not claim that his first cause is the “Source of all this”. Rather, it is the destination of all this.

More On the First Cause

Referring to Odysseus’ speech that inspires, unifies, and invigorates the Greeks in Homer’s Iliad, from which Aristotle quotes in the final sentence of book Lambda, translator Joe Sachs says in a footnote, “Similarly, the divine intellect described by Aristotle does not create things or the world, but confers upon them their worldhood and thinghood” (Metaphysics, p. 252n). It is that which the what-it-is of every other thing presupposes. For Aristotle, the thought thinking itself identified with the first cause is the condition of their intelligibility, and the condition of the possibility of there being any intelligibility at all. Otherwise, everything would be in “chaos and night”.

For Aristotle, there could be no such thing as a beginning of time, nor could there be anything “before” time, since before and after presuppose time. The first cause and the stars persist forever, but to my knowledge he never clearly refers to anything being strictly eternal or outside of time altogether, as is true of God for Augustine.

Platonic forms might be outside of time, but Aristotle does not recognize forms of the Platonic sort. However, he says that the hylomorphic kind of form he does recognize is not itself subject to becoming or change. What becomes or changes is the composite of form and matter.

The first cause is also said to be exempt from becoming and change. We have recently seen, though, that Aristotle has a very specific concept of becoming and change. Any kind of new state — whether of body, soul, intellect, or knowledge — does not count for it as a becoming or a change.

The intuition behind this seems to be that becoming and change apply to processes that are continuous, whereas a new state may be considered to be something discrete. With composite things, he says that a new state may also be accompanied by a change or becoming in something else that is related to it.

The first cause, though, would be unaffected by anything else, so this would probably prevent its having a new state. Also, as a pure entelechy, it should always be in a state of completion or fulfillment, which would probably also rule out its having any new state. So while not technically eternal in the Augustinian sense of outside of time altogether, according to Aristotle it persists forever inside of time, without becoming or change, and it seems not to have any new states either.

The “firstness” of the first cause, then, does not refer to any kind of firstness in time. It is first in the sense that everything else has a dependency on it, while it has no dependency on anything else.

A puzzle related to the first cause is that it seems it is supposed to be both a pure that-for-the-sake-of-which, and a non-perceptible independent particular thing that persists forever. In general, we would not expect any particular thing to be a pure that-for-the-sake-of-which. But perhaps the thought thinking itself that he says characterizes the first cause is in fact a bridging term that could meet the conditions for both.

Thought thinking itself seems as if it may be the same as pure contemplation (theoria). In the Nicomachean Ethics, he says that contemplation seems more divine than human, and seems to feel a need to justify his claim that it applies to humans at all, but he associates it with what he considers to be the highest possible human virtue. As the highest possible virtue, it would qualify as an unconditional that-for-the-sake-of-which. If it is not just the idea of thought thinking itself but an actual thought thinking itself, then it is also a particular thing.

He also identifies it with the good and the beautiful, but this does not mean the Platonic idea of the Good as a logical universal that is supposed to have a univocal meaning. What gives it universal import is not logical universality, but its unique concrete relation to all other things. The concrete particular thing that is pure thought thinking itself is superlatively good and beautiful, just because it is a pure entelechy. A pure entelechy for Aristotle is itself the highest conceivable perfection, and is thus easily equated with the good and the beautiful in an unqualified sense.

Last post in this series: Mathematical Things and Forms

Reflections on Book Lambda

It turns out that Aristotle’s way of arguing for a first cause in book Lambda of the Metaphysics depends almost entirely on his unusual thesis of the priority of actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment over potentiality. His justification of the priority of actuality there also seems unexpectedly Kant-like, which means that so does his argument for a first cause.

We don’t positively know that actuality is prior, or that there is a first cause. Rather, Aristotle makes the indirect argument that a priority of actuality is a necessary condition for the kind of intelligibility that we need to have in order to be able to explain things at all. The pure actuality he attributes to the first cause is part of his affirmation that the priority of actuality is not an optional feature of his account.

I have been very impressed by Robert Pippin’s account of how Hegel’s rediscovery of the Aristotelian priority of actuality affects ethics and the theory of agency. Gwenaëlle Aubry increased my sensitivity to the normative, end-like character of Aristotelian actuality itself, and to his repeated associations of the first cause with the good and the beautiful. I’ve always read Aristotle’s first cause in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which — as a sort of ultimate end — so this was a welcome perspective. This much seems to tightly cohere, and all to be nicely confirmed by the somewhat more disciplined reading of the Metaphysics I’ve just finished.

But I’ve been neglecting another strand from the Physics, which defines motion in terms of actuality and potentiality, and which ultimately traces every motion to the realization of an end, and to the actualization of a potential. Given my own interest in the idea of interpretation in an ethical spirit as first philosophy, this suggestion that material motion as such is in some minimal way ends-governed — even when no living plant or animal is involved — is something I find very appealing, albeit in need of clarification.

On the other hand, the arguments about a first motion and a first moved thing associated with the sphere of the fixed stars presuppose the non-relative status of a geocentric point of view in astronomy, and I don’t see any way to sustain that. The first cause of all things can no longer be conceived as having a special, more direct relation to the motion of the stars as viewed from earth, such as Aristotle suggests.

But we can still say that the pursuit and partial realization of the good and the beautiful are in a way involved in motions in general. This can be defined in a way that depends only on observable patterns of how various kinds of material things tend to seek completion in one way rather than another in different situations.

The good and the beautiful will be a “prime mover” only in this more diffuse sense, not as also having a special relation to the motion of the fixed stars. But we can still have entelechy from top to bottom, and we can still be moved by the beauty of the stars.

Next in this series: More on the First Cause

Mathematical Things and Forms

We’ve reached the end of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, though there are in fact two more books, Mu (XIII) and Nu (XIV).

Aristotle’s main point of contention with his former colleagues of the Platonic Academy is whether or not mathematical objects and forms understood as universals are independent things in their own right. Both books Mu and Nu (XIV) are concerned with this, and have a somewhat polemical character. I think Aristotle’s own distinctive views on form are better expressed in what has been said already, so I will mostly focus on the other remarks he makes in book Mu, and will skip book Nu entirely.

Book Mu does not clearly refer to the preceding book Lambda (XII), but does refer to previous discussion of “the thinghood that has being as being-at-work” (Sachs tr., ch. 1, p. 253) as well as to discussion on aporias.

“Now it is necessary, if mathematical things are, that they be either in the perceptible things, as some people say, or separate from the perceptible things (and some people also speak of them that way); or if they are not present in either way, then they do not have being or they have it in some other manner. So for us the dispute will not be about whether they have being, but about the manner of their being” (pp. 253-254).

I take especial note of the last sentence above. This could also serve as a comment on what is at stake in the Metaphysics in general — questions not really about being as if it were one thing, but about what things are, and the ways they are.

He goes on to argue that mathematical things are neither “in” perceptible things, nor are they separate things in their own right. “In” for Aristotle suggests a material constituent.

“It has been said sufficiently, then, that mathematical things are not independent things more than bodies are, nor are they prior in being to perceptible things, but only in articulation, nor are they capable of being somewhere as separate; but since they are not capable of being in perceptible things either, it is clear that either they have no being at all, or that they have being in a certain manner and for this reason do not have being simply, for we speak of being in a number of ways” (ch. 2, p. 257).

For those who insist that the whole Metaphysics is a single linear development and not just generally coherent with itself, and also that being finally acquires an unequivocal sense, it seems inconvenient that now, after book Lambda, he continues to emphasize that being is said in many ways.

I think the Metaphysics is very much coherent with itself, but is not a single linear development pointing toward Being, and that he never wavers on the emphasis that being is said in many ways, although he does sometimes use the word equivocally himself. If the whole thing points toward something, that something is the good and the beautiful, and not Being.

He goes on to make some positive remarks about mathematics.

“Now just as the things that are universal within mathematics are not about things that are separate from magnitudes and numbers, but are about these, but not insofar as they are of such a sort as to have magnitude or to be discrete, it is clear that it is also possible for there to be both articulations and demonstrations about perceptible magnitudes, not insofar as they are perceptible but insofar as they are of certain sorts” (ch. 3, p. 257).

He is saying that insofar as there is mathematical knowledge, it is not about magnitude or number as such, but about more specific things such as right triangles or even numbers. Similarly, the meaning of articulations and demonstrations about perceptible magnitudes does not depend on their perceptibility as such.

“[S]ince it is true to say simply that there are not only separate things but also things that are not separate…, it is also true to say simply that there are mathematical things and that they are of such a sort as people say….If it is about things which incidentally are perceptible, but is not concerned with them insofar as they are perceptible, mathematical knowledge will not be about perceptible things; however, it will not be about other separate beings besides these either” (p. 258).

Mathematical things are bona fide things in the broad sense, but not all things are separate or independent. Some are attributed to others.

“[I]f someone examines anything concerning these attributes, insofar as they are such, positing them to be separate, he will not on this account cause anything to be false, any more than when one draws a line on the ground that is not a foot long, and says it is a foot long, for the false assumption is not in the proposition…. [F]or this reason the geometers speak rightly” (pp. 258-259).

Mistaken belief about the independence of mathematical things is incidental to the doing of mathematics. It is irrelevant to the results of constructions or calculations.

“And since the good and the beautiful are different (for the former is always involved in action but the beautiful is also present in motionless things), those who claim that the mathematical kinds of knowledge say nothing about what is beautiful and good are wrong…. The greatest forms of the beautiful are order and symmetry and determinateness, which the mathematical kinds of knowledge most of all display. And since these make their appearance as causes of many things…, it is clear that these kinds of knowledge would also speak about what has responsibility in the manner of the beautiful as a cause in some manner” (p. 259).

Here he not only recognizes mathematical beauty, but relates it to the beauty associated with that-for-the-sake-of-which as a cause.

“The opinion about the forms came to those who spoke about them as a result of being persuaded by the Heraclitean writings that it is true that all perceptible things are always in flux, so that, if knowledge and thought are to be about anything, there must be, besides the perceptible things, some other enduring natures, since there can be no knowledge of things in flux. And then Socrates made it his business to be concerned with the moral virtues, and on account of them first sought to define things in a universal way. For among those who studied nature, only to a small extent did Democritus attain to this… and before that the Pythagoreans did about some few things…. But it is reasonable that Socrates sought after what something is…. But Socrates did not make the universals or the definitions separate, while those who came next did, and called beings of this sort forms” (ch. 4, p. 260).

Aristotle rejects the Heraclitean doctrine of radical flux that influenced Plato. He says Plato was driven to assert separate forms because he wanted to assert that there is knowledge, in spite of his Heracliteanism about perceptible things. Aristotle says that driven by a concern for ethics, Socrates — and not any of those we know as the pre-Socratics — was the first to seriously inquire about what things are. Aristotle has been inquiring about the what-it-is of things and its causes and sources, and we have seen in abundance his concern for the good and the beautiful. Aristotle is claiming a Socratic heritage, and claiming to be truer to it than the Platonists: “Socrates did not make the universals or the definitions separate”.

There follows a long argument against Platonic views about the forms, at the end of which he observes:

“[K]nowledge, like knowing, has two senses, the one as in potency, the other as at-work. The potency, being, like material, universal and indeterminate, is of what is universal and indeterminate, but the being-at-work is determinate and of something determinate; being a this it is of a this, but incidentally sight sees a universal color because this color that it sees is a color, and this A that the grammarian contemplates is an A” (ch. 10, p. 279).

If I am reading this right, he is saying here that being as universal and indeterminate is to being-at-work as potentiality is to being-at-work. If that is so, then the priority of actuality over potentiality would also seem to be a priority of actuality over being. Once again, it just doesn’t seem that being is the principal term.

In any case, he returns to the ultimately ethical theme of the priority of actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment over potentiality, and of particular concrete things over universals in the ordinary logical sense. This still has to be carefully balanced with his other view that there is no knowledge of particulars; knowledge is of universals only.

Positive concern for the priority of actuality is in my opinion the primary thing that underlies his sharp critique of the Platonists. The second — evidenced in the part I skipped over — was the popularity within the Academy of a kind of Pythagorean mystique of numbers that also identified the forms with numbers, in sometimes baffling ways. Plato himself was apparently not immune to this.

Many think Aristotle claims to have knowledge of non-perceptible particular independent everlasting things. I think this interpretation relies on ambiguous use of Aristotle’s saying of “knowledge” in different ways in different contexts. Sometimes he means it very strictly, other times much more loosely. Some translations add confusion by using the same English “knowledge” for other Greek words like gnosis, which I think for Aristotle means personal acquaintance with things nearer to us, whereas episteme is supposed to be about things in their own right.

I do not think that Aristotle means to claim knowledge in the strong sense about ultimate things, but rather that his attitude was in a way closer to that of Kant, who held them to have the highest importance but not to be knowable in the strict sense. This means we do not have to equivocate about what knowledge is.

The wisdom that is called sophia in book capital Alpha initially seems to be concerned with universals in the ordinary sense, as true episteme or knowledge genuinely is. It turns out in book Lambda that sophia‘s primary concern is not with universals in the ordinary sense at all, but with analogous relations that a uniquely positioned particular or particulars has or have to all other things.

In any case, my own view is that the wisdom or sophia concerning these highest things ought to be understood as aligned not so much with knowledge or episteme, as with the ethical or “practical” wisdom (phronesis) that is explicitly said to be a wisdom about particulars. A wisdom about particulars is not prevented from making — and indeed presumably would make — use of knowledge of any universals that genuinely apply. Nonetheless it is the wisdom about particulars that judges which universals should apply in a particular case.

Pure Entelechy

Book Lambda (XII) of the Metaphysics sketches Aristotle’s brilliant and beautiful solution to the problems that have been under investigation in this work. The text of book Lambda itself, however, seems more like a series of fragments than the kind of tight, continuous development that characterizes the so-called “central books” Zeta (VII), Eta (VIII), and Theta (IX), or the books of Aristotle’s Physics.

He now clearly affirms that there is a first cause of all things — not only of their being what they are, but also of their motion. As a result, book Lambda presents a mix of philosophical theology and Aristotelian physics.

Aristotle has a very distinctive notion of what the first cause is. I would call this pure entelechy. I’m not aware that he literally uses that phrase, but he definitely says that the first cause is pure energeia (actuality, being-at-work, or fulfillment), and he very strongly identifies energeia with entelecheia (a new Greek word coined by Aristotle, meaning literally “in [it] end having”, or “being-at-work-staying-itself” in Sachs’ translation), for which I am using the English “entelechy”.

Entelechy is the theme that unifies Aristotle’s account of motion with the inquiry about why things are what they are. Motion is a kind of incomplete entelechy. The first cause, both of motion and of things being what they are — which he identifies with the good, that-for-the-sake-of-which, thought thinking itself, and what I would call a kind of pure delight — is a complete and pure entelechy. The concept of entelechy thus binds Aristotle’s physics together with his theology.

Apart from considerations related to the first cause, Aristotle normally distinguishes that-for-the-sake-of-which from the potentiality that is an internal source of motion in things. But he also says that every motion is for the sake of that toward which the potentiality inclines. And the first cause of all motion affects things purely as that-for-the-sake-of-which.

The kind of motion that best exemplifies entelechy is circular motion. Circularity is also a kind of figurative image or metaphor for entelechy. Continuous motion in a circle is in a sense always complete in the sense of unchangingly accomplishing its goal, and yet it is always ongoing. But not even the first motion is itself unconditionally complete as an entelechy, since it is still moving. Only the first cause is that.

For Aristotle, there is one thing that is directly moved by the first cause, and that is the sphere of the fixed stars, which also demarcates the most comprehensive whole of things that occupy space. Other motions are indirect consequences of this, which follow only in a conditional way.

The first cause is not just pure entelechy in the generic sense of a logical universal. It is a particular independent thing that turns out to be the unique exemplar of its kind.

In virtue of its unique relation to all other things, it plays the role of what Hegel would later call a concrete universal. Further, the unique character of that relation of “firstness” makes it an unconditioned concrete universal. This is the kind of unconditioned thing that Kant says reason is always reaching for, but that cannot be strictly known. It is also the kind of unconditioned thing that Hegel treats as the ultimate ground of intelligibility and value.

He begins by recalling that the path of the inquiry has approached “all things” by focusing on those sources and causes that make concrete independent things be what they are. Independent things turn out to be those that have some entelechy of their own, which exhibits greater self-determination than the minimal kind that applies to all motions. These include plants, animals, and the stars.

“Our study concerns thinghood, for it is the sources and causes of independent things that are being sought” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 231).

“[E]verything changes from something that has being in potency to something that has being at-work” (ch. 2, p. 232).

All change for Aristotle is from something being potentially something to its being that same something in actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment. This is narrower than common English usage. In Physics book VII he says that “states, whether of the body or of the soul, are not alterations” (Collected Works, Barnes ed., vol. 1, p. 412).

“Now if something has being in potency, still this is not a potency to be any random thing, but a different thing comes to be from a different potency” (ibid).

Although one thing may have many potentialities, each of which may or may not be realized, each of these is a specific potentiality to be actual or at-work or fulfilled in some definite way.

“The kinds of thinghood are three, since the material is a this by coming forth into appearance (for whatever has being by way of contact, and not by having grown together, is material and underlies something else), while the nature of a thing is a this and an active condition into which it comes; and then the third kind is the particular thing that consists of these, such as Socrates or Callias” (ch. 3, p. 233).

He reminds us that when we speak of particular things, to avoid confusion we need to attend to whether we mean their matter, their form, or the composite consisting of both.

“Now things that cause motion are causes as being previously present, but things that are causes in the sense of rational patterns are simultaneous with what they produce” (p. 234).

Causes that are not of motion as such, but rather simply of being in a certain way, like form and that-for-the-sake-of-which, are not like more direct causes of motion in their mode of operation with respect to time. Their operation as causes does not involve a distinct externality related to a before and after, but rather unfolds immanently in their effects.

“Now there is a sense in which the causes and sources of different things are different, but there is a sense in which, if one speaks universally by way of analogy, they are the same for all things…. [B]ut the elements are different in different things, and the first cause that sets them in motion is also different in different things…. [B]ut still, over and above these, is the cause which, as the first of all things, sets all things in motion” (ch. 4, p. 234-236).

For Aristotle, everything has both a particular cause or causes, and a dependency on the first cause of all. The first cause of all operates through particular causes. This is the first time he has unambiguously implied that there is a first cause of all things. (In the middle above, when he speaks of “the first cause that sets them in motion”, this is not the first cause of all, but the first more specific cause of the motion in question.)

“Now since some things are separate while others are not separate, the former are independent things. And it is on account of this that all things have the same causes, because without independent things, attributes and motions are not possible. So then these causes will be, presumably, soul and body, or intellect, desire, and body. And in yet another way the sources of things are the same by analogy, namely being-at-work and potency, though these are both different and present in different ways in different things” (ch. 5, p. 236).

Once again, he recalls both the strategy of deriving the saying of being in the other categories from the saying of what independent things are, and the analogy by which the meanings of actuality and potentiality were illustrated. Again he emphasizes actuality and potentiality as sources of all things.

In passing, he seems to suggest thinking about human being in more specific terms of intellect and desire, rather than an undifferentiated soul. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he specifies that choice is grounded in a fusion of intellect and desire.

“Further, it is necessary to see that some things are possible to state universally, but others not. Now the primary sources of all things are a this that is first at work and something else which is in potency. So these are not the universal causes, since the source of particular things is particular; for a human being is the source of a human being universally, but no one is this universal, but rather Peleus is the source of Achilles and your father of you, and this particular B is the source of this particular BA, but B in general is the source of BA simply. And then, if the causes and elements of independent things are the sources of all things (but different ones of different ones), then as was said, of things not in the same class (colors and sounds, or independent things and quantity) they are different except by analogy; of things that are in the same kind they are also different, but not in kind, but because they are different for particular things, your material and form and mover from mine, though they are the same in their universal statement” (p. 237).

Again he emphasizes that particulars have particular causes. The kind of universality and operation that will be attributed to the first cause of all will be of a sort that respects this. He also again emphasizes that the primary sources of all things are particular actualities and potentialities.

“So as for seeking out what are the sources or elements of independent things and of relations and the of-what-sorts of things, and whether they are the same or different, it is clear that, since they are meant in more than one way, they do belong to everything, but when they have been distinguished they are not the same but different, except in one sense. And the causes of all things are the same in this sense — by analogy — because they are material, form, deprivation, and a mover, and the causes of independent things are the causes of all things in this sense — because when they are taken away everything is taken away; and further, the primary thing that is completely at work is the cause of all things. But the causes are different in this sense — they are as many as the primary contraries, described neither generically nor ambiguously, and as there are kinds of material as well. So what the sources are of perceptible things, and how many there are, and in what way they are the same and in what way different, have been said” (pp. 237-238).

At long last, we come to the argument that there really is a first cause of all things. Again he emphasizes that everything also has particular sources and causes.

“Now since there are three kinds of thinghood, two of them natural and one motionless, about the latter one must explain that it is necessary for there to be some everlasting motionless independent thing” (ch. 6, p. 238).

“For independent things are primary among beings, and if they were all destructible, everything would be destructible; but it is impossible for motion either to come into being or to be destroyed (since it always is), and impossible too for time” (ibid).

For Aristotle there is no first motion, or first moment in time. Instead, there must be an everlasting cause of motion.

“For if there were no time, there could be no before and after; and motion is continuous in just the way that time is; since time is either the same as or some attribute of motion” (ibid).

He points out that to speak of anything “before” there was any time is incoherent, since before and after presuppose time.

“But there is no continuous motion other than in place, and among these, other than in a circle” (ibid).

Only motion in a circle could continue forever. Space is vast, but Aristotle does not believe in infinite distances, so for him there could not be motion continuing forever in a straight line.

He seems to imply that the most fundamental motion of all — that of the fixed stars — provides a uniform measure for time. In modern terms, this is the earth’s rotation on its axis, as observed from a point on the earth. In the absence of evidence refuting what we see to be the case, he assumes that the stars forever rotate around the earth, and that the apparent motion of what is apparently the outermost sphere of the fixed stars is therefore a primary motion that spatially surrounds all things. If we take earth as the point of reference for whatever relativistic motions we see in the sky, this fits all the observational facts.

“But surely if there is something capable of moving and producing things, but not at work in any way, there will not be motion; for what has a potency admits of not being at work” (ibid).

Here he returns to the Physics sense of potentiality and actuality, and to the priority of the actual. Every potentiality is a source of motion that requires something external that is already an actuality of the same sort, in order for the potentiality to be actualized. The child requires a parent, the artifact a Platonic model.

“Therefore, there is no benefit even if we adopt everlasting independent things, as do those who bring in the forms, unless there is in them some source capable of producing change; moreover, even this is not enough, not even if there is another independent thing besides the forms, since if it is not going to be at work, there will not be motion” (ibid).

A pure form or logical universal that is not “actual” cannot explain motion. Once again, motion as the actualization of a potential depends on a pre-existing actuality.

“What’s more, it is not enough even if it will be at work, if the thinghood of it is potency, for there would not be everlasting motion, since what has being in potency admits of not being” (ibid).

Further, any first cause of motion must be everlasting, continuous, and unchanging in its action. That is to say, it must itself be purely actual, with no admixture of potentiality. It would not be sufficient to explain everlasting, continuous motion if the first cause just happened to be actual for some period of time.

“Therefore it is necessary that there be a source of such a kind that the thinghood of it is being-at-work. On top of that, it is necessary that these independent things be without material, for they must be everlasting, if indeed anything else is everlasting. Therefore they are being-at-work” (ibid).

As he just suggested, any first cause of all must therefore be a pure actuality with no potentiality. What Aristotle calls matter is kind of potentiality, so the first cause must have no matter either.

“For how will things have been set in motion, if there were not some responsible thing at work? For material itself, at any rate, will not set itself in motion” (p. 239).

“And this is why some people, such as Leucippus and Plato, bring in an everlasting activity, for they say there is always motion. But why there is this motion, and what it is, they do not say, nor the cause of its being in a certain way or some other way. For nothing moves at random, but always something must be present to it, just as now something moves in a certain way by nature, but in some other way by force or by action of intelligence or something else” (ibid).

It is not enough to simply posit motion. This does not explain anything.

“And then, what sort of motion is primary? For this makes so much difference one can hardly conceive it. But surely it is not possible for Plato to say what he sometimes thinks the source of motion is, which sets itself in motion; for the soul is derivative, and on the same level as the heavens, as he says” (ibid).

The thought here seems to be that if there is a first cause of motion, there must be a primary sort of motion that it primarily causes. For Aristotle, this is the movement of the fixed stars.

“Anaxagoras testifies that being-at-work takes precedence (since intellect is a being-at-work), as does Empedocles with love and strife, and so do those who say there is always motion, such as Leucippus; therefore there was not chaos or night for an infinite time, but the same things have always been so, either in a cycle or in some other way, if being-at-work takes precedence over potency. So if the same thing is always so in a cycle, it is necessary for something to persist always at work in the same way” (pp. 239-240).

If all things did not come from something that is an actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment, then they could only come from what the poets called “chaos and night”. But if all things came from chaos and night, there would be no hope of understanding anything. Aristotle suggests that several of his predecessors ought to have recognized the priority of actuality, as an implicit presupposition of what they did say.

“But since it is possible for it to be this way, and if it is not this way things will come from night and from ‘all things together’ and from not-being, these questions could be resolved; and there is a certain ceaseless motion that is always moving, and it is in a circle (and this is evident not only to reason but in fact), so that the first heaven will be everlasting” (ch. 7, p. 240).

He does not claim to positively know that actuality is necessarily prior to potentiality. He claims that the account is plausible, and that any alternative must lead back to sheer chaos, which would make it impossible for anything to be truly intelligible at all.

“Accordingly, there is also something that moves it. And since what is in motion and causes motion is intermediate, there is also something that causes motion without being in motion, which is everlasting, an independent thing, and a being-at-work” (ibid).

Behind each independent celestial motion, there must be some actual everlasting independent thing. Behind these, there must be something that is completely unmoved, and that is a pure actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment.

“But what is desired and what is thought cause motion in that way: not being in motion, they cause motion” (ibid).

For Aristotle, desire and thought are unmoved movers.

“But the primary instances of these are the same things, for what is yearned for is what seems beautiful, while what is wished for primarily is what is beautiful; but we desire something because of the way it seems, rather than its seeming so because we desire it, for the act of thinking is the beginning” (pp. 240-241).

Desire and thought both aim at what is good or beautiful. The way things seem — and consequently, the act of thinking or judging — drives wishing and willing, not vice versa. Further below, he will again emphasize the active rather than merely receptive role of thought.

“But the power of thinking is set in motion by the action of the thing thought, and what is thought in its own right belongs to an array of affirmative objects of which thinghood is primary, and of this the primary kind is that which is simple and at work” (p. 241).

Thinking itself is driven by the actuality of what it thinks. This does not negate his emphasis on thinking as act.

“But what is one and what is simple are not the same, for oneness indicates a measure, but what is simple is itself a certain way” (ibid).

The simplicity he attributes to the first cause is a stronger criterion than being one.

“But surely the beautiful and what is chosen in virtue of itself are also in that same array, and what is primary is always best, or analogous to it” (ibid).

First things are good and beautiful, and the first thing of all can be identified with the good and the beautiful.

“And that-for-the-sake-of-which is possible among motionless things, as the [following] distinction makes evident; for that-for-the-sake-of-which is either for something or belonging to something, of which the former is and the latter is not present among motionless things” (ibid).

Here he explicitly says that that-for-the-sake-of-which has a broader scope than any source of motion. Alone among the four kinds of causes, it provides ultimate reasons why things are what they are. Form may be identified with what things are, but that-for-the-sake of which is the cause of form and the reason why it is what it is.

“And it causes motion in the manner of something loved, and by means of what is moved moves other things” (ibid).

The highest kind of cause, that-for-the-sake-of-which, involves no force or compulsion or unconditional necessity. Other things are moved because they love it or are attracted by it, but they could not be so moved if they did not have their own sources of motion. They are not moved by some active power emanating from the first cause.

“But since there is something that causes motion while being itself motionless, this does not admit of being otherwise than it is in any respect at all” (ibid).

“For among changes, the primary one is change of place, and of this the primary kind is a circle, but this is what this mover causes” (ibid).

“Therefore [the first cause] is something that has being necessarily…. On such a source, therefore, the cosmos and nature depend” (pp. 241-242).

“And the course of its life is of such a kind as the best we have for a short time. This is so because it is always the same way (which for us is impossible), and because its being-at-work is also pleasure (which is what makes being awake, perceiving, and thinking the most pleasant things, while hopes and memories are pleasant on account of these)” (p. 242).

If we speak in terms of pleasure here, it would be of the highest possible sort. I think “pure delight” captures the meaning more clearly.

“And the thinking that is just thinking by itself is a thinking of what is best just as itself, and especially so with what is so most of all” (ibid).”

“But by partaking in what it thinks, the intellect thinks itself, for it becomes what it thinks by touching and contemplating it, so that the intellect and what it thinks are the same thing” (ibid).

And this, I say, is pure delight.

“For what is receptive of the intelligible and of thinghood is the intellect, and it is at work when it has them; therefore it is the being-at-work rather than the receptivity the intellect has that seems godlike, and its contemplation is pleasantest and best” (ibid, emphasis added).

He is saying that it is by virtue of the more perfect entelechy of intellect, which goes beyond the limited entelechy associated with motion — rather than intellect’s incidental touching or contemplation of something else — that intellect seems godlike. Here again he emphasizes the primarily active rather than receptive character of thought.

“So if the divine being is in this good condition that we are sometimes in, that is to be wondered at; and if it is in it to a greater degree than we are, that is to be wondered at still more. And that is the way it is” (ibid).

For Aristotle, the divine is not incommensurable with the human. Albeit in a very partial manner, we also partake of it, and the more so the more that we are moved by our highest values.

“But life belongs to it too, for the being-at-work of intellect is life, and that being is being-at-work, and its being-at-work is in itself the best life and is everlasting. And we say it is a god who everlastingly lives the best life, so that life and continuous and everlasting duration belong to a god; for this being is god” (ibid).

“That, then, there is an independent thing that is everlasting, motionless, and separate from perceptible things, is clear from what has been said. And it has also been demonstrated that this independent thing can have no magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible (for it causes motion for an infinite time, while no finite thing has an infinite power, and since every magnitude must be either finite or infinite, it cannot have magnitude, either finite, for the reason given, or infinite, because there is no infinite magnitude at all). But surely it has also been demonstrated that it cannot be affected or altered” (p. 243).

Sachs says in a note that the reference to a demonstration that the first cause is not involved with magnitude effectively incorporates the entire argument of the Physics by reference. Book VIII of the Physics has a far more thorough argument that there must be a first unmoved mover corresponding to the primary observable motion of the circling of the fixed stars, but that account does not address the what-it-is of things.

“But since… we see in addition to the motion of the whole heaven, other everlasting motions which belong to the planets…, it is necessary that each of these motions also be caused by something that is itself motionless and an everlasting independent thing. For the nature of the stars is for each to be an everlasting independent thing, while the mover is everlasting and takes precedence over the thing moved, and what takes precedence over an independent thing must be an independent thing” (ch. 8, p. 244).

The terrestrial independent things are mainly plants and animals. These have the richest entelechies among terrestrial perceptible things.

Aristotle also acknowledges each star participating in the motion of the heaven as an entelechy of its own. At least in a way, it is superior to ours, in that to all appearances it lasts forever.

The stars he calls planets are those that stand out by having observable independent motions of their own, different from the primary motion that they share with all the stars that are called “fixed” by contrast.

“[B]ut the number of motions is already something one must examine from that kind of mathematical knowledge that is the nearest kin to philosophy, namely from astronomy. For this kind makes its study about perceptible, everlasting thinghood, while the others, such as those concerned with numbers and with geometry, are not about thinghood at all” (ibid).

“[A]s for how many [independent motions] there happen to be, we now state what some of the mathematicians say, for the sake of a conception of it, … and as for what remains, it is necessary to inquire into some things ourselves, while listening to what other inquirers say about others. If something should seem to those who busy themselves with these matters to be contrary to what has just now been said, it is necessary to welcome both accounts, but trust the more precise one” (pp. 244-245).

“[F]or let the number that is necessary be left for more relentless people to say” (p. 246).

Apparently he made an arithmetic error counting the motions (“either 55 or 47”, where the 47 should have been 48, according the details I have not reproduced), then made a joke of it. I don’t believe Aristotle is very attached to specific enumerations of any sort. It is the principles upon which distinctions are based that matter.

“There has been handed down from people of ancient and earliest times a heritage, in the form of myth, to those of later times, that these original beings are gods, and that the divine embraces the whole of nature. The rest of it was presently introduced in mythical guise for the persuasion of the masses and into laws for use and benefit” (p. 247).

The divine embraces the whole of nature. We still name the planets by the Roman names for the Greek gods that were associated with them in antiquity.

Next he seems to respond to, or perhaps anticipate, doubts about what he said earlier about intellect.

“Now concerning the intellect there are certain impasses, for it seems to be the most divine of things that are manifest to us, but the way it is if it is to be of that sort contains some things that are hard to digest. For if it thinks nothing, what would be solemn about that? Rather, it would be just like someone sleeping. But if it does think, but something else has power over it, then, since it is not thinking but potency that is the thinghood of it, it could not be the best independent thing, for it is on account of its act of thinking that its place of honor belongs to it. And still, whether the thinghood of it is a power of thinking or an activity of thinking, what does it think?” (ch. 9, p. 247).

“For [what intellect thinks] is either itself or something else, and if it is something else, either always the same one or different ones. And then does it make any difference, or none, whether its thinking is of what is beautiful or of some random thing? Isn’t it even absurd for its thinking to be about some things? Surely it is obvious that it thinks the most divine and honorable things, and does not change, since its change would be for the worse, and such a thing would already be a motion” (p. 248).

Intellect will prefer the beautiful and the good over any random thing. Physics book VII much better explains why certain things that we are used to calling “changes” are not considered changes in his way of speaking.

“First, then, if it is not an activity of thinking but a potency, … it is clear that something else would be more honorable than the intellect, namely what it thinks…. Therefore what it thinks is itself, if it is the most excellent thing, and its thinking is a thinking of thinking” (ibid).

For a third time, he insists that intellect is primarily active, rather than receptive. Its main concern seems to be with whatever is most good and beautiful and honorable. It is a thinking of thinking — true higher-order thinking, rather than a first-order “thinking” of something external.

“But [the human soul’s] knowledge and perception and opinion and step-by-step thinking seem always to be about something else, and about themselves only as something secondary” (ibid).

The above seems to be in implicit contrast with the active thinking about which he was speaking just before. In this way, intellect in its own right is unlike the human soul.

“What’s more, if the thinking and the being thought are different, then in virtue of which of them does what is good belong to it? For to be an act of thinking and to be something thought are not the same” (ibid).

They are the same and yet not the same. Of course, this is in different respects. This is the model for many similar formulations in Hegel.

“Or is it rather that in some cases the knowledge is the thing it is concerned with, so that in the case of the kinds of knowing that make something, the thinghood without material and what it is for something to be, or in the case of the contemplative kinds of knowing, the articulation, is both the thing the knowledge is concerned with and the activity of thinking it? So since what is thought and what is thinking are not different with as many things as have no material, they will be the same, and the act of thinking will be one with what is thought” (ibid).

Here he suggests that we may after all be able to see instances of this identity by reflecting on our experiences of productive and contemplative knowing. Insofar as we actually know anything, we partially escape the inherent limitations of the human soul.

“But there is still an impasse left as to whether what is thought is composite, for then thinking would be changing among the parts of the whole. Or is it the case that everything that has no material is indivisible?” (pp. 248-249).

Implicitly, he seems to favor the latter alternative. Then twice more he speaks of intellect’s predilection for what is good and best.

“So the condition the human intellect, or that of any composite being, is in at some period of time (for it does not have hold of what is good at this or that time, but in some whole stretch of time it has hold of what is best, since that is something other than itself), is the condition the thinking that thinks itself is in over the whole of time” (p. 249).

Again, for Aristotle we have a little bit of the divine within us insofar as we have intellect, so there is no radical incommensurability between the divine and the human.

“One must also consider in which of two ways the nature of the whole contains what is good and best, whether as something separate, itself by itself, or as the order of the whole of things. Or is it present in both ways…?” (ch.10, p. 249).

Book Lambda’s final chapter ends with a quote from a speech by Odysseus in Homer’s Iliad. The whole chapter is oriented toward this literary image. At this point in the Iliad, the Greeks had been in complete disarray, a confused mass, but Odysseus’ words restore their morale and disciplined unity. (Notably, Odysseus was not the high king or commander-in-chief, though he was a leader. It was what he said that mattered.) Aristotle wants us to see this as a metaphorical answer to the question just posed. What is good and best must indeed be present in both ways — both as from the first cause, and as distributed and embodied throughout the whole — but he wants to emphasize that the “for the sake of which” of the first cause plays a real leading role, even though it does not govern by force.

“But beings do not present the aspect of being badly governed” (pp. 251-252).

As we have seen, this does not mean that all the facts of the world are as they ought to be. It does mean that life and the world are essentially good.

Next in this series: Reflections on Book Lambda